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The Workers Socialist League International Summer School means that we will not be publishing an issue next week. Socialist Press 160 will contain a feature of the workers in Namibia and a review of Pig Earth' by Terry "The Tories would love nothing more than seeing all our troops rising up out of their industrial trenches; carrying the banner of a fixed percentage claim and marching forward into a barrage of hostility like lambs to the slaughterhouse of public opinion."

This was Moss Evans at the TGWU Conference spelling out the determination of the leadership of the TGWU to avoid a full-scale confrontation with the Tory government over pay.

Inflation, he said, has been deliberately created by the Tories-"it is a trap, a provocation, a bait, a test to see how our industrial strength is doing"

Evans In the speech which was also heavily flavoured with rhetoric Evans said the TGWU would lead strikes on pay; but negotiators would act "responsibly"

and base claims on the profitability of the company concerned.

In a clear reference to the next debate to follow-on cost of living clauses-Evans insisted the TGWU should give no instructions to negotiators on what they should include in claims.

We don't want to "tie their hands", he declared. Claims should each be formulated at local level.

The Executive motion, carried unanimously, declared itself for "unfettered collective bargaining" and opposed "government intervention in wage bargaining whether in private or public sectors of industry, through sanctions, formal incomes policies or cash limits in the public services."

But in his major speech Evans was clearly laying out his strategy for controlling the the massive onslaught being launched on all fronts against the working class by the Tory He is determined that the struggles that do erupt should be kept isolated within individual firms and industries.

The last thing he wants to see is the spread and generalisation of pay strikes into a political confrontation with the Tory government.

Moss Evans' politics, for all his tub-thumping 'left' rhetoric, are those of social democracyseeking piecemeal reforms for the working class within the framework of capitalism.

While he can countenance even militant strikes in individual profitable firms-such as Fords-the prospect of mass action uniting different sections of the working class and forcing the Tories out of office is one that frightens him.

Bankruptcy

Nor does he have any understanding of the utter bankruptcy of the capitalist system on a world scale.

By describing inflation as "a provocation" deliberately engineered by the Tories he avoids any consideration of the soaring price of oil, or the mounting world recession that have forced the Tories into an all-out attack on the working class.

And by committing himself to "responsible" claims and respecting the "viability" of capitalist firms he turns his back on a socialist solution to the crisis.

Such a solution must reject any concern whatever for the problems of the increasingly bankrupt capitalists, whose difficulties are the product of the crisis of their own system of exploitation, and start out instead from the independent interests of the working class.

Far from shrinking like Evans from an ail-out confrontation with the Tories, it is essential to prepare for such a confrontation and to create the conditions to bring down the Thatcher government.

While Evans and his fellow TUC bureaucrats struggle to keep their main troops in the trenches, and to send individual sections of workers "over the top" one by one to fight the Tories alone, socialists, must fight for a . programme of demands to unite the coming struggles and direct them at the task of bringing down the This means fighting for the development of councils of action through which delegates from local strike committees can act jointly with representatives of other trade union and labour movement organisations, and fight for the spreading and generalisation of strikes.

And it means struggling within the labour movement for principled revolutionary leadership capable of fighting at every level against Evans and those bureaucrats, who dread nothing more than the mass movement of the working class.

Conference chairman Stan Pemberton - forced to call in tellers for vote on cost-of-living clauses. daes "This Conference believes that the defence of our members' living standards against inflation can only be achieved by TGWU negotiators including a cost of living clause in wage claims, in addition to general increases. To ensure the fullest protection, such claims should be based on figures calculated by elected committees of Union members."

This motion, moved by Alan Thornett and seconded by Tim O'Sullivan, both delegates from the Cowiey Assembly Plant made history in the TGWU.

Tellers were used to count the votes for the first time in over 20 years in a union where the platform normally commands overwhelming support and has only been voted down once-In. 1977 when Jack Jones was defeated on the Social Contract.

A large number of delegates remain convinced that chairman Stan Pemberton judged the vote wrongly in declaring the motion lost in the first vote.

Appeals against this ruling immediately led to tellers being organised.

But in the five minutes or so required to organise tellers, large numbers of delegates who were in the bars and tea rooms when the vote was first taken rushed back into the hail to votewithout having heard the debate.

They heard only the platform's recommendation to vote against.

in this second vote the motion was lost by 348 votes to 437.

The had Eagleton. complete contrast to the line of Moss Evans arguing against confronting the Tories and committing TGWU negotiators to any policy on wages.

It sought to mandate the TGWU at plant and industry level to defend their members' wage packets by building cost of living clauses into agreements which would increase wages by the full amount of • price inflation.

Thornett In moving the motion Alan Thornett said that Moss Evans obscured the real nature of intlation by calling it a Tory provocation.

It arose from the world crisis of capitalism and in recent months particularly from the Iranian revolution and the devaluation of the 'green pound' He said the full implications of the new oil prices had not been grasped.

Conservative estimates put the rate of inflation to be reached by the end of the year at over 20%.

Already the gains of the wages struggles of the beginning of the year had been taken away. 20% inflation cut the value of the average wage by £16 a week.

Under these conditions, he said, he was amazed that the General Executive were opposing the motion.

Opposed

At the 1977 conference Jack Jones had opposed a similar motion. He had argued that pay restraint would halt inflation. He was ciearly wrong: .

The only answer workers can give to inflation is to defend themselves against it.

MPs, he said, who had been inflation proofed deal.

Their cost of living clause would be worth an estimated €2,000 over the next two years.

Cost of living clauses have become the property of the privileged few, said Thornett.

If they were good enough for MPs and top Civil Servants they are good enough for: the working class.

Committees

Seconding, Tim O'Sullivan stressed the importance of the motion. Only if general increases were linked to cost of living clauses could wages be successfully defended.

Mike Eaude, from Bristol NHS, stressed the importance of the second part of the motion which called for cost of living clauses to be based on figures worked out by elected committees of workers.

He said Thatcher's statements about taking the price of petrol out of the government's official figures showed the importance of this part of the motion.

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