Students' Union in Conference Reformism on the Rocks at Blackpool Disband the Spg Chix Mass Avenge Blair Peach: Bring Down Tories

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immigrants, and the fight against the Tory Employment Bill was made at a House of Commons lobby this week.

A coach load. of Chix workers and their families made up the lobby though it was called by the Camden Committee for Community Relations as a "mass lobby"

Spirits are clearly high among the strikers who have been picketing the bubblegum factory in Slough for six months now. At the meeting in the plush grand committee room striker Mohammed Yassim detailed the conditions which led to the strike-such as low wages of 95p an hour for the women, no sick pay nor pension scheme, etc.

Mohammed Anwar pointed out that if supportive pickets are outlawed in the Employment Bill, strikes such as at Chix would be impossible to sustain, especially where most strikers are women who are continually harrassed by the bosses.

He assured the meeting, to applause, that they would continue to call mass pickets, in defiance of the law.

Prosecution

Also their picketing of premises, such as the cash and carry in Hayes and the Hollywood warehouse to stop the supplying of Chix and the storing of its products could also open them to prosecution under this Bill.

"You can't separate the Employment Bill from other attacks on the workers' movement" stated Jim Thakoordin of the GMWU Education Department. • He placed it in the context of the 1971 Immigration Act, the use of the SPG and the SUS be cajoled into changing the Employment Bill or of abandoning their other attacks.

The urgent task was to kick the government out, using May 14 as the first shot in this fight.

This was not to say that the struggles for unionisation would be resolved.

Betrayed

Under the last Labour government, for example, the major strike of 18 months for the union at Garners had been betrayed.

The TGWU leadership had sabotaged the struggle and even agreed with the police voluntarily to limit the number of pickets.

Joan Lester responded to this by saying that Labour should have brought in new laws after Grunwicks.

This completely missed the point. The real issue is the responsibility of the trade union and labour leadership to mobilise their membership to support weak, isolated sections to win the most basic right of all-to be in a union.

It is this which has led to defeat, not loopholes in the law.

The Chix strikers " have learned some things from the past bitter struggles.

The employer is now very weak. Support the mass picket.

Send money to the strike.

A victory now will give the biggest boost to the organisation of immigrant, low paid, unorganised workers into trade unions.

More information from messages of suppo tand tions to: M. Anwa , 271 man Park, Slough.

and donaSoodA year ago six known thugs carried out an organised gang attack in West London, clubbing to death a young teacher-yet no arrest has yet been made.

The thugs were part of the police Special Patrol Group. Their attack was on anti-fascist demonstrators in Southall. The young teacher, murdered by a blow to the head from a weapon was Blair Peach.

The cover-up by the state has effectively shielded the murderer: and the police license to kill has been underlined in the outcome of the inquest into Merseyside man Jimmy Kelly and Tynesider Liddle Towers, both of whom died in custody after receiving savage violence at the hands of the police.

Meanwhile the Tory government has come to office, at once implementing its electoral pledges to increase spending on the police and army, and relying on these repressive forces to uphold their planned anti-union laws and racist legislation as well as to smash mass pickets and maintain existing harassment of working class youth.

One corner of the security curtain that shrouds the state's surveillance and phone tapping network has been lifted-revealing a central monitoring unit in London with apparatus to simultaneously "bug' up to 10,000 telephones.

More than protest Under these conditions the struggle to prevent a repetition of the murder of Blair Peach requires far more than even the mass protest that will certainly be mobilised on April 27.

The Tory government have already shown themselves to be impervious to protest: they are driven on by the acute economic crisis of the British capitalist class. There is no way in which they will allow any weakening of the bodies of armed men that form the backbone of their power.

" In supporting the April 27 demonstration the Workers Socialist League in no way endorses the vague protest politics of the 'Friends of Blair Peach' or the pacifist Anti Nazi League.

The fight against fascist violence and the struggle for the disbandment of the police and the standing army both point to the necessity to develop workers defence squads, based on and answerable to the labour movement.

But at the same time the fight to end organised police violence demands mass working class action to bring down the Tories and drive out Labour's right wing leadership.

Labour's left wing-led National Executive, which is officially backing the April 27 march, has offered no challenge whatever to then Home Secretary Merlyn Rees-who has subsequently spoken out criticising Bristol police for not being more aggressive in their response to the recent mass clashes with youth and workers in the St Pauls area.

Only a leadership prepared to struggle for the independent mobilisation of the working class and a workers government can be expected to wage a serious struggle for the disbandPHOTO: John Sturrock, Report ment of even a section of the police apparatus.

It is clear that Labour's right wing are opposed to such a fight: it is necessary in the Police in action at Southall course of the struggle for workers to test out for themselves whether the 'left' talkers are prepared to put forward any alternative.

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