The Struggles That Toppled Heath

Scan page 6

The agenda of the TUC Congress in September 1971 featured seven resolutions against the Industrial Relations Bill, none of which called for industrial action to prevent its passage into law.

Indeed the ront wing al the Congress, led by GMWU Chief Lord Cooper, fought tooth and nail -though unsuccessfully-to prevent even the adoption of a policy of instructing TUC unions not to register under the Act.

Shortly after losing this vote, 5-4, Cooper and other right wing leaders including those of the seamen's union declared their intention to go ahead regardless and register.

But while the fight got underway to force the TUC leaders to expel the rebel unions, the miners, having voted at their July conference to seek wage rises óf 35-47% began a national overtime ban on November By December D, eight days after the formal opening of the NIRC, the NUM Executive voted unanimously to call a national strike a month later.

That strike was to demonstrate beyond doubt the potential strength of the working class and its capacity to defeat the Tory offensive.

Flying pickets

From its opening dayJanuary 9, 1972,-flying pickets moved into action, shutting down coal depots, power stations and other selected targets. Massive popular opposition to the Tories facilitated this work.

February 9 saw Heath declaring a state of emergency designed to create conditions to force the miners back to work. + .

February 10 brought the first power cuts, and by 14 February much of industry faced a three-day week, with massive lay offs.

So devastating was the impact that the right wing NUM leadership frightened itself as much as the government and ordered a relaxation of power station picketing.

Defeat for Heath In desperation Heath intervened personally in the Wilberforce inquiry into miners' pay, and by February 18 a massive £4.50-£6.00 settlement had been recommended, signalling a dramatic defeat for the Heath strategy.

Yet such was the depth TUC collaboration that .:.!ster. on March 9 with Heath on wage These talks were to continue during 1972, despite Barber's inflationary March budget which showed that prices would rage uncontrolled upwards and despite a wave of militant sit-down pay strikes in the engineering industry (particWhich the North kers, workers willingness to defend living standards.

The talks did not, however, lead immediately to wage controls. Rather they served the Tories as a test of the spinelessness of the TUC This test was carried out on the eve of the first major case brought before the NIRC-the case of the TGWU's blacking campaign against the container firm Heatons.

The blacking was part of a rearguard action by the dockers to stem the flood of container firms using lower paid non-dock labour in depots close to the main dock areas. , Dockers correctly saw this trend as a threat to their hard-won wages and conditions and to the very survival of the registered dock labour scheme itself.

While IGWU officials squirmed and manoeuvred, seeking top level collaboration with container bosses and other employers-which culminated in the job-slashing Jones-Aldington Report -rank and file dockers on Merseyside and in London turned the screws on selected 'cowboy' container firms Heatons, Chobham Farm and Midland Cold Storage.

The Heatons case was the first taken to court after a blacking campaign on the docks had begun to have a crippling impact on its St. Helens operation.

The case opened on March 23. By March 29 the TGWI had been fined €5,000 for not stopping the blacking and by April 20 this was stepped up to 15:000 That same day, April 20, the NIRC, still flexing its muscles, intervened in a work to rule staged by rail unions in support of their pay claim, and ordered a "cooling off period" of 14 days.

This attack on the rail unions served to prove two things: that the union bureaucracy were willing to go along with any instructions handed out by the court: and that the membership were willing to fight.

Ballot ordered As soon as the 'cooling off period' had elapsed, the NIRC ordered a ballot of railwaymen prior to any further industrial action.

While the leadership willingly climbed down and participated in this ballot, the membership registered Tory Chancellor Barber their views in a staggering 80% vote for a strike-a vote that secured a substantially improved pay settlement.

. It was the TGWU case, however that was to lead to the biggest confrontation between workers and the NIRC in the life of the Heath government.

This confrontation was not of the GWU leaders' making.

On the contrary, they informed the TUC on 26 April that they intended to pay the fine.

And the TUC for their part chose May Day as the ironic time to concede that the TGWU could appear before the ant-union court.

But though the £55,000 was paid, the blacking campaign conducted by docks stewards went on. And on May 12 the NIRC made the historic ruling that the union was responsible and liable for the actions of its shop stewards-effectively reverting to the legal position of the 1901 Taff Vale judgement.

Retreat

It seemed :: Ju.= however, as i the government might have been forced to retreat from confrontation.

The Appeal Court on that day cancelled the £55,000 fines, and declared that the TGWU was not legally accountable for the actions of its shop stewards.

But only three days later on June 16 the NIRC ordered two London docks stewards Bernie Steer and Vic Turner to jail for contempt of court.

