Two Conference Stop Talks Call Action!

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•TUC lobby, Brighton 1978. The right to strike still the kev auestinn 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.

With only a handful against, a union delegate conference of shipyard workers in Newcastle last week voted for an 'orderly transition' to the dole queues of Scotland and the North of England.

This was the response to British Shipbuilders' decision to close yards and scrap 6,000 jobs.

The words 'orderly transi -tion' were those of Boilermakers Union chief Chalmers, declaring his opposition not to the destruction of whole sections of the industry but only to the means of carrying it out.

His opposition merely to 'compulsory' redundancies and the imposition of a token overtime ban confirms his reformist politics to be as bankrupt as the shipbuilding industry whose It was largely ignored by the working class but was used by union officials to keep workers divided and was quoted as supporting evidence by viability he staunchly defends.

Certainly the employers are annoyed that the various sanctions decided on at the Confed conference are to be implemented. But 'they, like the union bureaucrats who proposed them, are well aware that such measures will not save a single threatened job.

Slump

Just as with steel (where Chalmers' co-thinkers have similarly ducked calling all-out action and supervised the industry's gradual run-down over several years), the capitalists in Britain are gripped by a huge international slump in these major sections of the While Confed leaders talk starry-eyed nonsense about 'revival' in 1981, the drive towards rationalisation intensifies.

• Yet key delegations in full of the right-wing's line employers seeking High Court injunctions.

That same bureaucracy headed off organised opposition to the Concordat by declaring included those led by prominent members of the Communist Party who are actually in the leadership of yards on the closure list.

Though their left reputation undeservedly gained during the UCS struggle against Heath, was based on the correct tactic of occupation, they show no sign of raising this demand against the latest attacks.

Instead it has been the Communist Party who have championed the one day protest strikes.

As with steel, seizure of workplaces in line for the axe must be accompanied by a campaign for elected rank and file trade union committees to open the books of the industry, its suppliers and bankers.

A programme of useful public works must be worked out to provide alternative employment as part of a struggle for a planned socialist PAY PARITY 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 smali 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 8.00p.m.

OCCR, Princes St.

Cowley Road In Wandsworth official: upport was immediately n ithdrawn.

Denning has declared the NUJ strike of last winter unconstitutional and reinstated the expelted 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' lin 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 Nothing MIRINGI Nothing

Public meeting The Engineers' Strike: The Way Forward'