Reject WRP cowardice: PREPARE TO BRING DOWN THATCHER

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WRP refuse to concede that Fords strike defented 5% nav noliry WRP junks the old We reprint below leaflet distributed by WSL members to the 400-strong conference of the Workers Revolutionary Party's "All Trade Unions Alliance"

held at Wembley Conference Centre on July 1.

At the door of the conference duly delegated trade unionists thought to be members or supporters of the Workers Socialist League were formally barred from entry.

They therefore missed a hysterical speech from WRP leader Gerry Healy who predicted the immediate collapse of capitalism.

On this basis Healy offered The working class in Britain has now entered a new period of unparalleled opportunity.

The capitalist class internationally have their backs to the wall-unable to find solutions to inevitable slump without vicious attacks on hardwon conditions and democratic rights.

The undefeated workers movement in Britain will have no difficulty in defeating and pushing aside this uncertain, reactionary Tory government.

Yet how have the organisers of this Conference reacted to this? The diminishing band of ex-Trotskyists and guilt-ridden middle class hucksters who run the so-called Workers so-called Revolutionary so-called Party have now lost all confidence in the working class and its ability to fight and defeat the Tories.

In recent issues of Newsline and in internal aggregate meetings called specifically for the purpose, the leaders of the WRP have tried to impose on their own members the same blue funk in the face of the coming offensive of the working class that they clearly feel themselves.

Internal crisis

Despite the combative mood of the working class the WRP have become wracked by internal crisis with wave after wave of expulsions that they are never able to refer to publicly, and faced with financial problems which they say are worse than at any time since they started running a daily paper in 1969.

After ten years of calling ceaselessly for general strikes to overthrow every governmentLabour or Tory-the WRP leaders have now suddenly changed their position:

On 15 June the Newsline alleged that. 'the danger in the present situation is that the working class might be goaded into industrial action of general strike proportions.!

WRP leaders refuse to raise the burning question of the preparation of action by the working class to bring down this reactionary government, they bleat pathetically about the 'problem of what is to take the p'ace of the Tory government' and opposite to the case, ina. mass action by the working class 'would only facilitate those ultra-reactionaries who want to see a police-military dictatorship'.

Afraid of action

The''ultra-revolutionaries' WRP are now so afraid no policies for workers' struggles other than the immediate establishment of socialismpresumably under the leadership of the WRP.

The other notable aspect of the conference was that 50% of its diminutive audience appeared to be Iraqis who had come to hear a speech by a flunky of the Iraqi Ba'athist bourgeois regime, in his capacity as a teader of the so-called Iraqi trade union movement.

The WSL leaflet threw the WRP leaders into paroxysms of fury and drew forth a lengthy reply in the pages of Newsline in which Alex Mitchell proudly paraded his political illiteracy and unlimited capacity for brazen lying.

PHOTO: Carlos Augistino, IFL the action of the working class that they line up with the notorious right-winger of the NUM, Lawrence Daly, who says in this week's Tribune that. 'We will not be panicked into ill-considered action"

This is because the WRP leaders, like Daly, do not fight for the development of revolutionary leadership in the working class through the relentless daily struggle of the masses.

This struggle must take up every issue and fight the trade union consciousness of workers by finding a bridge to the objective tasks of the overthrow of capitalism according to the method of Trotsky's Transitional Programme.

The frightened petty bourgeoisie in Clapham Old Town have completely turned their backs on Trotsky's principles.

No policies They have no policies to place before workers involved in struggle except maximalist calls for the overthrow of the capital -ist system.

Thus in Newsline on 16 Ju-e me are informed that 'in unioras agains me Tara i= masses must be mobilised on a revolutionary socialist programme to nationalise basic industry, banks and land without compensation and under workers control' Such statements have more in common with the int :antations of witchdoctors than with Since Mr. Mitchell's acquaintance with Lenin appears to be restricted to a single sentence, and his awareness of Trotsky does not extend to any grasp of Trotsky's struggle for a programme through which workers can be broken from the hold of social democracy and Stalinism, his polemics seldom produce anything of substance.

, But further evidence that the WRP is desperate to cover over their ATUA fiasco has appeared in last weekend's issue of Newsline, which parades carefully angled full colour photographs of the conference and a completely imaginary account of the attendance.

They claim, for instance, an attendance of delegates the struggles of serious revolutionaries.

Lawrence Daly, Len Murray or any other treacherous bufoon will agree to such abstract statements which commit nobody to anything.

What bureaucrats and ultra-lefts will always shy away from is policies to challenge the reformists and social democrats at every turn.

No development The sectarians and reformists are completely at one that there is no development of struggle, no bridge at all between routine reformist struggle and the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. • The WRP leaders have presented for today's conference a 'Programme for Discussion' which calls on nobody in particular to 'Nationalise banks, land and basic industry', even for 'a sliding scale of wages' and the 'disbanding of the standing army', yet no possible way of achieving such aims.

In Saturday's Newsline they are reduced to a pathetic plea to 'the TUC to fight the Tories Incapable What participants in today's conference must ask themselves is this. Why is it that the WRP, and its so-called 'Industrial Section' , the ATUA is incapable of participating in any way in any of the real struggles facing from no less than 80 unnamed TGWU branches, 75 AUEW branches, and 29 ASLEF branches: This is the big lie' par excellence!