The stewards had refused to stop picketing the Chobham Farm container operation. ' The confrontation was staved off at that point by the intervention of the hitherto almost unheard-of Official Solicitor, Norman Turner, who argued at the Court of Appeal that there was insufficient evidence as to their picketing activities.

But the crisis point loomed once again when on July 7 the NIRC ordered seven London dockers, including Steer and Turner, to stop threatening national blacking against firms using Midland Cold Storage Ltd., an East London depot.

Talks with Heath

But far from throwing the full weight of the official trade union movement • behind these embattled shop stewards, TUC leaders continued to engage in official talks with the Heath government, at a time when Heath himself was talking openly of the prospect of unilateral government action to impose wage controls.

On July 10 a reluctant CBI agreed to tripartite talks with the government and a much less reluctant TUC. And on July 13, only a week before the major confrontation was to take place, CBI leaders and TUC bureaucrats agreed to the establishment of a new voluntary "conciliation and arbitration service" (ACAS), designed to shackle the working class in a network of spuriously legalistic but completely impotent machinery.

But despite the grovelling of their official leaders, the dockers pressed ahead with their struggle against the container bases that they saw as a threat to their jobs and conditions. The NIRC order was ignored.

Dockers jailed Cornelius Clancy, Derek Watkins, Bernie Steer and Vic Turner-were arrested and imprisoned in Pentonville Jail. • The response from the trade union movement was swift and massive. Print workers, 42,000 dockers, transport workers. engineers, blastfurnacemer: Tires apor stes are mega entee country-a total of over 2 million all told-joined in the spontaneous near-general strike wave that erupted as soon as the news of the arrests was broken.

And this was at a time when millions of workers were already on works holidays.

Protest gesture

Such was the scale of this massive movement that the collaborators in the TUC General Council were obliged to make a gesture of opposition themselves.

And gesture it was- a one-day General Strike call, limited strictly to pressuring the Tories to release the five dockers.

Seven TUC leadersEETPU leader Chapple, and GMWU leaders Lord Cooper and Basnett, along with delegates from NALGO, the NUT and the Dyers and Bleachers Union even voted against this token action, which was proposed by AUEW leader Scanion.

And only one speakerNUM General Secretary Lawrence Daly-called for all-out indefinite action.

After five days in jail, the dockers were released by Donaldson in the wake of a House of Lords judgement ...ne container case. Pentonville picket-freed by massive i This judgement reimposed the £55,000 fines on the TGWU and added another £25,000 bill for costs.

It reaffirmed the strategic principle of the Industrial Relations Act, that trade unions, as collective bodies, and not individuals, should be held responsible for industrial action taken by members.

In other words it relied on blackmailing servile union bureaucrats into more ruthlessly policing their rank and file members-and where necessary expelling shop stewards and others that have the nerve to pursue the interests of their members in defiance of the anti-union laws.

Donaldson spelt this out:

"Every union has its dissenters, and they have a real contribution to make, but members who act in defiance of the union policy of obeying court orders are a liability which the union could well be without"

There was to be no attempt by TGWU or any other union leaders to challenge this position and build on the immense strength reflected in the spontaneous strike movement.

Instead tha malaman -e mccau, ut Ielease oI the five dockers was welVictims of builders pay betrayal: the Shrewsbury 3

Scan page 7

Heath e wave, not by TUC action comed with a sigh of rélief by frightened union bureaucrats, who at once called off the one-day General Strike and: then devoted their energies to "normalising" the situation and returning to their reactionary dialogue with Heath On Friday July 28, however, Jack Jones "was defeated in his efforts to prevent a docks delegate meeting rejecting the voluntary redündancy proposals contained in the JonesAldington Report, and a national docks strike was called.

Delighted dockers who had formed a 1,000 strong lobby outside the Transport House meeting, brushed aside surprised police and staged an impromptu illegal march to Parliament shouting 'Tories Out!' More talks A mere three days later, lowever, with 42,000 lockers on national strike iction and the Tories' legal ixe balanced over the neck • the organised labour novement, the TUC leaders raipsed loyally once again o 10 Downing Street for ripartite talks with Heath ind the CBI!

Jones' cold-blooded etrayal of the dockers' fight reached a new pitch when on August 16 he managed to force through a docks delegates' meeting a decision to call off the strike and to accept a rehashed version of the discredited Jones-Aldington Furious dockers stormed into Transport House and abused Jones and docks officer O'Leary-one docker throwing a tumbler full of water in Jones' face.

Heavy squads of police were eventually needed to get Jones from the building in one piece.

