Stop Struggling, Brother-what Harm Can

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savage Tory government, there has been a panic-stricken rush of trade union leaders seeking talks and agreements with it.

As even the pretence of price control was swept away, with the abolition of the Price Commission and a barrage of price increases hitting every working class family; as 22,000 civil service jobs were axed and a freeze imposed on local authority jobs; and as millionaire assetstripper Heseltine limbers up for the total destruction of council housing, TUC leaders have been meekly staking their claim for *talks" with the Tories.

"Best deal"

Head of the queue was miners' President Joe Gormley. who proclaimed that:

"The people have made their choice of government. am going to talk to Ministers to get the best deal I can" • But he was quickly followed by Alan "we've got to live with this government Fisher-whose willingness to collaborate with Thatcher was hindered by a NUPE conference resolution mandating him to oppose TUC talks with the Tories.

ASTS leader and former *left Clive Jenkins, however, succeeded in ramming through a conference resolution calling for a continuation of TUC/government talks begun under Labour.

Meanwhile TUC General Secretary Len Murray was lecturing an audience of 600 police cadets at Hendon, warning the Tories against rushing into hasty changes in the law on the unions.

Ignorance

Showing his willingness to tame struggles, his concern for the plight of the police, and his profound ignorance of the daily harassment already meted out to pickets under existing laws, Murray announced that:

"By and large, local police and pickets are able to agree[!] mutually satisfactory arrangements within the framework of keeping the peace.

"And I think this is the best way to proceed-not by changing the law and giving you [the police] jobs which are impracticable to carry out"

TWU bureaucrats did their bit towards collaboration by finally crushing the marathon recognition strike at Garners Steak Houses.

And Electricians' leader Frank Chapple outlined proposals for a pact with the Tories that would outlaw strikes prior to the end of each agreement and all political strikes.

Social contract These moves to collaborate with Thatcher echo not only the reactionary "social contract"

under Labour, but the 3½ years of TUC collaboration with the hated Heath government.

Time and again while workers clamoured for action, top union bureaucrats traipsed obediently to Downing Street for 'talks' with Heath, and returned to sabotage strikes and head off action against the anti-union laws.

Now in 1979 the new lurch in the international crisis of capitalism, symptomised most sharply by the fuel crisis, is drawing the reformist union leaders into even more profound and open collaboration with the employers and the Tory government.

Brazen

But it has been Callaghan who has most brazenly summed up the prostration of the labour bureaucracy in front of the Tory offensive.

Lashing out at Labour's National Executive meeting last week, Callaghan brushed aside all the 'left' talk that has been bandied about by Labourites in the wake of the Election defeat.

Neither he nor the Party would support a trade union that took strike action for political reasons against the elected government, he declared.

He would condone no action which tried to thwart the implementation of the Tory government's policies, he went on.

Instead Labour should use the next five years to show up "the weaknesses of Tory policies"!

Arrogant

Stamping on talk by NEC 'left' Neil Kinnock of renationalising without compensation industries denationalised under Thatcher, Callaghan arrogantly proclaimed that:

"As long as I am leader of the Labour Party I will do all 1 can to ensure the Party occupies the same middle ground in Opposition as it did when in But of course none of the 'left' talkers present at the meeting took up this renewed challenge to them to launch a struggle for the removal of Callaghan, and it was his reactionary statements that were gleefully publicised by the Tory press.

But such capitulation to the Tory offensive by all wings of the labour bureaucracy is miles removed from the mood of the working class.

Two weeks of union conferences have seen time and again workers seeking ways of censuring and removing their right wing and left'-talking leaders, and of pressuring their potentially powerful unions into action to defend jobs, trade union rights and living standards against attack.

The mass movement that destroyed Callaghan's 5% pay limit has stirred the entire working class and strengthened its confidence.

Wrath

Those labour leaders that today under the Tories seek to continue the collaboration with the employers that marked the last five years of Labour government do so under conditions where they can very quickly face the wrath of their membership.

Far from it being possible simply to "unite against the Tories", the last 3 weeks shows that it is essential to break with and drive out the right wing and left talking collaborators from leading positions if any serious fight is to take place against Tory attacks.

Principled Such a break requires a principled political Callaghan and a programme that can defend the independent interests of the working class and mobilise the kind of mass action that is necessary to drive this vicious Thatcher govern. ment from office.