Socialist Press •challenges Newsline to present a detailed list of branches to back up these utterly absurd claims. If the WRP can prove that even 20 TGWU branches sent official delegates to the ATUA conference we are prepared to donate £5 to the Newsline monthly fund.

In the meantime the leaflet reprinted below sets out to analyse the significance of the latest turn in the line of the WRP. the working class or providing any policies for their victory?

Why have they played no part in the big unionisation struggles in hotels and catering?

Why did they line up with the bureaucracy and the Stalinists at their rare appearances opposing mass picketing at the Garners strikes?

Why did they fall back paralysed last winter when after years of calling for 'the immediate overthrow of the Labour government' the victorious lorry drivers and Ford workers were going ahead and doing precisely that. The WRP found • themselves unable even to call these struggles victories!

Like witchdoctors who prayed for rain, they refused to acknowledge the existence of the thunderstorms that fell upon them.

Contident

We say that the WRP is in crisis now that the working class is strong, confident and capable of building revolutionary leadership.

The expulsion of the foynder members of the WSL in 1974 and the recent spate of =x=usiors and walk-outs congress take place 0: 5. because the despotic clique at the head of the WRP are unable to answer internal criticisms, even the mildest form, but also because they have long since rejected policies which provide a way forward for the fighting NUM General Secretary Daly Len Murray working class.

The WRP leaders have abandoned the fight for revolutionary policies in the Iranian revolution, lining themselves without • question behind its bourgeois leadership, refusing to defend those they persecute.

They have long since heaped praise on the bloodsoaked bourgeois nationalist regime in Iraq and the political capitulations of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

Now they are coming closer to home by presenting an ultraleft apology for every hesitation and betrayal of the trade union bureaucracy in Britain.

Today's conference will provide no policies, no perspective and no principles on which workers will be able to overthrow this Tory government.

It will present no alternative to the syndicalist claptrap of the Socialist Workers Party or the We note with extreme concern the exclusion from the ATUA conference on 1 July at Wembley Conference Centre of 2 properly appointed and accredited delegates from the GLC branch of NALGO on the grounds of their political disagreements with the WRP.

We condemn this action as incompatible with the principles of workers' democracy and demand of the WRP/ATUA that it apologises to the GLC Branch GADOI A WSL amphlat, IFL PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL capitulations of the International Marxist Group.

Only the Workers Socialist League fights in the working class on the basis of traditions of Trotskyism to deal with the problems that every day face workers confronted with capitalism.

That is why we invite all those who are fed up with the opportunism, despotism and lack of principie by the present leaders of the WRP to join us in the fight for revolutionary leadership, to participate in the theoretical and historical discussions at our international Summer School on July 21-29, and to discuss whatever differences and problems they may have with us in the fullest and trankest way. *Return to the policies of the Transitional Programme. *Prepare now for the overthrow of Thatcher!

by of NALGO, that it publicly renounces such practices . and repudiates the decision by the WRP/ATUA stewards and officials, particularly Mike Andrews, Chairman of the Security Committee, Alex Mitchell, editor of the Newsline and Sheila Torrance, Assistant National Secretary of the WRP, to exclude the GLC delegates. We resolve that until such time as these demands are complied with we will support no activities of the WRP/ATUA and that we will inform all affiliated organisations of this decision and seek their coopera. tion with it.

Trotskyism The only serious examination yet produced of the opportunist political line of Gerry Healy's . Workers Revolutionary Party in relation to the petty bourgeois nationalist regimes of the Middle East. 45p plus 15p p&p, from:

WSL,31, Dartmouth Park London NW5 1HR.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesdar July reme for mentally handicapped youth ding and troublesome patients.

Community care may benefit a great 'many patients presentiy in hospitals; but it should be borne in mind that it is not the 'universal panacea' The Jay Committee is right to stress the need for smaller and more homely residencies and also right in its criticisms of the hospitals' 'clinical' approach.

However, on a ward with fifty or more highly dependent patients, many of them with multiple-physical handicaps and with often only three or four staffsome untrained-the only way that ward can possibly be run is around a strict routine.

This can all too easily lead to a clinical approach and a situation where patients have to cater to the needs of the routine rather than the routine being able to accomodate for the individual and varied needs of the patients.

Condemned

The large hospitals have also been •widely condemned for their institutionalisation of both patients and staff.

But institutionalisation does not necessarily stem from the size of an establishment so much as the type of regime that operates within it. necessarily considered by the local electorate to be a high priority and the extent of social Deo vision will eventually, determined by rate-payers priorities.

This was amply demonstrated prior to 1948 when the NHS took over the administration of local authority hospitals which were showing signs of chronic under financing and the NHS was seen, quite rightly, to be the only way providing the necessary resources to raise standards national level of acceptability Mental-handicap had proved to be the lowest of priorities for the majority of local authorities.

To accelerate the transfer of residential care from the NHS to the Social Services is, in my view to risk reverting to that form of inconsistent and inadequate provision for the mentally. handicapped"

The utter hypocrisy of Williams's words is astounding.

He is wrong to say that social provisions will be Payers priorities"-they will determined "ratebe determined by capitalism's priorities and neither he, the COHSE Executive, nor the TUC Health Council have lifted one finger to challenge those priorities.

Williams and the rest of the trade union bureaucracy

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WRP leaders junk the old Trotskyism