Talist Oca Stop Talks Call Action!

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GWU SMITTE 5% AN STEWE Nothing itT STREN GI Nothing TUC lohbv. Brighton 1978. The right te The TUC Concordatwhich seeks to tie the working class in voluntary chains -is alive and well and will be paraded at Blackpool next week.

Under a smokescreen of angry language the TUC decided last week to drop from the agenda all resolutions which called for breaking off talks with the Tories.

Thus the crucial question facing the British working class in the immediate future-the attacks on basic trade union organisation and action-is not even to be discussed at its sharpest point, the point where the TUC is prepared to sit down and collaborate.

The TUC's own Concordat was reached with the Labour government as a means of trying to limit the effectiveness of last winter's strikes.

It was largely ignored by the working class but was used by union officials to keep workers divided and was quoted as supporting evidence I by TAP employers seeking High Court injunctions.

That same bureaucracy headed off organised opposition to the Concordat by declaring PAY PARITY strike still the kev auestinn that it had died with the Labour Yet TUC general secretary, Len Murray, came out of talks with Prior announcing that it was not dead but sleeping. He threatened that if the Tories went ahead with their legal attacks then the TUC would withdraw their voluntary agreement.

In other words once the Tories have cast striking workers in chains of steel Murray will unlock his own fetters.

The Tories have taken the Concordat and added to it. They plan to:

*Outlaw supporters from picket lines-thus rendering pickets at small plants or with small sections of workers impotent.

*Outlaw 'secondary pickets' thus preventing essential action to shut off suppliers or plants which take blackleg labour.

*Remove all immunity from sympathising action.

*Remove some immunity from all strikers.

*Widen the uses of secret postal ballots so that union elections can be manipulated by the press.

*Restrict the closed shop to the point where it will be impossible to maintain it.

Passing laws is one thing. Enforcing them another. But the courts-spearheaded by Lord Denning-have been acting on these proposals for months.

In the lorry drivers' strike they granted an injunction to stop secondary pickets. They have backed this up with a similar decision against Wandsworth building pickets (see page 11).

The response of the union leadership has been-no challenge.

LEAGUE

Public meeting "How to fight the cuts' Thursday September 6 In Wandsworth official : -dn port was immediately n ithdrawn.

Denning has declared the NUJ strike of last winter unconstitutional and reinstated the expelled scabs. Again no -challenge from union leaders despite a clear directive from the annual conference.

The Tory attack on the unions is not "nineteenth century" or unnecessary dogma.

It is necessary to them precisely because of the scale of attacks on spending cuts and on wages.

The question for the working class is whether it can resist such attacks with a leadership which wants to 'interpose its bulk' between the employers and the workers and substitute grovelling around the conference table for united class action.

The TUC, dishonest as ever, will debate whether its opposition to the Tory legal and economic attacks will be 'vigorous' (in the words of the TGWU motion now adopted) or something lesser.

Conscious decision

The TUC motion will call for the general council to "mobilise the resources and membership of the entire trade union movement" in words reminiscent of its non-existent "all out campaign against low pay.

But although this motion was a conscious decision to drop a policy of 'no talks' the Communist Party paper, the Morning Star hailed the decision as "a clear call for action against Tory attacks on the trade union movement"

The Financial Times made a more sober assessment: "It is not the union leaders, many of whom are showing a good deal of common sense in political and other respects, so much as the shop floor militants who must be confronted."

The working class will get nothing but treachery from this leadership. The fight must be taken up to remove all 'leaders' who refuse to fight.

The crisis of capitalism can never be fought even on the simplest level by those who wish to reform it.

Build a revolutionary leadership in the unions!

No talks with the Tories!

For united strike action against Tory attacks!

LEAGUE

LEEDS Monday September 10 8.00 p.m.

Room A, Leeds Trades Club, 21 Saville Mount

----- pull-quotes -----

FOR NO 5% or

8.00p.m. OCCR, Princes St. Cowley Road

Public meeting The Engineers' Strike: The Way Forward'