EVANS SELL OUT From front page
Socialist Press1980 1980-04-23Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
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5277, London WC1.V 6XX, Printed by Anvil Printers Ltd., London recessarily represent the views of the Workers Socialist League. government. Throughout the 14 week steel strike Evans turned a deaf ear to appeals for action to stop lorries crossing picket lines, and to growing calls for General Strike action.
For while independent action by the working class is the only means of defeating the employers' offensive, Evans knows full well that in such struggles his own bureaucratic control over the rank and file would be called into question.
Yet, paradoxically, even in knifing the Leyland struggle Evans has prompted a new level of political debate amongst thousands of workers who know they have been sold down the river, and are now forced to look for a leadership that is prepared to fight to defend their interests.
This requires the construction of a revolutionary leadership committed to the fight to mobilise the full strength of the workers' movement in action to bring down the Tories, drive out the opponents of socialism that form the present Labour leadership, and carry through the struggle for a workers government based on the nationalisation without compensation of the basic industries, banks and trusts, and the establishment of a planned socialist economy.
It is from this standpoint that the WSL fights in BL and throughout the workers' movement for policies of:
*Defend all jobs and conditions! No concessions to the boss or bank upt and other firms, their suppliers and bankers to elected trade union committees! Ex pose the anarchy of capitalism and the profiteering that feeds off "nationalised" industries!
*No sackings! For work-sharing on full pay under the control of elected workers' committees.
*Defend living standards! For pay claims to catch up with Tory price increases, protected against inflation through cost-of -living clauses based on a workers' price index!
*No closures! Оссиру threatened plants; fight for national supporting strike and blacking : action as part of the struggle for a General Strike to bring down the Tories!
*Drive out the Callaghan/ Healey Labour leadership and the TUC traitors!
*Build revolutionary leadership in the labour movement!
*Reject import controls! For international working class action to end capitalist exploitation!
**For a workers' government! Nationalise basic industry without compensation under workers' management! For a planned, socialist economy! Hawley As we go to press it is clear that, while Evans' betrayal at BL has effectively sabotaged the i strikes then under way, Leyland workers are far from beaten.
In particular, though Rover workers at Solihull voted 4-1 on Monday to return to work, at the same time paint shop workers in Longbridge, who had not been involved in last week's struggles, walked out and picketed the plant in a dispute over the imposition of the 92 page document.
Even TGWU convenors (in a meeting skillfully timed to come after mass meeting votes for a return to work) felt obliged to make a. belated gesture of opposition to the selloutparticularly in the absence of either Evans or Grenville Hawley.
They adopted a resolution from Region 5 Secretary Briar Mathers describing the deal as "unrealistic" • proposing further talks with management and calling for official strike action in the event of them breaking down, and calling on the TGWU Automotive Group to withdraw from the Confed.