Prior boks officials

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He is worried at the increasingly irate response by even right wing union leaders to persistent Tory speeches insisting that wage increases must be Thorneycroft's cage appears to have been particularly rattled by the recent blundering speech by Sir Keith Joseph to US electronics employers, in which much of the scarcest resource of all -human initiative," pronounced Joseph. hard-won rights and living standards.

Another Tory kader sounding off last week was so-called Employment Secretary James Prior, supervisor of the new anti-union laws.

Speaking to a gang of American businessman in South Carolina, he boasted that militant shop stewards are losing their influence in Britain.

This, in Prior's view, had two advantages: it gave management "a new authority" and it meant that power was "moving back to full-time union officials".

This • was particularly welcome to the vast majority of full-time officials, particularly at regional level, declared a rosy cheeked Prior.

"The officials won't ever say it, but they know that a resurgence of management that clearly knows what it is about is the best support they can have against the militants"

On that point, if little else, Prior certainly hit the nail on the head. As workers in BL, BSC and elsewhere count the cost of betrayals by their officials, the officials are counting the blessings of sheltering behind a ruthless management.

Such a situation can only be confronted by the construction of a revolutionary leadership in the labour movement.

Tory conference delegates