Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

[A COATS •FAG nternational Summer action by trade…]

Socialist Press no. 156, 27 June 1979 · scan p. 4 · about 914 words

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A COATS •FAG nternational Summer action by trade unions to block Tory policies or bring down the government emerged at the Labour Party's Women's Conference at Felixstowe.

But the conference itself went on to adopt a series of policies which stand has " a challenge to Callaghan's reactionary line.

Two motions on pay called for a struggle against low pay for women on the basis of a fight for a national minimum wage and a 35 hour week, coupled with a campaign to recruit women into the unions.

And a Manchester resolution went further and called correctly for wages to be protected against inflation through sliding scale of wages providing increases based on a prices index drawn up by elected comJoan Maynard mittees of trade unionists and housewives.

When right wing APEX delegate Irene Gregory opposed the motions on pay and urged that the question be left up to the unions, another delegate. immediately responded by pointing Tribunite left' Joan Maynard, who has done nothing to fight for the removal of Labour's right wing leaders, sounded off with belated and muted critical remarks against "certain Labour Cabinet members" who had attacked last winter's pay strikes.

But although one delegate correctly stressed that some of the biggest male chauvinists were to be found in the labour movement, the decision to set up a working party to find ways of recruiting more women to the Party avoided the need to throw aside the reactionary Callaghan leadership and the concentration of Party propaganda on extolling the bourgeois values of the family.

Such a fight requires the construction of a principled revolutionary leadership in the labour movement.

The committee which emerged on an ad-hoc basis from a recent Oxford labour movement conference on Ireland has continued to win growing support from local trade unions and other bodies.

At its meeting last week delegates were present from the Oxford NUJ Branch, the local CPSA/DHSS branch, and the ACTSS 5/833 Branch as well as the local women's movement.

Delegates have also been elected by Oxford Trades Council, while other trade unionists and students continue to attend the committee meetings.

Other labour movement organisations are being approached to support the committee in its campaign for the sending of a 12strong fact-finding labour movement delegation to Ireland next spring.

The first issue of a bulletin designed to raise this issue and prompt wider discussion on Ireland throughout the local labour movement is due out within two weeks.

The first issue will contain an account of the Oxford conference and a transcript of the speech given to it by troops out campaigner Brendan Gallagher.

Already orders for it from union branches and organisations including the local UTOM/'H' Block Committee amount to nearly 200.

The Committee-which is to be called the Oxford Irish Delegation Committee-also But such strengths did not mean that the IC was free from major political weaknessesweaknesses which showed themselves the more the movement was put to the test of practice.

Today, in the most fertile conditions for revolutionary work, the WRP has reached its deepest stage of political degeneration. Its heritage has been liquidated by its leadership.

The WL now represents the most developed expression of the continuity of the strengths of the IC tradition and the fight for the Trotskyist programmeits principles and methoddeveloped over the last 4½ years.

One of the tasks of the summer. school will be to deepen our understanding of this development as a basis for the struggle to reconstruct the Trotskyist Fourth International.

The main presentations will include: Political Economy;

Dialectical Materialism; the International "Committee; the USFI; the OCI; and the development of the WSL 8s an International Tendency. discussed plans to mobilise the maximum delegation on the national demonstration on Ireland called on August 12.

Though this demonstration has been convened on opportunist slogans which fail to call for the immediate withdrawal of British troops it was agreed that the wide sponsorship the march has received from trade unionists and Labour leaders will make it a focal point for the building of a broad movement against the British war in Ireland.

The Committee agreed to fight where possible for delegations to attend the march on the basis of the policies adopted at the Oxford conference on May 19_ *British Troops Out Now!

*Self determination for the Irish people as a whole.

*Support for the blanket prisoners of Long Kesh and Armagh jail in their struggle for the restoration of PoW status. ' *End media censorship of coverage on Ireland.

Our founder members were expelled: from the WRP in 1974-two weeks before the annual conference. All discussion was stifled. Recent expulsions were on similar lines.

The suppressed discussion must proceed now. Our summer school offers a unique opportunity for that to take place. We think that all ex-SLL/WRP comrades have an obligation to be part of this.

The WSL has of course been consistently slandered by Healy in the Newsline and elsewhere, presumably in order to create a barrier between ourselves and the membership and ex-members of the WRP.

We urge ex-members to examinę us on our politics and our practical record and not to be influenced by this approach.

The school will provide the opportunity to discuss all ques tions on which there may be disagreement.

Write for the agenda of the school plus the practical details Accomodation will be provided with meals at low cost.

Details from WSL, 31, Dart.

mouth Park Hill. London NW5 1HR

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REDESTRUC Schoo

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 156, 27 June 1979