[The farcical nature of the "debates" at the…]
Socialist Press1980 1980-09-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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The farcical nature of the "debates" at the TUC Congress was epitomised in Wednesday's discussion on economic policy.
An almost uninterrupted stream of General Secretaries and full-time officials vied with each other in their efforts to louse up the delivery of speeches carefully drafted for them by research departments, while lay delegates sat impotent, mandated only to stay silent and raise their hands politely as instructed.
Cock-up of the day must be Terry Duffy's demand -in the midst of a boring and reactinnarv cneech which VI HUH confirmed beyond doubt that he is no more than the creature of the Tory press -that:
'We offer these must young unemploy- people ment."
In fairness to Duffy, of course, it is quite true that the policies of Callaghan which he SO eagerly applauded the day before would certainly ensure that a returned Labour government would offer youth and workers still more unemployment. But this is not what he meant to say.
ISTC General Secretary Bill Sirs also let the cat out he leapt to his feet to second an amendment by the EETPU on the Common Market, which deleted a statement of opposition to the EEC, and called simply for a referendum.
"My union has no policy on this" , confessed Sirs, who, nothing daunted, went on to put his own personal view instead!
Perhaps the lack of an ISTC policy is linked with the decision of Sirs and the ISTC bureaucracy to cancel the union's conference this year in order to dodge the hostility of the members to the wholesale sell-out of jobs atter the marathon strike last Spring?
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of the bag. Professing concern about democracy,