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Send us a letter, putting your views on the articles in Socialist Press, on the struggles in your union or district, or on any topic you feel is important. Write to: Socialist Press, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR. for every vacant post, focussing only on those management had stated would not be filled.

This retreat was supported by Communist Since the engineers' strike is supposed to be resented by the workers and kept going only by "Marxists' within the AUEW leadership (whoever they are) there is some mystery as to why it has not yet collapsed.

The press must be given full marks for trying.

After weeks of proclaiming false dawns their powers of prophesy are looking tattered.

But last week the press changed tack.

It is difficult to tell whether there is some guiding hand which corrects their line or whether the Fleet Street press has some organic means of all reaching the same wrong conclusions at once.

This week's manoeuvre has not as in previous weeks been to proclaim that the strike is folding and that millions are returning to work every day.

Instead the press has been trying to explain how their erstwhile champion Terry Duffy is apparently refusing to budge on union demands for a shorter week.

On the same day the Express and the Telegraph published leaders making identical points.

РНОТ: Laurence Sparham, IFL Duffy This was that Duffy and Boyd were elected by secret ballot (a method beloved by the Tories for its complete contradiction of the fundamentals of collectivism) while the executive-which has refused to allow concessions-has been elected at branch meetings.

The Express simply called for postal ballots throughout the union.

The Telegraph complained that:

"the Social Democrats in Labour politics always seem to play the game, and always seem to lose it."

Why could not Duffy have simply torn up the constitution and ignored the executive?

With one eye on the AUEW vote at the Labour Party conference the Tory press steps ever more boldly into the internal affairs of the unions.

Robert Taylor Observer, another friendly advisor to Duffy, sympathetically sums up his dilemma as follows:

"Mr Terry Duffy... needs a way out of the impasse which doesn't destroy his credibility with members who have also displayed surprising solidarity by striking at considerable cost to their own pockets.

«He faces re-election next year and a humiliation at the hands of the EEF is hardly a strong platform on which to fight the moderate cause against a strong leftwing challenge."

supposed retreat of the working