But, despite this humiliation for this supposed 'left' trade union leader, the basic job was done. Unofficial resistance to the return to work Liverpool eventually folded and the jobs massacre on the docks got under way.

But at the same time another major struggle that had been smouldering since the end of June was bursting into flame-as the building unions pressed ahead for their £30/35 hour week claim.

Drawing on the lessons of the successful miners' strike, mass pickets and flying pickets were gathering ; forces and demands on the leadership to call all-out action were increasing.

These demands, too, were to be brushed aside by bureaucrats hell-bent on controlling and defusing the mass militancy of their own members.

The result of this was to be not only the sell-out of the pay claim, atter manly sections had been out on strike as long as 12 weeks, but also the notorious 'Shrewsbury 24' court case in which a group of builders' flying pickets were to be victimised and imprisoned in a newextension of the Tories' legal clampdown on union rights.

• In the midst of these major class battles, the TUC met under difficult conditions at Brighton.

Collaboration

The Congress agenda was once again devoid of any resolution calling for action to bring down the Tory government and force the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act.

And rejected ; by 5.6 million to 3.4 million votes, was a resolution which attempted to prevent unions using "any facilities of the Act"

This decision cleared the way for full scale collaboration between union officials and the NIRC.

Satisfied that despite the profound setback over the 'Pentonville Five' , this arm of Tory anti-union strategy had locked into an embrace with the TUC bureaucracy, and under acute international pressure, Heath then moved forward on September 26 with his so-called "anti-inflation" plan.

Of course there was no way that this plan-a £2 limit on wage rises and a supposed 5% ceiling for price increases-could control inflation, which' was galloping away on a world scale, and had nothing to do with the size of workers' wage increases.

Currencies had been fluctuating in value wildly for over a year in the wake of President Nixon's decision in August 1971 to sever the fixed relationship between the dollar and gold-effectively opening the floodgates to a round of inflation and economic anarchy.

One result of this instability had been Heath's July 23 1972 decision to float the pound, which had produced a rapid fall in its international • exchange value, and a corresponding rise in the price of imported goods, including foodstuffs and raw materials. By October it had fallen in value by an astonishing 10%!

Under these conditions the sole practical impact of Heath's "anti-inflation plan" was to hold back workers' struggles to defend their living standards against the rising cost of living.

The 15 months since Heath had been elected promising to "cut prices at a stroke" had brought a 22% increase in the cost of living.

Chequers talks But the TUC was not in the least deterred from its collaboration with Heath.

October 16 saw talks on inflation at Chequers, which were continued ten days later at Downing. Street, even while power workers prepared for industrial action on their £5.50 pay claim.

The talks resumed once more on October 30-the very day that the NIRC began an offensive against the AUEW.

It issued an instruction that the AUEW must appear before the Court to answer the claim that the union's branch at CAV Sudbury had ignored a court order.

This was a NIRC ruling instructing the AUEW branch to admit expelled scab James Goad to branch meetings.

The case highlighted the way in which the NIRC carried power to dictate the rule-books of unions and impose swingeing penalties if they did not act in accordance with its dictates.

When the AUEW refused to appear on November 8, it was at once fined £5,000.

A week later the AUEW Executive correctly voted not to pay this fine-but failed to call all-out action to defend itself against this mounting attack.

On November 29, therefore, despite mounting anger in the workers' movement, AUEW leaders allowed their bankers, Hill, Samuel, to respond to a writ of sequestration and hand over the £5,000 with an additional £1,000 costs.

Nor did this end the case.

Though refusing to launch all-out action to defeat the Tory anti-union laws, the AUEW leaders also refused to appear before the Court.

December 8 therefore saw a further £50,000 fine ladled out by Donaldson against the AUEW for contempt of court. 1,200 workers at the CAV plant promptly took strike action in protest-but still there was no call to action from the left' talking AUEW Not worried Instead a one-day token strike was called by motor industry and newspaper workers on December 18 in protest against the £50,000 fine, followed by an even bigger one day strike in the motor industry and on the docks on December 20.

But the Tories who had quailed before the mounting General Strike movement in July were not worried by such stage-managed protests.

The day after the second strike, the Commissioners for Sequestration moved into the AUEW headquarters and seized €50,000 which was then paid to the NIRC.

Meanwhile, the secret talks with Heath had borne bitter fruit-in the form of Heath's November 6 Counter Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Bill, which legislated a pay, prices, rent and dividends freeze for 90 days with power to extend it another I THITTKUC =-00 MI The talk of price controls was of course a complete fraud. Exempted was all fresh food, along with all imported goods and products.

And food prices had risen at an annual rate of over 15% during the "standstill" period!

