After Bl Sell-out 6% Limit: Tories Put the Boot in

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ill-fated 5% limit-is to be enforced through rigid cash limits on local authorities.

But there are already signs that the Tories have miscalculated the level of militancy in the working class.

The immediate reaction from the fireman -the section of workers first affected by the pay limit-was an unofficial work-to-rule that spread rapidly across virtually the whole country in advance of a meeting of the FBU Executive.

The firemen have particular reason to be angry. The agreement which ended their national strike three years ago laid down that they are entitled to an 18.8% rise this month: the Tories have now unilaterally torn up this agreement and offered them only 6%!

With the firemen clamouring for action, other public sector workers-if given a lead-can also be expected to fight back strongly.

Brunt

Inflation is now running at over 15%. Public sector workers have already born the brunt of Tory spending cuts in terms of slashed services, cuts in manning levels and cuts in overtime earnings. Bitterness is Howe with Inatener: seizing running high.

But leadership in the public sector is running at an all-time low. Union leaders, who have done nothing to oppose the cuts, have tried to blame the membership for their own refusal to mount a fight.

Sized up

The same union leaders who left the steelworkers isolated in their three month struggle last winter are equally determined to prevent a showdown with the Tories this time around.

The Thatcher government has sized up the TUC leaders. They recognise that every one of them would sooner sacrifice their members' jobs and living standards than unleash the kind of struggles that could drive the Tories from office.

Thatcher has no doubt been heartened by the mealy-mouthed statements of union leaders in response to the 6% limit.

But this assessment leaves out the mood of rising anger and militancy in the working class itself.

In BL car plants, news of the aavantage oj Du veiruyur betrayal was met by fury and impromptu gatherings of shopfloor workers literally demanding to be called out on strike.

Firemen have shown their readiness to fight.

Water workers have already declared themselves prepared to take strike action to back up their 20% pay claim.

And elsewhere, too, the pressure on wages is bullding up. Right wing miners' President Joe Gormley found little support last week for his moves towards acceptance of the NCB's single figure pay offer in reply to the NUM's 35% claim.

In Fords, shop floor workers have suffered the double insult of a new disciplinary code unilaterally rammed home, coupled with the certainty of a single figure pay offer.

In British Airways and Rolls Royce, state-owned firms have proclaimed a total pay freeze. Rolls Royce management are offering only a possible 5% tied to increased productivity, while BA bosses have imposed a pay freeze until July, to be followed by a paltry 7.8% offer.

A readiness to fight on pay runs alongside the emergence of struggles on jobs, with the Gardners occupation in Manchester now joined by the militant occupation of the threatened ICL factory in Winsford by workers who immediately evicted management.

And November 1 saw a broad-based 700-strong labour movement delegate conference, convened by Lambeth Labour Group, carry a fighting resolution spelling out a campaign for mass action to halt the cuts.

Even as the Tories move to put the boot in to the working class, therefore, the opportunity exists to mobilise the generalised strike action that we need to boot Thatcher out of office!

A precondition for success in such a fight is a determined struggle to prevent any moves to isolate those sections of workers that move into struggle on wages, on jobs or against the cuts.

Since TUC leaders and local officials will do everything in their power to prevent the spread of such struggles, this means it is essential to fight wherever possible for the building of councils of action to Firemen in 1978: their pay defend and extend strikes an occupations in each area.

Such councils of actio should draw in delegates froi all trade union and labour movi ment bodies as well as workir class political parties an organisations of tenant pensioners, students and unen ployed.

They should fight to mobi ise class-wide action for tr defeat of the Thatcher gover: ment-and as such challenge tł agreement now torn up d stranglehold of union bureaucrats.

They must link up the fight for industrial action against the Tories to the political struggle throughout the whole labour movement for a new, revolutionary leadership.

Only such a leadership is capable of challenging Foot and the old Callaghan gang, and carrying through the fight for a genuine workers' government to implement socialist policies.

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