All Out on

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Secretary Len Murray continues to campaign to prevent the TUC's May 14 "Day of Action" becoming a full-scale one-day General Strike against the Tory government, pressure from their members is forcing some union leaders in the other direction.

SOGAT leader Bill Keyesattempting to force tr rough a miserable pay settlem ent-was among the first to put r ›ut a call Ofshall ..YOUR MAN AT THE for one-day strike action on May 14: but he was swiftly followed by the right wing leadership of the NUR.

General Secretary Sid Weighell correctly declared that "it is not sufficient to wave banners in Trafalgar Square"

Instead the NUR Executive has demanded that the TUC General Council:

"calls upon all trade unions to instruct their members not to report for duty on 14 May, in order to demonstrate the depth of feeling in the movement against government policy."

The engine drivers' union CONGRESS HOUSEA HIVE OF ACTIVITY!

[TUC RECEPTION ... THOSE POSTMEN INSIST ON CLINGING ON TO THEIR JOBS! I DONT KNOW WHY WE HOLD THESE RUDDY CONFERENCES -NOTHING BUT TROUBLE!

WATCH OUT, HERE COME GEOFF DRAIN AND BILL ASLEF has followed their lead, as has the NUPE leadership. And the East Midlands Regional TUC has added its voice to the call for a one-day General Strike.

Socialist Press supports the fight for strike action on May 14 as part of the fight for an all-out General Strike to bring down the Tory government and create conditions for the political struggle for socialist policies against the existing Labour and trade union leaders.

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SOCIALIST RESS •ALIST STEEL: NO INQUIRY. STOP THE LORRIES. ORR E As we go to press, leaders of the ISTC and NUB have rejected an appeal from BSC management for an immediate return to work in exchange for a 10% interim pay supplement.

But they have accepted the establishment of a "committee of inquiry" into their pay claim. The outcome of this inquiry is unlikely to vary more than one or two percent from management's pathetic 14%-with-strings offer and will come nowhere near the 20% claim.

No challenge •The fact is that no arbitration board or committee of inquiry is going to challenge the basis on which BSC management case rests: that an Sirs The Underhill Report has been published at an embarassing time for the Labour lefts and right wing alike.

The most significant part of employer must restore "viability" -profits-at the expense of the working class.

Steel union leaders who have allowed management to axe jobs by the tens of thousand in recent years, themselves accept the case for "viability"

But while they have found it comparatively easy to demoralise workers into accepting what in many cases have been hetty sums in voluntary redundancy payments, union leaders were forced to call the strike because they found it next to impossible to persuade their members to accept BSC's further plans for speed-up and closures with a miserable 2% pay offer on the table.

Now, after 13 weeks on Strike have raised workers' expectations to new levels, Bill Sirs and the union bureaucrats have been forced to throw out a* 10% cash-down offer.

Scabbing

But the weeks of conscious sabotage and scabbing by TUC leaders- who have worked might and main to isolate and weaken the steel strike -have taken their toll on the strike.

Though morale among militants remains high, it is clear that many: steelworkers will look with dismay on the minimal impact their 12 weeks argument begin" has to be put into the context of a statement from Eric Heffer (who actively opposes the witch-hunt) that a letter has already been sent from the organisation commitPHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report out have had on production in the engineering industry.

It is no good for Sirs and Hector Smith merely to reject the BSC pay offer: it is necessary publicly to take up the fight for other unions to mobilise solidarity action.

Yet the ISTC and NUB leaders have consciously refused to do this. They prefer to see the strike defeated than to embarass their • fellow TUC In particular, though thousands of TGWU steelworkers are S: * 16:

on strike, directives from Moss Evans and Ron Todd continue to allow convoys of lorries through steelworkers' picket lines to keep production lines rolling in major factories.

There must be full scale steelworkers' lobbies of TGWU District, Regional and National Offices to demand that the instruction goes out at once to stop all lorries crossing these pickets, and for immediate disciplinary action to be taken against any driver who flouts such an order.

strike The working class in Zimbabwe has lost little time in making its presence felt following the sweeping victory of Robert Mugabe in the recent elections.

Port Talbot pickets Other unions, too, and the TUC should be picketed in the fight for supporting action to win the steel strike.

And. a principled leadership must be built in the steel unions to defend the interests of the working class.

*20%- no strings!

*No sackings, no closures; defend all jobs.

*Spread the strike; bring out BL; for a General Strike to bring down the Tories. suggest that the purpose of the witch-hunt is in reality to hound out Socialist Press supportersunfortunately there are too few to merit such attention.

But there is no doubt that A wave of strikes has erupted reflecting the expectation of the masses in the wake of that result. Reports of the extent of these strikes vary, with suggestions that as many as 40 different plants have been affected.

Mr Kum Biarai Kangai, the new Minister of Labour and Social Welfare has been working overtime to get the strikes called off.

He is quoted as saying "l must point out that there is a laid down procedure for the airing of workers' grievances, which must be observed. While the government has given an undertaking to review the situation as soon as possible, nevertheless any precipitate action at this stage can only serve to damage the goodwill which has been built up between the government, the employees and their employers, and will inevitably have a crippling effect on industry. This in turn will have the effect of postoning any improvement in workers' conditions of service which might otherwise have taken place,"

Mass sackings

Some strikers have returned to work, while something in the region i of 3,000 have been Beside the number of different plants affected, the action is not isolated to one town.

Companies in Salisbury, Bulawayo and Umtali as well as the Delni mine at Umvuma have been hit.

The stored-up anger of the Zimbabwean working class which suffers from low wages, bad conditions and high unemployment is tinding expression in these strikes.

The task of revolutionaries is to develop the necessary programme and organisation which can answer the desire of the masses to put an end to their oppression.

This means the development of a system of demands based on the method of the transitional programme, the building of soviets and the construction of a Trotskyist party.

Imperialism

Such a perspective, the development of the independence of the working class, will be bitterly opposed by the likes of Mugabe and the ZANU(PF) leadership, who are moving to rebuild a stable base for

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STEEL WORKERS' POWER