Weighell: vote Labour for wade controls

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At a Labour campaign meeting on Monday in Somerstown, Sid Weighell, NUR General Secretary reported: that he had "mobilised his whole membership" in support of the But just what Weighell was actually supporting he made clear-the Concordat.

Wage controls, he claimed, barefaced, are "a socialist measure"! Remove them and there would be the free-for-all advocated by Keith Joseph, leading to "anarchy and Worse still, he went on, there could be a "resurgence of class conflict"! All this wouid, he said, be to the detriment of the "weak and unorganised"

Weighell made it clear to any that doubted it that he "did not want to pick a fight" , and he saw the way forward as cooperation between union leaders and government rather than a 'bust up' Weighell's conception of protecting the weak and unorganised is to restrict the combativity of the strong and organised -so that attacks on living standards will be borne by the whole working class.

In a brief historical survey he pointed to the role of the forerunner of the NUR in convening the founding conference of the Labour Party in the wake of the historic Taff Vale judgement.

And he spoke also of the role of the enforced ballot of NUR members which was a major part of the defeat of the Tory Industrial Relations Act.

But for Weighell the lesson was not that the only defence against attacks by the ruling class is the mobilisation of his membership but rather to look for top level deals behind closed doors.

Weighell understands as well as his predecessors, his interests are best defended not by a combative membership organised in an independent workers' party, but by the parliamentary compromisers, wheelers, dealers and the crypto-Tories who form the Labour government.