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UI alist system einsure and productive only a With workers by the thousand taking to the streets to oppose Tory policies there is plainly no lack of militancy in the organised working class.

Yet the existing trade union bureaucrats and Labour leaders -Whether right or 'left'-have no perspective to offer those workers prepared to fight in defence of jobs, living standards, social services and democratic rights.

These can only be defended through policies which start from the independent interests of the working class, which, as an international class, has nothing to gain and everything to lose from attempts to restore the profitability of their "own" employing class.

In a period where the contradistina, of tha anarchin ranit- Ufit force the wholesale destruction of the forces of society, socialist • planned economy on a world scale offers a way forward.

To achieve such a perspective a leadership is needed which, in today's struggles fights to advance workers beyond trade union militancy, protest politics and illusions that capitalism can be abolished through parliament.

The Workers Socialist League is a Trotskyist movement fighting day in and day out to build such a principled leadership in the working class in Britain.

Internationally, we are affiliated to the newly-formed Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, which fights for the reconstruction of the Fourth International and the building of reunlitinnary narties in everv country to lead the struggle against imperialism and against the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracies in the deformed and SM degenerated workers ' states.

We invite all readers of Socialist Press to seek more details of the WSL a ind its work, and to join us in the ' struggle for socialism.

Please send me more details of the Workers Socialist League.

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Address Send to WSL: BM Box 5277, London WC1V 6XX.

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Saturday November 15 10.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.

Terry Duffy's statement last month that the leadership of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions were "not in an aggressive mood" in pursuing their notional wage claim of 18.5% has been warmly received by the employers.

Following the rejection of their initial miserable 6% offer, they now seem likely to offer an almost equally miserable 8%and expect to find it endorsed by Duffy and his reactionary Confed colleagues.

Cut in wages

The engineering pay review is one of the first clear instances of a whole section of particularly avaricious employers exploiting the recession and mass lay offs to force through a cut in real wages of around 10% for 2 million workers.

The EEF's offer has since been echoed by British Leyland management's offer of 6% to BL carworkers.

Far from rejecting such a puny amount out of hand, the union leaders have gone away to consider it-no doubt calculating their chances of successfully foisting it on shop floor workers who have suffered more than almost anyother from successive years of wage control and collaboration between union leaders and management.

Meanwhile under pressure from their members, NUM leaders have announced that they intend to press ahead with the miners 35% pay claim due for settlement next month.

The Tories have already hinted that the miners and a few other powerful sections of public sector workers may be regarded as "special cases" in order to avoid potentially disastrous confrontations.

Rather, they hope to select their targets for victimisation, and to pick off isolated and industrially weak sections of workers with the assistance of the craven TUC leadership.

Living standards will fall dramatically for the vast AUEW leaders Duffy, Boyd and Laird The consistent thrust of the CDLM has been towards the development of a new leadership based on a consistent programme of struggle to defend the independent interests of the working class.

This autumn's conference, taking place in the shadow of 2½ million unemployed, huge