Tuc's Reactionary Diversion Dangerous Policy

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TE TO DEFEAT REACTIONARIES IN PORTUGAL!

TUC leaders, meeting last week, planks of policy to attempt to ho from struggle to defend jobs and The first was the decision by the economic committee to recommend the TUC inonitor wage settlements to ensure that they do not go beyond the government's stateimposed £6 limit. The collaboratio of the TUC in this way covers up the vicious use of the law by the Wilson government to cut real wages, and violates every principle of trade unionism.

The second decision, taken at the same meeting, was to press the government for quick measures to restrict imports. The idea, as always with the TUC, was to throw a smoke-screen around their betrayals, buts completely different. from the left talk of earlier periods.

NATIONALIST

There must be no mistake. To call for import controls is a reactionary diversion from the struggle in every factory to defend all jobs and defend living standards. It suggests to workers that they shou ally with "their" employer against foreign capitalists. In doing so, it seeks to whip up nationalist feelings which will be used to isolate and weaken British workers as sharper struggles emerge.

It leads away from the all-out struggle against the employers necessary to defend jobs.

This can be seen from the effect of the demand in recent working class struggles. In Imperial Typewriters in Hull, where workers occupied for nineteen weeks in defence of jobs, the demand for import controls, coupled with the nationalist slogan of "Yanks out" put forward by the local leadershi was linked to utopian schemes for a cooperative. The struggle was defeated, with no political lessons learned.

"DUMPING"

In the textile industry, where jobs are being lost faster than in almost any other industry, the trade union and Labour leaders have for a long period simply campaigned for embargoes and restrictions against alleged "dumping" of imports, rather than fight for nationalisation and work-sharing.

Now, in the struggle at Norton Villiers Triumph, three demands have been passed by Wolverhampton shop stewards: for nationalisation of the company; for no redandancies; and for import controls Ominously, the only demand being discussed by the T&GWU fighting NVT management.

The danger is that this could be accepted by the shop stewards. As a spokesman for the occupation committee said in an interview with Socialist Press: "The Japanese are importing bikes to such an extent they put the working people of this nation on the dole."

The opposite is the case. Jobs are being taken away by British emplo] ers, not "the Japanese". The fight must direct at the main enemy.

LEFT-TALKERS

The import control policy is not restricted simply to right wing trao union leaders. Left talkers such as Clive Jenkins of ASTMS and 'left' MPs of the Tribune group have it as a centre-piece of their reformist policies. The latest economic document put forward to the NEC by the Labour 'lefts' centred on a strengthening of import controls. Eric Heffer, talking of a "radical approach to Britain's problems" has called in the New Statesman for Wilson to "mobilise Britain's overseas assets". , and to "include selective import controls" - followed by a call for what he calls "voluntary wage control" . This shows that for Heffer, like the TUC, there is no separation between these policies In the call for import controls both 'lefts' and rights have the full support of the Communist Party. The Morning Star greeted the TUC's first adoption of the policy earlier this year, saying:

"Its call for the temporary impos ition of import controls is also a measure which is long overdue, ans is now a matter of urgency in view of the serious crisis shown by the huge deficit in the balance of payments..."

The word "temporary", current word " the TUC, is a cover. What is here being applauded by the Stalinists is a fraudulent policy which attem! to avoid the struggle for jobs - at the expense of the jobs of workers in the countries hit by import restrictions.

REJECTED In fact, the treacherous nature of the whole campaign being whipper up (and noticeably spearheaded by right-winger Jack Jones, who has called for a total ban on Japanese imports of motorcycles in order to "help" not just on jobs, but in "stopping British currency going So on the one hand we see reactionary union leaders clamour for the government to stop importing Japanese cars, so as to prop up British Leyland (where they are assisting the company to impose redundancies through the Ryder plan.) The latest of these is the British Cars" campaign, and called for restrictions on Japanese and Continental cars.

On the other hand the Sunday Times Business News devoted a major article to exposing how small is the loss to British capitalisi on trade with Japan, and how impractical import controls against Japan would be for other British car manufacturers. These union leaders know their policies are a fraud to cover their own betrayals.

The policy of restricting imports is doubly dangerous for the working class because it also ties workers to attempting to preserve a particular industry and leads away from the defence of jobs: It is in this way that it links with the TUC acceptance of speed-up and wage cutting, because only through such measures can the industry be maintained under capitalism.

POLICY

A socialist policy to defend jobs must begin not from the imagined need to defend one capitalist against another, but from the real need of workers to preserve their right to a job. It must begin then to challengi the power and the 'rights' of the employer and to develop organs of workers' control - factory committees - to lead the fight.

Such factory committees must start out with one goal in view, the defence of the workforce: not one job lost, not one penny less. This is of course inseparable from the fight for work sharing on full pay to divide available work among the whole workforce. This in turn demands in the case of bankrupt firms their nationalisation, under committees of workers' managemer Such socialist nationalisations -with a centralised economic plan of state contracts and a state monopoly of foreign trade - are the opposite of the "nationalisation" carried out under capitalism.

Capitalist nationalisations are aimer at equipping national capitalist states to compete better in the world market, and better exploit the working class. They are subject to the law of value and the drive for profits. For this reason workers in 'nationalised' industries are often among the first to be threatened with the sack.

Within every industry where jobs are threatened, workers must organise committees to lead resistance In every corner of the world all eyes are turned each day now on the unfolding drama of the Portuguese Every class conscious worker. every treacherous labour bureaucrat, every capitalist atraid for his position and every CIA agent labouring to preserve the system of imperialist exploitation, each in his own way sees Portugal as the fulcrum of the post-war break-up of capitalist boom under the hammer blows of the international offensive of the working class.

As the forces of counter-revoluti‹ have gathered in recent weeks to attack every gain that the revolution has made so far, the decisive factor has been and still remains the independent mobilisation of the power of the working class, not just in Portugal itsell.

The book-burnings, the beatings and attacks on trade union offices, led or cheered on by nuns, priests and archbishops, have been splashed across the world press and telenadiy beaten Communist Farty member protected from reactionary mob by soldier.

newspaperreditor, every friend of poverty and oppression have been behind these reactionary move ments. Their initiators have been the reformists of the Portuguese Socialist Party, their cheer-leader the rotten social democrats of Eu ope, with Harold Wilson at their head.

The leader of them all of course is US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Addressing the racialist faithful on Wednesday last, 14th August, in Birmingham, Alabama he expressed himself opposed to 'the efforts of a minority' aimed at 'subverting the revólution'.

As though such hypocrisy was not enough, he then went on to attack "the involvement of external powers' in Portugal, a form of activity in which one assumes he has expert knowledge. As Presid ent Ford put it in a US News & World Report interview, the US was being 'prevented from acting by the recent "bad press' obtained by the CIA.

Still, hope was at hand 'We know that the Western European

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Reports from Peking last • eration government in Cambodia Ine: Augi Oth

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