Craftsmen Climb Down

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An excellent collection of £410 at the Third Annual Conference of the Workers Socialist League and a good start to the March fund with £337.75 already collected indicates the growing support that exists for the Workers Socialist League and Socialist Press in the labour movePublished by Folrose Ltd. for.the Workers Socialist League, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR. spoke last week to 'defend' French workers against the attacks of the bourgeois media. The French ruling class had reacted with indignation and outrage to the methods used by the swelling mass movement against unemployment, and further huge redundancies in the steel industry.

Seguy, Stalinist leader of the CGT union confederation gave the bourgeoisie little cause for relief in his speech. The reactionary chauvinist policies which the French Communist Party has tried to foist on the movement have not been able to curb militancy:

FUND ment.

With 2½ weeks still to go we are well placed to meet our All donations should be Monthly Fund, 31, Dartmo NW5 1HR.

These actions in themselves are only one part of a rising tide of resistance to the 'antiinflation' policies of Barre's bourgeois government.

Workers in the nationalised railway, and post and telecommunications sectors have also taken strike action •and threatened increasing activity.

But at Denain on Wednesday the conflict between the working class and capital took the form of violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators.

After clashes and skirmishes the night before, some 1600 to the end of the month £600 fund target in full.

sent to: Socialist Press uth Park Hill, London brutal and hated CRS riotArmed only with iron bars and makeshift weapons, the demonstrators were subjected to a barrage of tearges and chlorine bombs. The first clashes developed into a pitched battle through the afternoon, which ended only at 1 o'clock the next morning.

Gaz explosives In the course of the fighting, several police were injured by shots from a rifle. But the demonstrators mostly resorted to explosives of Camping-Gaz canisters, and the hasty conGeorges Seguy The newly formed Leyland Joint Trades Committee voted last Saturday to withdraw. its resolution for all-out strike action from Friday 16 March.

The decision took place at a meeting of Leyland skilled stewards in Birmingham. • Acting chairman Roy Fraser said this was because some of the delegates' factories had not considered the strike resolution.

He then went on to argue that, since their organisation was now broader-based, he considered that the craftsmen could now win their pay demands without a strike.

On Radio Oxford he said that he considered the meeting a success.

The same meeting also decided to change the original claim for a £90 a week wage to one for a "substantial" increase, since the Coventry factories considered the original claim too "conservative"

The reality is that the leadership of these skilled men is doing everything to avert a confrontation with the company.

Fraser is showing that he is the same as the other misleaders in Leyland, trying to drive the workers the LORD PARTICIPATION • Nine months ago there was a decision of the ad-hoc committee of appointed union representatives in Leyland that they would call a Senior Stewards meeting with a recommendation to give the company six months notice of withdrawal from the "participation" scheme.

But now ine Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions has refused to sanction such a meeting.

Lord Scanlon-who though retired, is still President of the Confed explains:

"We are fully in support of BL workers' participation, but believe you cannot solve the problems by coming. out-that is why we want evidence."

The CSEU is therefore setting up a meeting to hear evidence of lack of consultation by management and take this to the NEB. bureaucratic and secretive way they have forced through acceptance of the 9% offer.

Agents

There is no doubt that NUPE will still try to sell out the pay struggle-and in this task they have plenty of agents within the branches, such as Councillor Jamie Morris, at the Westminster Hospital, who announced his acceptance of the offer at a time calculated to do the maximum damage to future pay struggles. in the health service.

He will undoubtedly be rewarded for this act of cynical betrayal by being asked to join the other parasites at NUPE head office at some future date.

The task in the other three unions in the claim is to expose the betrayals of the leadership before the members.

National and area delegate conferences comprising genuinely elected delegates must be called for the TGWU, COHSE and GMWU, the decisions to accept the 9% must be reversed, and a policy of all-out indefinite strike action for the full claim must be adopted.

Sections of these three unions are still determined to fight on for the full claim-and some, in London and Brighton at least-are at this moment on strike over pay.

The fight by these branches must be broadened into a resumption of all-out strike action for the full claim, and the union bureaucracy must be forced to lead this action.