Tory manifesto builds on Labour's years of betrayal

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Police powers, stepped up by Labour, will be increased by The publication last week of the Party's election brought predictable squeals of rage from trade union and Labour leaders.

They railed at its proposals for new anti-union laws, its proposals to hold down wages in the public sector, its planned spending cuts, and its hopes to denationalise the shipbuilding and the aircraft Such anti-working class policies are of course no surprise from the Tories. As the party of big business they have never bothered to hide their bitter hatred for the workers' movement.

Indeed, though the Heath wing of the Tory Party is now conventionally portrayed in the mass media as "moderate" by comparison to the Thatcher gang, Heath's 1970-74 government was only prevented from fully implementing its savage Industrial Relations Act by a massive, spontaneous strike movement against the jailing of the Pentonville dockers in 1972.

Similarities

But what every TUC leader was careful to avoid in his comments on the Tory manifesto was any reference to the obvious similarities • between the Tory proposals and the Labour policies imposed with full TUC collaboration over the last five years.

Indeed in a whole number of areas Tory policy can be seen as simply building on a foundation laid down by Wilson and Callaghan.

The anti-union laws, for instance, centre on precisely those issues-picketing, the closed shop, and public sector strikes-which were conceded as "problems" by the TUC and explicitly dealt with in the reactionary Concordat: signed with Callaghan in February. The difference between this and the Tories' approach is that the TUC leaders-themselves scared stiff by the scale and scope of the massive offensive movement of trade unionists in defiance of Phase 4 of wage seek, as restrict their members by.

FIGHT curs Thatcher government would their own time-honoured method of administrative sabotage and further suppression of democracy with the unions.

The Tories on the other land, expressing the nistoric cepticism of the ruling class as to the capacity of the Tuc to control union members, prefer the reassurance of legislation on the statute books.

This way they can exploit the services of the trade union bureaucracy under conditions far more favourable to the employHeaded off helpful remembering the way in which TUC leaders under Heath headed off working class resistance to the hated Industrial Relations Act into the blind alley of protest marches, they feel confident that they can bring in such legislation with little organised resistance.

Clearly the Tory pledges to wield an even sharper and longer-handled axe on public spending is based on a similar cynical calculation as to the likelihood of any concerted resistance from the trade unions.

Sitting back

Having seen NUPE's "left" demagogue Alan Fisher, along with every other public sector union leader, sit back and allow Healey's spending cuts to' JOBS FIGHT T THE C SAintensify Healey's cuts close hospitals, schools and nurseries, cut manning levels and cripple whole departments, the Tories feel certain that they would be allowed to get away with more of the same.

The rigid cash limits on the social services introduced by Labour Chancellor Healey will therefore be continued, and used as a means for rigorously controlling wages in the public sector. And huge new Tory cuts in public spending will hit at jobs and services affecting millions of workers, while counting on cowardly submission from union officials.

In general the Tories declare themseives for "responsible pay bargaining" phrase which, echoing the diplomacy of a Jack Jones or a Len Murray, avoids either an explicit policy of wage limits (as implicitly advocated in Labour's manifesto) —or free collective bargaining.

Thatcher will remember that, under Heath, the TUC "reluctantly acquiesced" to two and a half years of savage wage controls, until the miners' strike broke the silence and signalled Heath's downfall.

She therefore wants to leave her options open on the issue of future wage controls, seeking if possible simply to weaken the unions and strengthen individual employers to enable them to hold the line against wage demands.

The series of secret meetings between TUC leaders and Tory chiefs has no doubt confirmed for Thatcher that whichever course she adopts, these servile bureaucrats will lead no concerted action against her.

There are numerous reasons for this servility. Of course the union leaders fear that a new upsurge of militant struggles will leave them exposed as obstacles to workers' struggles.

PHOTO: Mark Rusher. IFL the Tories Union bureaucrats also dread struggles that disrupt their cosy relationships and collaboration with the employers and force them into acting as spokesmen for the demands of the workers they supposedly represent.

But another key factor is that, as reformists who seek merely to improve the conditions and wages of workers within the context of a continuing capitalist system, the union leaders are as committed as the Callaghan-Healey cabinet to preserving the viability of capitalist firms.

This is a cause dear to the hearts of the Tories, too. Their whole strategy revolves around cuts in taxation and spending designed to bolster the profitability of private industry, while dismantling "non-viable" sections of nationalised industry.

Their manifesto points out that:

"Profits are the foundation of a free' enterprise economy. In Britain profits dea Thatcher are still dangerously low."

