Fight secret ballots!

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Acton London Comrades, As a worker in a large enginearing plant in West London I have been involved in the recent industrial action in pursuit of the Confed claim.

Naturally enough there has been a great deal of discussion among workers in the plant and a number of issues have been raised including the lack of democracy in the unions.

It has become apparent to me that the bureaucratic manner in which the union leadership operates can often drive workers into the arms of anti-union forces who the press portray as offering a more "democratic" alternative.

- I have noticed that it is not only workers that are "moderate" (believing that ballots would avoid the need for them evar to take any action at all) that are attracted to this idea, but also people who are genuinely concerned about the power wielded by the bureau. cracy over the membership.

Socialist Press campaigns for more democracy in the Labour movement and think that it is important that socialists sharply differentiate themselves from those calling for democracy from a reactionary standpoint.

in particular we should be against the use of secret ballots' as opposed to voting openly at mass meetings.

The capitalist class cons tantly seeks to break down the working class into a collection of individuals.

The importance of the secret ballot for them is that it changes decisions in the workers movement from collective ones into individual ones.

Rather than voting. meeting having heard a discussion where the views of the meeting can be aired the worker votes in his or her own home in isolation from workmates and subject only to the influence of the capitalist media.

We fight for the bureaucracy to be accountable to the membership not to the Daily Mail and the other bosses' propaganda sheets in Fleet Street.

As more and more peopie are forced to take action in order to defend their living standards the union leaders will increase their use of undemo cratic methods so they can contain the movement.

It is essential that PHOTO: John Sturrock, Rer Class strength in mass meetings the question of democracy otherwise we leave the field open to the Tories, employers and their agents who want to undermine the independence of the working class.

Not only this, but we will be hamstrung by a leadership that has no stomach for the fight to get rid of this government.

I velcome the CDLM conference in November which will provide policies to fight the Tories and the bureaucracy. I will certainly be trying to get workers from this factory along to it.

Yours fraternally, Gerry Hawkes.

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Any hint of democracy appearing in the Labour Party would be enough to persuade extreme right winger Shirley Williams to with hold her services as a Labour MP in future.

Appealing as this promise may appear at first sight, it emerged last week in the midst of a viciously reactionary speech in which Williams denounced illusory perspective of eventual peaceful parliamentary transformation to socialism has been continuously used as the cover behind which Labour MPs have in reality been sucked into the apparatus uf the bourgeois state machinery, while the demands of rank and file party members have been jettisoned in opportunist manoeuvres.

For all of the bluster and committed first and foremost.to seeking reforms and change through Parliament.

This is why they have mounted no campaign against Callaghan's determined stand opposing industrial action to stop or bring down the Tory Williams is of course conscious of and supports, the complete separation between the rigmarole of Labour's In reality of course, while evén tentative moves towards Party democracy should be supported, the "'lefts' themselves have neither the policies necessary to defend the working class, nor any grasp uf the need to ' mobilise independent working class action to bring downi the lories and. carry through a socialist programme of nationalisation, without compensation under workers' management.

Only a new revolutionary leadership can fight for such a perspective in the Labour and trade union movement.

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