Fighting for a General Strike

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2,000,000 public sector workers stopped work for one day aga Sirse by Sid Weighell and Bill resolution called simply for: "a campaign of protest and consistent political lead to "Instead of one-off, one-day defiance against the new laws". workers in struggle.

Conference itself, bureaucratic- currency of the term 'General Toppled bj How can the Tory offensive be stopped?

This question, arising time and again since the Thatcher government was elected with a hefty Parliamentary. majority last May, has come right to the foretront with the development of the steel strike.

Tory offensive

Embodied in this class battle are so many fundamental questions: the Tory offensive against PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report workers living standards; the particular cutbacks in the public sector; their plans to "hive off" profitable state industries; the general threat to jobs arising from their asset-stripping policies; : the moves towards savage new anti-union legislation, enforced by police violence, and, above all, the crippling crisis of working class leadership as TUC leaders have attempted at each stage to restrict and shackle the fight against these attacks.

From the moment Thatcher was elected the Workers Socialist: League and. Socialist Press have spelled out a general line of No Compromise with the Tories' and Prepare to Bring Down Thatcher' We have focussed on the long-term necessity to prepare a generalised, mass mobilisation of the working class in strike action if this Tory govenment, with its gamut of reattionary and repressive policies, are to be defeated.

So deep is the economic crisis of British capitalism, and so drastic are the steps necessary if the employers are to hope to resolve it, we have stressed, there is no prospect that token actions or protests no matter how sincerely motivated or on how large a scale-will deflect this bosses' government from its course.

Serious campaign

But of course Callaghan's right wing Labour government driven on by the same galloping crisis of capitalism, persevered to the last in its efforts to ram home a fourth phase of wage controls, and further rounds of public spending cuts against a militant working class.

Even now the Labour leaders are refusing to pledge to restore Tory' spending cuts or to immediately repeal anti-working class legislation.

The answer is not therefore simply to call for the replacemènt of Thatcher by another Callaghan-Healey government:

Socialist Press has consistently argued that neither the 'left' nor the right wing of the present Labour leadership is able to offer a socialist programme that can meet the requirements of the working class.

For this reason we have called for a political struggle to be waged both in the trade unions and in the Labour Party i to reveal the true political character of the existing leaders and create conditions for buildmass action-Heath in 1974 ing of a revolutionary leadership.

In the unions we have raised demands to expose and fought for the removal of officials and convenors who start not from the defence of the jobs and living standards of the members they are supposed to represent but from the problems and "viability" of the employers.

And in the Labour Party we have called upon workers to demand that those 'lefts' that profess to oppose the Callaghan-Healey leadership mount a serious campaign for their removal throughout the Labour and trade union movement, and to lend their weight to the call for mass action to bring down the Tories.

At the same time we have fought to expose the vacillation and inadequacy of the stand taken by these 'lefts'; their refusal to launch such a fight; and their lack of any serious alternative programme as a challenge to that of Callaghan and the right wing.

But while such policies and perspectives have at times appeared to be far ahead of the level of struggle and consciousness in the working class, the steel strike has shown the kind of conditions in which they could become a material factor in advancing workers' struggles.

Material possibility

From being simply a part of our strategy for combatting the Tory government, and as such an objective to be worked towards, the General Strike has become very clearly a material possibility in recent weeks.

We have for this reason brought the demand to the forefront of our political work around the steel strike.

The possibility of a General Strike has been recognised at once by reformist trade union and Labour leaders-who see. such a development as profound threat to their position of power and privilege within the labour movement.

It has been only more slowly and partially recognised however by "Marxist" groups of the British Left.

On the agenda Yet as the Welsh TUCunder particularly strong pressure from steelworkers, miners and other sections threatened by BSC's programme of closures and sackings-called for an indefinite General Strike beginning on January 21, the issue of mass mobilisation to bring down the Tories was placed firmly on the agenda.

South Wales miners voted 9 to 1 to back the strike and at once the full weight of the TUC bureaucracy was mobilised-to crush this threatened action.

Even Bill Sirs and Sid Weighell-frightened at the prospect of escalating struggleioined the chorus of dire warnings that a General Strike was imminent.

As Denning ruled it illegal for the ISTC to call out its members in private steelworks, Labour 'lefts' emerged calling for the law to be defied, and making militant anti-Tory speeches-all of which stopped short of fighting for general strike action to bring down the But the forward movement by the working class brought immediate problems for the TUC bureaucracy in their struggle to control the membership.

