[the Tory government has immediately begun wielding a…]

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the Tory government has immediately begun wielding a sharpened axe on jobs, conditions and social services. Trade union rights face imminent legal attack. Prices are already Plum sectors of state industry will be handed to the Tories' profiteering big business backers; and the pay rises to police and armed forces mark only the prelude to increased state violence against pickets and anti-fascists and an intensified army crackdown The Callaghan-Healey leadership has made it clear that it will oppose any perspective other than settling down and meekly acceptAnd, though they have once more dusted off their near-forgotten "socialist" specches, Labour's 'left wing' MPs have continued to duck away from any fight to remove Callaghan.

TUC leaders, too, have set out to establish a basis for collaboration with Thatcher and the Tory cabinet, parallelling their anti-working class alliance with Wilson and then Callaghan.

But the working class has experienced and overcome such betrayals before-to topple Heath's union-bashing_ government in 1974, and smash through Callaghan's reactionary Phase 4 of wage controls in a series of monumental pay battles in the winter of These experiences are not dead. They point to the way that jobs, social services and hard-won union rights can be defended against But a principled, revolutionary leadership is needed if the Labour traitors, the TUC collaborators and their hangers-on in the Communist Party are to be exposed and pushed aside, and the mass struggles mobilised that can defeat and remove the Tory governSuch a leadership must fight day in and day out for a programme of transitional demands which, starting from today's conditions and today's consciousness within the working class, lead workers to And in taking up democratic demands-such as an end to racial and sexual discrimination, it must show the crucial role that must be played by the working class as the only consistently revolutionary class capable of leading the struggle for the emancipation of And it must fight on an international basis-mobilising sulidarity for anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggles-whether in Ireland, South Africa or elsewhere throughout the world, and drawing strength and political lessons from revolutionary upheavals such as that which ousted the hated Shah in Iran. This means fighting for the reconstruction of the Trotskyist Fourth International.

To this end, the Workers Socialist League is affiliated to the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee which fights to reaffirm and develop the method and principles of the 1938 Transitional Programme, and for full discussion in the world Trotskyist moveThe next period will see major class struggtes in Britain. A principled Marxist leadership is essential. Our movement though JOIN US and take forward the struggle for socialism! rocketing upwards.

in the occupied North of Ireland.

ing five years of Tory devastation. 1978.

renewed Tory attacks.

ment.

grasp the necessity for socialist revolution.

mankind. strong in programme is small in numbers. ET SOCIALIST DESS lead and redundancies Name. .

Address Send to: BM Box 6XX.

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In this year's conference of the health service union COHSE, David Williams, Assistant General Secretary, spelt out the betrayal facing nurses over their pay claim.

Banging the table to rapturous applause, Williams recommended branches to vote against the government's 13-14% pay offer declaring:

"Let no-one be mistaken. This means business. If we go down this road we must be careful to ensure we win."

Apart from this call for caution Williams made no attempt to explain what action • While NUPE sponsored MP Reg Race was bemoaning the low-pay of University workers in Parliament last week, a group of that Wednesday was proposed after rejecting the offer and no attempt was made to unite other health service workers alongside the nurses.

However the clearest indication of where Williams and the NEC stand came when they opposed a resolution calling for the banning of dual membership with the RCN.

It. is hard to see how a COHSE rejection of the pay offer can mean any type of "business" except business as usual if the union allows into its ranks members of an organisation whose constitution bans any form of industrial action.

Albert Spanswick was even more militant in his verbal back condemnation of the NHS cuts. He declared the whole labour movement must be mobilised to denounce government policies and save the welfare state.

He then went on to oppose motion from Essex Hall branch calling for joint action alongside industrial workers!

Mass action It must be spelt out clearly that denunciation will not reverse government policies. Only mass action is capable of winning anything.

Pay and cuts cannot be seen as separate issues.

They are both part and parcel of the same and £1.38 an hour, as recommended by the Clegg Commission.

Though there are clear divisions within the College management, all the indications are that they intend to take the once it is accepted that profit is the central criterion and not social need, then the same logic requiring the closure of car firms and steel mills requires also the closure of schoois and hospitals.

A clear call must go out now to all nurses to unite alongside NALGO and seek the support of industrial sections of workers.

No government-Labour or Tory-has ever been given a mandate to attack the NHS, and the whole labour movement must be mobilised not in denunciation but in action in a general strike to bring this government down. Spanswick on With over 2000 engineering workers at Vosper Thornycroft's (Woolston) shipyard still out on unofficial strike and another 333 facing a management lock-out at Vosper Ship Repair (Eastern Docks), shipbuilding and ship repair in Southampton is being hit very hard.

Electricians and fitters at VSR have responded by carrying out an occupation of key buildings and the strike at Woolston remains extremely solid with all EETPU and TGWU members outside, although some workers (AUEW, UCATI) continue to cross picket lines ... under orders from union officials!

As this report is filed these bureaucrats have failed to lead a