Such a step, taken at what is normally a peak time for wage negotiations, could only have been considered by Heath once he was convinced that TUC leaders would fully cooperate in preventing pay struggles.

And by January 17 Heath had unveiled his Jones, Fisher, Scanlon: each Phase 2 limits-£1 plus 4%which were to run from March 31 until the autumn.

Phase 2 plans also declared it illegal for workers to take industrial action to secure wage increases less than 12 months after their last settlement, and illegal for deals to be concluded without Pay Board approval -with fines ranging upwards from £400 for anyone who broke the law.

Yet wages militancy continued to grow amongst a number of sections of workers including gas workers and hospital ancillary staff.

In each case union officials set out to take the steam from these pay struggles by restricting action to "selective" stoppages and working to rule.

But by mid-February midlands firms were facing lay-offs as a result of the gasworkers' action, and by March 1 27,000 health ancillary workers were on strike, with 80% of the total 230,000 workforce engaged in sanctions in pursuit of their £4 claim.

On March 5 an emergency TUC called for a day of strikes COMIC TIR US THAT KHT C FAMDEI TRADES LONNIE DIMMITTEE and demonstrations against Phase 2, as well as voting to support unions struggle against the pay laws.

The hollow mockery of this latter pledge was soon to be exposed. Not only did TUC leaders lift not a finger to back the gasworkers and hospital workers, they went so far on March 18 as to attempt to head off the ancillary workers' fight by calling for a government inquiry into their pay.

By mid April TUC leaders were vying with each other to be the most emphatic in denying that their members would use a ided off full scale action agai big settlement for the ancillary workers as a precedent.

Even the earlier empty language of class struggle was being cast aside. TGWU leader Jones publicly declared in a statement that was to set the scene for years of class collaboration under the Labour government that:

"We are standing four square with management in building a better Britain"

Millions of workers were not convinced it was a "better Britain": as food prices soared again to a 28% annual rate of increase 1.6 million workers went on strike on May Day in protest against Phase 2.

But in stark contradiction to this solid militancy, the next day the Daily Mirror revealed the continuing secret talks taking place between TUC leaders and Heath on the shape of a Phase 3 of wage controls!

But by' now the impact of the world economic crisis -powering forward inflation-was creating a situation beyond the control of the Tory government or the union bureaucracy.

The plummeting value of the • dollar and other capitalist currencies had for some time been annoying the oil producing states of the Middle East.

But when the 1973 Middle East war showed imperialism once more energetically supporting • Its Zionist puppet state, this economic grievance combined with political pressure from the Arab masses demanding a cutback in oil supplies to the West.

By October 1973 these cutbacks began to take eitect, hand-in-hand with a bbk increase in crude ol prices.

In Britain, working class militancy was still on the increase. The miners voted on October 11 to throw out a 7% pay offer. By November 12 they were to pursuit of their cim ban in begin But at the same time feeling was growing again on the NIRC, which at the end of October fined the AUEW another £75,000. Fleet Street workers walked out in protest and on November S 264,000 workers struck against the fine.

A . week later, as oil supplies dwindled, the miners began their overtime ban, and power engineers took action over pay, Heath declared a state of emergency.

By November 29 petrol ration coupons were being issued, and a fortnight later as the energy crisis sharpened Heath announced that the 3-day week would operate from the New Year.

Rather than acting in this situation of acute crisis for Heath to mobilise action to bring down • his hated government, TUC leaders em barked on a series of pleading and grovelling approaches designed to secure a settlement with the miners as a "special case"

Pressed by their rank and filé, the NUM leaders were unable to strike the deal PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL Tory attacks with Heath they longed for.

Instead on January 24 they held a ballot on strike action. The result was an overwhelming 81% vote for all out action-a clear reflection of the mood of the vast majority of workers.

The NUM leaders on February 5 announced that the strike would begin from February 10.

Two days later a desperate Heath, hoping to win on an anti-union "who runs the country" platform, called a General Election for February 28-and vainly appealed to the NUM to call off their strike during the election.

The Tories were to lose the February 1974 election; and they lost again in October 1974.

But the lessons of the Heath government prove beyond doubt that it was only despite the most abject class collaboration of their official leaders that the working class were able to beat back the Tory attacks and eventually drive Heath's union-bashers from office.

This message, and its political conclusion-that a principled revolutionary leadership is essential in the struggle against the class enemy-must be thoroughly absorbed for the coming struggles against the Thatcher government.

Scan page 8

Tony Richardson reviews "Warrio

----- pull-quotes -----

On July 21, five London dockers-Anthony Merrick,