[Bring down the Tories! For a workers go…]

Scan page 8

Bring down the Tories! For a workers go vernment!

In fighting for General Strike action to brinig down the Tories, we call at present for the return of a Labour government, but not one where Callaghan and Healey are simply allowed to return to th e policies of 1974/9.

This is why we call on workers in Labour Parties and union brainches to put down demands con the Labour 'iefts' and for its replacement by leaders prepared to implement socialist frolicies.

We clo not make such a call in tine belief that a reformist government, however left, can implement socialist policies in an er a of capitalist crisis; but for thre education of the working class in practice at a time 'when a demand for a workers government appears an empty/ abstraction.

Wre combine this with propagandar and agitation for a system of transitional demands for the defer ice of jobs, wages and social services, and with the struç jgle to mobilise independent working class action on such demands.

\Within such struggles we fighit to direct workers to the building of independent organisatirons to take forward the fight for their class interests-elected strike committees, price committees, open-the-books committees, workers defence squads and councils of action.

We stress that as such bodies ernerge and grow in scale and that in the course of the coming struggles and political experiences growing sections of workers will come to recognise with us that the only consistent workers' government is, in fact, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that the only real solution to their problems is to fight, with us, for the overthrow of capitalism to bring that about.

The General Strike Demand The eruption of the steel strike and its spill-over into the struggle against closures forced even sections of the bureaucracy to talk of a possible General Strike.

The Welsh TUC-to the horror of its big British brother -actually called a General Strike from January 21, only to abandon it and substitute a January 28 'day of action' and the threat of further prolonged action from March 10-by when they hope the pay battle will be safely over.

Socialist Press, however, took up the initial call by the Welsh TUC and brought the demand for a General Strike to bring down the Tories to the centre of the WL intervention around the steel strike, It is therefore important to be clear on the way we see this demand not as empty propaganda, but as integraily linked to our agitational work and to the development of the class struggle itself.

Limited and inadequate though their demands were, the fact that the Welsh TUC were forced to the length of calling for a General Strike indicated the kind of pressure on the They saw the national strike as a means of waging a battle against closure and striking a major blow at the hated Tory government. With other sections of workers pressing their leaders to take action alongside the steelworkers in defence of jobs, an opportunity arose to fight throughout the labour movement for a General Strike with the clear objective not simply of delaying the BSC closures, but of bringing down the reactionan Tor, government.

itate as acted I*2:

TOF Wales miners as somes =Ewhelming suppori is a st-e= Other railwaymen and miners would undoubtedly hav followed their lead.

Were more generalised action to spread it would offer a lead to countless thousands of workers in other industries under Tory attack:

-2. million public service workers, whose pay rise this year is pegged far below the cost of living by Tory cash limits, and who face cuts, closures and speed-up on every side:

-Civil servants, who face a steady erosion of manning levels and an endless tide of cuts;

-workers in every industrial sector whose wages are under attack from Tory-fuelled inflation, and whose unions are once more under attack from Tory legislation;

—women workers, facing the worst impact of the cuts, the worst unemployment, and Tory attacks on their rights at work and on the right to abortion; 30 2

----- pull-quotes -----

to campaign for the removal of the Callaghan-Healey leadership,