Join Our Fight Against Tories!

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Returned to office after five years of Labour betrayals, the Tory government has immediately begun wielding a sharpened axe on jobs, conditions and social services. Trade Union rights face imminent legal attack. Prices are already beginning to rocket upwards.

Plum sectors of state industry will be handed to the Tories' profiteering big business backers; and the pay rises to police and armed forces mark only the prelude to increased state violence against pickets and anti-fascists, and an intensified army crackThe Callaghan-Healey leadership has made it clear that it wil! opppose any perspective other than settling down and meekAnd, though they have once more dusted off their near-forgotten "socialist" speeches, Labour's "left-wing" MPs have continued to duck away from any fight to remove Callaghan.

TUC leaders, too, have set out to establish a basis for collaboration with Thatcher and the Tory cabinet, parallelling their anti-working class alliance with Wilson and then Callaghan.

But the working class has experienced and overcome such betrayals before-to topple Heath's union bashing government in 1974, and smash through Callaghan's reactionary Phase 4 of wage controls in a series of monumental pay battles last winter.

These experiences are not dead. They point to the way that jobs, social services and hard-won union rights can be defended But a principled, revolutionary leadership is needed if the Labour traitors, the TUC collaborators and their hangers-on in the Communist Party, are to be exposed and pushed aside, and the mass struggles mobilised that can defeat and remove the Such a leadership must fight day in and day out for a pro. gramme of transitional demands. which, starting from today's conditions and today's consciousness within the working class, lead workers to grasp the necessity for socialist revolution.

And in taking up democratic demands-such as an end to racial and sexual discrimination, it must show the crucial role that must be played by the working class as the only consistent. ly revolutionary class capable of leading the struggle for the And it must fight on an international basis-mobilising solidarity for anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggleswhether in Ireland, in Southern Africa or elsewhere throughout the world, and drawing strength. and political lessons from. revolutionary upheavals such as that which ousted the hated This means fighting for the reconstruction of the Trotsky..

This mathod of approach, rejecting any descent to simple tráde union militancy, or concessions to any wing of the labour bureaucracy, is the mathod fought for by the Workers Socialist The noxt period will see major class struggles in Britain. A 'principled, Marxist leadership is essential. Our movament though strong in programme rerhains smali in numbers.

JOIN US and take forward the struggle for socialiam! down in the accupied North of Ireland.

ly accepting five years of Tory devastation. against renewed Tory attacks.

Tory government. emancipation of mankind.

Shah in Iran.

Ist Fourth International.

League.

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*X** 1202 12 0 00008 20952 No fight yet on BL jobs SAVE STELLA SAVE CORBY -The TGWU's declaration that it will black any work that is moved out of British Leyland plants that fight closure has meant that all eyes are turned on the 13 plants that are affected, particularly the bigger ones like Canley and Castle Bromwich.

At Canley very little seems to be happening under right wng convenor Eddy McGary.

At Castle Bromwich, however, half the leadership is going along with the plant directors' plan to "save the plant" through a crash • programme ending demarcation, imposing speed-up acceptance of company grading structure and withdrawing from the Confed pay claim.

By doing this these collaborators hope to persuade Edwardes to keep the plant open.

At the MG plant in Abingdon which is due to cease all car production, the right wing leadership has talked about occupation "if necessary'":

Meanwhile at the _ Park Royal buses plant in London; the Communist Party led shop stewards put up no serious resistance as a vote was carried to accept humiliating voluntary redundancy terms which included a sum to cover completion of 200 Titan buses prior to the closure.

A clear indication of the fighting spirit of McGarry and the Castle Bromwich leadership. was their failure even to turn up to a specially convened meeting of the Leyland shop stewards Combine Committee last week to discuss the closure threats and the coming BL pay claim.

Pay claim

The meeting of the BL Combine Committee last week adopted a pay claim for the 1 November annual wage review.

A proposal submitted by the officers of the committee, heavily dominated by the Com munist Party, called for:

*An increase of £12 per week on all grades from November 1 1979.

* An increase of £1 of Retail Price Index above 10% calculated year on year from 1 November 1979.

*Full Parity to apply for all plants from November 1979.

*Elimination of penalty clauses in respect of lay-off and sick fund (sick fund to be fully funded).

*One hour off the working week with a commitment to 35 hours by 1982 without loss of pay.

A successful amendment from Cowley increased the claim from £12 per week to £24 per week and deleted the 10% threshold from the cost of living clause.

A further amendment from Cowley to delete any reference to the "parity" payments from the claim was narrowly lost.

Parity was a part of last year's wage settlement and is likely to be used by the Company to avoid a straight offer this year.

An important policy proposal was also moved by Cowley.

This amendment, which was moved by Alan Thornett, attacked what he called the present "undemocratic" and '"Heath Robinson". bargaining arrangements which currently handled the wage negotiations for 100,000 workers in BL Cars.

He proposed that the Combine Committee call upon the National Joint Negotiating Committee to convene a delegate confererice, based on one delegate per 100 workers, which would be the authoritative body for annual wage reviews and to which the JNC would be responsible.

• This amendment was ruled out of order, without any grounds whatsoever, by Stalinist Jack Adams, Longbridge TGWU convenor, who chaired the meeting.