Img Seeks 'unity' with Dromey
Socialist Press1979 1979-06-13Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
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Clark Dromev and veteran ship. It's a p After the evident failure of attempted to latch onto the man grovelling to the organisers their own "Socialist Unity" SWP conference.
But the latest Socialist of the SE Region TUC. attracted only 150 people, the IMG member Jonathan SilberWhat kind of kind of "unity" against the Tories?
This question becomes more and more important as the opportunist line of various 'left' wing tendencies takes shape in the wake of the May 3 elections.
The Communist Party of course has intensified its turn to popular front alliances with a huge spectrum of so-called "progressive forces" • and in the National Union of Students has consummated a marriage of its supporters with the Young Liberals in a new, broader-thanever, Broad Left.
The Socialist Workers Party, meanwhile presses ahead towards its 'Rank and File' con. ference 'Defend Our Unions', at which no doubt they will once again offer the prospect of 'unity' on a minimal programme and combine to avoid the real issue of confronting and removing the trade union and Labour Bandwagon This leaves the opportunist International Marxist Group aimlessly casting around for a bandwagon to jump onto. trade union conference which IMG's Socialist Challenge has ONDO* AL of the conference on unemployment called by the bureaucracy In an interview with Jack Dromey and veteran Stalinist Jack Dunn, Silberman manages to fill two columns of discussion on unemployment without once mentioning the thorny question of import Chauvinist Dromey of course was the one who got up only a tew weeks ago at the Trades Councils Conference in Harrogate to make a viciously chauvinist defence of the policy of import controls-which seeks to "solve" the unemployment problem in Britain not by fighting British employers but by exporting the unemployment to workers in other countries.
Dunn, too, as a member of the Communist Party, is committed to this same reactionary policy.
But not only did Silberman avoid this-the essential nub of any serious fight that might take place at the SERTUC conference-but he allowed Dromey to declare on the fight against unemployment that:
"It is not a problem ship. It's a problem that the dominant ideology at all levels has been in favour of the mixed This is the position that allows Dromey and his fellow bureaucrats to blame the working class for defeats brought about by the absence of leadership and the back-stabbing by union officials.
Not a word of criticism or challenge to this reactionary view is uttered by Silberman either in the interview or in the introduction.
What kind of unity can self-styled 'Trotskyists' Socialist Challenge offer working class on this basis?
Only the kind of a political 'unity" that Dromey exploited during the Grunwick struggle to shield the APEX and TUC bureaucracy and pave the way for defeat:
No meaningful 'unity' can be achieved by cuddiing up to opportunists and Stalinists.
To create conditions for unity in action there must be a clear conflict with those who in fact oppose action, and oppose the programme needed to win. the of the
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Workers fuming at Callaghan's recent reactionary declaration that the Wednesday June 'age
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TABLIER Liti Dromey speaking from the platform of the Stalinist-backed 'Better Life for All' campaign