Tameside Trades Council fights TUC censors

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Already the IUC have been who had torced the expulsion in The TUC • General Council's recent decision to disaffiliate Tameside Trades Council over its anti-imperialist stand on Ireland is a fundamental attack on democracy within the labour movement.

Terry Parry Just as successive British governments have used the Irish war to launch a general attack on basic rights, particularly through the Prevention of Terrorism Act, so now the Congress House bureaucrats follow suit in an attempt to gag all those in the trade union movement Who speak out on the issue.

Len Murray has circulated all Trades Councils telling them that no initiatives can be undertaken on the Irish question without prior approval of the TUC.

"Safe"

In other words, unless the proposals are 'safe' such as with the pro-imperialist "Better Life for All" campaign, and guaranteed not to deal with the real political issues concerning Britain's military occupation of the six counties, the TUC will rule them out of order!

As with Tameside, defiance will be met with expulsion.

But with a campaign now getting underway in defence of Tameside, demanding their reinstatement, the union leadership have a right to be nervous. forced to instruct Trades Councils to ignore all material sent out by Tameside claiming they have "placed themselves outside the official trade union movement"

And last Saturday's successful lobby of the Trades Councils Annual Conference by Tameside delegates and their supporters brought , an encouraging response to their call for In the conference itself the chariman, FBU General Secretary Terry Parry, refused to accept two emergency resolutions on the expulsion, one calling for Tameside to be given the right to put their case.

When it was eventually discussed under the TCJCC's report, several delegates protested at the TUC's decision.

Confused With most delegates confused over the real situation, they were swung behind support for the disaffiliation by a typical witch-hunting attack by Manchester CATC speaker Frances Dean.

It had been Dean and other prominent • Communist Party members_ in the North West, first place, with the carried by 2-1, and subsequently many delegates (significantly including numbers of embarrassed CP rank and file members) signed a petition condemning the TUC's actions.

Endorsed

The Tameside fight has already been : endorsed by a growing list of trade union bodies-including the NUJ Annual Conference, Camden, Hyndburn, Andover all Battersea Trades Councils, one TGWU District Committee, five NUPE branches and two Labour CLPs.

Tameside Trades Council's labour movement conference on Ireland, which when originally convened, provoked hysterical condemnation not only from Len Murray and the CP but also the National Front, has now been recalled for next Saturday.

Again, fascists have threatened to break it up, with a declaration that a specially prepared squad of ex-army 'hit men' intend to destroy it.

The organisers are taking necessary measures to defend it from such attacks.

Messages of support from labour movement bodies should be forwarded to Tameside Trades Council Secretary Dave Hallsworth, 186 Kings Road, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire.

The parallel between the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and the bureaucracy of the trade unions has often been made.

One of the paraliels can be seen by the way in which the events on the Isle of Grain has opened up the whole trade union movement to attack.

Just as the international scabbing and betrayals of the Soviet bureaucracy actually make it more likely that the Soviet Union will be unablé to defend itself effectively against attempts by imperialism to restore capitalism; so the betrayals and scabbing by the trade union bureaucracy jeopardise the very existence of the whole trade union movement on which they depend for their privileges and power.

That is why the press has made such a meal out of the mass picket at the Isle of Grain.

The spectacle of unions divided, and of official, organised scabbing has presented the gutter press with a heaven sent opportunity to portray the unions as being opposed to the interests of the working class.

The press is of course acting as the propaganda wing of the Tory party to smooth the path of its anti-union legislation.

That is why the Daily Mail sent reporters along with the trade union officials on the scab buses and chose to quote not the Tory front bench