After the House of Lords reversed the Denning ruling, Bill Sirs was voted down by his executive in. his bid to give private steel firms a "stay of 5CE30 ainst Callaghan: this did not win execution" , and his instructions were ignored by the mass picket that closed down Hadfields.

BSC's craft union. leaders were voted down in their efforts to impose a 14%-with-strings sell out settlement; and elsewhere in the public sector GMWU leaders have been rebuffed on pay deals by delegates from , water workers, gas workers and shipyards.

Again and again in recent weeks conditions have been created to drive a wedge between the membership and their reactionary leaders, and to raise within the steel strike the prospect of generalisea, class action to defeat the Tories and thus combine the issue of pay with the defence of the 50,000 threatened jobs, and the fight against the cuts and other Tory attacks.

Yet in the midst of this situation other groups on the. left have found themselves floundering and confused-often trailing far behind the level of consciousness developed by steel workers in the course of. their struggle.

Placards Such for instance has been the case with the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP in a number of towns has joined mass demonstrations sporting placards calling for a General Strike; but this is not a policy seriously advocated in their weekly paper Socialist Worker.

The nearest the SWP have come to arguing for such a policy was in the Socialist Worker of January 26, in which (on an inside page) John Deason takes up the warning statements for good it all torters 1 their pay demands struck together. And what better time to do it than NOW when the steel plants in South Wales are shut . down and hundreds of flying pickets are blockading the movement of steel?"

Different time

This generally correct statement was combined with a correct criticism of the delays of the Welsh TUC General Strike to March 10 by which time anything could have happened."

• Deason argues that:

"Every effort needs, to be made to bring the March date forward. We will have to fight within our unions to force our leaders to fight-every inch of the way."

Yet even while SWP members were selling this on the streets, Deason, as the head of the SWP's "Rank and File Defend Our Unions Committee" was involved in fighting for a completely different line at the January 26 conference called by the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions.

Far from arguing for the March 10 General Strike to be brought forward; far from arguing against "one-off, one-day stoppages; far from calling for "all workers to strike together" to stop the Tories for good, Deason meekly endorsed the CP's appeal to the TUC to call "a one day general stoppage against the anti-union laws" on May 14—more than three months later!.

"Protest"

And the Rank and File The 1000-strong LCDTU ally managed by veteran Stalinist Kevin Halpin, proved to be, in Deason's words, a "debacle". But this brought no political lessons to the SWP, who failed to resume Deason's call for a General Strike, even in the wake of the Denning judgement.

Instead the Socialist Worker lead article (Feb. 2) carefully avoided any call for generalised action by other unions now to defy the courts and defend the steel unions:

«The last time the Tories tried to crush the unions in the courts was during the Heath goyarnment in the early seventies.

"Five dockers' leaders were throwm into jail. Mass strike action freed them.

"The power to defy Denning lies with the rank and file."

[emphasis added] The same attitude was echoed in the following Socialist Worker which headlined on the TUC's March 9 Sunday demonstration, declaring that:

"This, of course, won't stop the Tories. But it is better than nothing." (SW, Feb. 9).

Inside, on page 3, was buried a short article correctly condemning the 'treachery and cowardice of many of our trade union leaders" .. whose manoeuvres. were directed to forcing the cancellation of the March 10 Welsh general strike call, and making the valid point that:

.. the enthusiasm for a Welsh General Strike against the closures and against the Tories is not mere propaganda. It is the obvious aim-how else can we shake any Tory government..

But such a General Strikewhether, in Wales or across Britain+'has been far from the "obvious aim" of the SWP. • Indeed Socialist Worker has since shifted its sights to the far more distant target of May 14and on Februarv 23 the Dape carried a report on a Dundee shop stewards' vote for strike action on that day, pointing out that:

"It should now be possible to raise this kind of action in every other city. If that happens then the TUC General Council may well find a General Strike in their hands"

Far from "stopping the Tories for good" • Socialist Worker now appears to be intent on stopping Dundee and other cities for one day!.

Inconsistency

A similar inconsistency has been shown however by the International Marxist Group and their paper Socialist Challenge:

Thẻ IMG has always been an organisation whose impressionist method of analysis leaves them struggling along behind and seeking to "fuse" with movements of the working class.

From such a position, no matter how sincere the intentions of IMG members, they must invariably fail to offer a Thus, while the growing

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