The manifesto goes on to reveal how the boosting of profits is connected to the axing of jobs, arguing that the Labour government which itself jacked unemployment from 350,000 to nearly. 1 million in five years-places "too much emphasis on attempts to preserve existing jobs" As evidence for this they point to the cash handouts made by the NEB to ailing firms.

But not even the dullest witted or most doctrinaire of Tories could claim that the TUC leaders " have emphasised defence of existing jobs.

On the contrary union officials have usually been the first to agree with employers that manning levels need to be cut back or plant rationalised-even at the expense of thousands of jobs.

Since the isolated and unsuccessful occupation of the Imperial Typewriters

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has been no officially-led occupation or serious fight against a single factory closure or redundancy.

The few occupations that have occupied against hospital closures-such as the EGA and Hounslow in London have all begun as rank and file initiatives only belatedly followed by union officials.

Such weakness and betrayal by union leaders has gone alongside more open forms of collaboration-such as the 'worker participation' schemes railroaded in despite shop floor hostility in British Leyland.

Under the BL 'participation' set-up convenors and leading stewards were together with union into joint bodies with management whose task was to impose speed-up, redundancies and corporatelevel bargaining throughout the combine.

It led quickly to Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon featuring on the front page of the company's Leyland Mirror witch-hunting strikes and instructing their members to accept management attacks on jobs and Would-be Tory Chancellor Howe point in pretending otherwise.. Hence this manifesto gives participation the back of the hand, and relies rather on more blatant methods of weakening the power of workers on the shop floor-through blackmail and confrontation.

Having established to their own satisfaction that not only union officials, but widelayers of convenors too, have been completely bureaucratised to the point of becoming completely incapable of leading a fight in defence of jobs or conditions, the Tories intend to play on this crisis of leadership.

Independent interests The only answer to their planned attacks is the fight in every industry for the construction of a revolutionary leadership that starts not from the "viability" of the employers but from the independent interests of the working class.

But it is not only in industrial matters that the Tories find much of their spade-work already done by Everyone of these reactionary steps could now put a deadly weapon in the hands of a Tory determined ruthlessly to confront and defeat the working class.

Democratic rights

And the Tories will also trade heavily on Labour attacks • on democratic rights-the use of the Official Secrets Act to intimidate journalists as in last year's ABC trial, the deportation of ex-CIA agent Phillip Agee without trial or charge: and the mounting wave of precedents attacking union rights that have been amassed in the courts over the last 15 months.

The. Tories also pledge themselves to build further on Labour's sickening record of racial discrimination by extending the existing Immigration Acts to further restrict the right of black workers' families to enter Britain.

Coupled with their other service slasher Joseph policies of wage cutting and mass unemployment this would ensure that the Tories added to Labour's record of fostering racist division within the working class and fascist violence against immigrant workers and the the labour movement.

This would of course be coupled with a continuation of the full-scale military repression of the Irish struggle for self-determination, and of course a further lurch to the right in foreign policy.

But though the Thatcher gang's anti-communist rhetoric and defence of racist regimes and imperialist oppression would be more dramatic . and uninhibited than that of the Callaghan cabinet, there would be no reason for them to change the fundamental drift of policy.

Errand boy

Labour's imperalist errand-boy David Owen has DAMN LINEMARK TONGETAR ERS INTELLIGENCE KONIMDNTON VEN MADENIAN sweated and day to night preserve stability of the capitalism in Southern Africa-and the decision of whether to stand by the Anglo-American "peace plan" for Zimbabwe or simply go along with Smith's racist "internal settlement" is a question of tactical not principled disagreement between Tory and Labour leaders.

Praise for Shah

Owen stood second to noone in his fulsome praise and support for the butcher Shah of Iran right up until his fall. His dire warnings against Communism provide starting point for any Tory Foreign Secretary.

In short, both in Britain itself and on a world scale the record of the Labour government and their TUC colleagues is one of opening the door for the return of a full-blown Tory Should the Tories be defeated in the election it will mark not a r ote of conFailed hardliner Heath fidence by workers in Callaghan's reactionary policies, but a class move by the workers to keep the bosses' party out of office and thus stave off the attacks lined up in the Tory But the return of Callaghan and Healey will in itself solve nothing for the working class. Their policies offer only more of the same cuts and class collaboration.

The task facing workers is a combined one: to return Labour to office; and to prepare the revolutionary leadership that can mobilise the working class in defence of its independent interests, and fight for the complete exposure and removal of the Callaghan-Healey cabinet.

Only the Workers Socialist League, basing itself firmly on its record of principled practical struggle against both right and "left" wings of the Labour and trade union bureaucracy, offers workers such a perspective.

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