Must No Compromise Tories!

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Thatcher's new right 'wing government may be home, but they are certainly far from dry.

It is one thing to take the formal reins of office. It is quite another to impose the defeats on the working class that are necessary to make Tory policies stick.

Indeed whether the tories, the open political representatives of the employers and bankers, or their loyal servants in the Labour leadership had emerged as the Election victors, the unbroken strength and militancy of the working class was certain to be their most stubborn problem.

The Tories remember all too vividly how workers' readiness to fight every attack on their trade unions and living standards led in 1974 to the premature fall of the Heath government: and Callaghan was in turn forced into the 1979 Election with his policy of wage controls torn to tatters by the massive pay struggles in both private industry and the public sector.

Pay struggles

Even as the Election took place, thousands of teachers were engaging in partial action over their 36.5% pay claim, with growing voices demanding an all out strike. Postal workers voted 7-1 to throw out a pay and productivity package recommended by their right wing leaders: and power workers are reportedly about to reject an 11% package offer endorsed by their officials.

The reality is that the conditions under which the new Tory government has ridden to office have been created not by any weakness or retreat of the working class but by its historic crisis of leadership.

Five years of Labour government, in which the Callaghan- Healey leadership has shamelessly implemented Tory policies in deep collaboration with the capitalist class, cut social services and driven up unemployment, offered no socialist alternative to attract the middle class forces that were skilfully whipped up by an orchestrated Tory press campaign.

Labour's The door for every one of the Tories' major election stalking horses-anti-union laws; racist immigration laws; social service cuts; tax concessions to the rich; and "law and order" —was opened by similar moves by the Labour government which, like the Tories, started not from workers' interests but from preserving the profitability of British capitalism.

Yet despite the most sophisticated populist election campaign, carried out at lavish expense with the guidance of top advertising salesmen, the Tories failed to win significant layers of Labour voters to their anti-working class platform.

Instead, in this highly polarised election, the Labour vote marginally increased compared with that in 1974. The rise in the Tory vote came from a 20% slump in support for the secondstring capitalist party, the Liberals, coupled with the extra forces that turned out for this Election.

Racist policies

As an added bonus, Thatcher's racist immigration policies appear to have won a number of votes from the fascist National Front, which, saddled also with the 'Nazi' label, suffered a severe electoral setback.

Whatever minimal consolation Labour leaders may try to draw from all this, one fact emerges unmistakeably from Thatcher's impregnable overall majority of 43 in Parliament: this government cannot be 'pressured' to change course by innocuous protest actions.

There are no peaceful, parliamentary solutions to the wholesale attacks now being planned by the Thatcher cabinet.

Lay waste

And if these representatives of crisis-ridden British capitalism are allowed to run their full five year term of office they will lay waste jobs by the thousand, destroy social services fought for by generations of workers, and outlaw trade union rights established in centuries of Let there be no mistake. This government must be brought down by the mass action of the working class, just as Heath's attacks were stopped in their tracks only by the most widespread and determined struggles.

The task now for such action.

But workers should not expect the trade union officials and Labour leaders who have shamelessly collaborated with the capitalist class for the last five years to spring forward now to lead such struggles.

Callaghan spoke for his whole right wing cabinet last Friday when he wished Thatcher "success" as Prime Minister, stressed that she will need 'a lot of support' •and promised that she will face no 'factitious opposition' from Labour MPs.

But equally pernicious are Labour's fake 'lefts' who, after five years of bootlicking support for Callaghan's policies and refusal to challenge his leadership of the Labour Party, now pose as critics of the 5% pay limit and defenders of socialist policies.

Certainly Callaghan and his right wing cronies must be removed from the Labour leadership. But the socialist alternative that is needed has nothing in common with the reformist notorious and nationalist pleas for import controls peddled by the Tribune Group: it must be based firmly on the fight to mobilise the working class to force the nationalisation of basic industry without compensation under workers' management.

This requires the construction of a principled revolutionary leadership in the working class.

Meanwhile Len Murray and other TUC leaders are already eating their dark threats of 'confrontation' with the Tories, and offering Thatcher friendly advice and consultations.

HOTO: Mark Rusher Their answer to earlier calls for anti-union laws to restrict picketing and the closed shop was to sign the Concordat with Callaghan which set out "voluntarily" to impose crippling limits on their members.

The danger is that they will offer • similar concessions and compromise to Thatcher, while continuing to head off the militant struggles of their members.

Relentless

Such compromises and betrayals are a sure-fire guarantee that the Tories, sensing weakness and indecision, will press relentlessly forward onto the offensive.

We say that offensive can be halted; the Tory government can be defeated.

With this in view, the Workers Socialist League will continue to struggle in the workers' movement for the construction of a revolutionary leadership capable of strengthening and generalising every one of the struggles that will break out in conflict with Tory policies-whether this be against anti-union laws, speracist immigration ea, sackings or racist immoration laws.

And we invite workers who share these objectives to, join with us in this fight.

In a new round of the mounting legal offensive against picketing, a temporary High Court order was issued last week to restrain stage hands from the National Theatre from stopping supplies crossing their picket line.

The injunction was obtained on the request of the NT's management,, the South Bank Theatre Board Ltd., who have already declared their intention to sue six of the pickets-members of NATTKE-for £193,000 damages, alleging that this is the loss of business caused by their action.

But the ancestry of the temporary injunction shows a clear continuity from the spate of anti-union judgements that have multiplied since the NAFFsponsored injunction last year to prevent the UPW blacking mail to South Africa.

Secondary picketing' In particular, similarities were drawn between this casewhere it was claimed that building materials irrelevant to. the dispute were being stopped by pickets-and the January injunction against haulage driver Reg Fall for the so-called "secondary picketing" of United Biscuits.

These legal rulings can be expected to grow further in scope and number under the Tories, while Thatcher's unionbashing cabinet draw up plans for more comprehensive laws to shackle the unions.

The only answer to such judicial harassment is the mobilisation of the full strength of the trade union movement to assert the basic right to impose blacking, to picket and strike, wherever that right is The National Theatre judgement, like the Nottingham Evening Post ruling, the United Biscuits injunction and the ban on NUJ blacking of Press Association copy, stands as a monument not only to the class character of the courts, but also to the spineless nature of the trade union bureaucracy.

This can only be changed through the struggle for a new, revolutionary leadership in the workers' movement.

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