Leicester bosses back import controls' demonstration

Scan page 5

On Wednesday 12 MP, Labour MP for Leicester West will head a large demonstration through the streets of Leicester.

He will be accompanied by two other local Labour MPs, Jim Marshall and Tom Bradley, together with Alex Kilsby, the Hosiery Workers Organiser.

Is this to be a demonstration calling for the bringing down of the Tories? Not on your life! The bureaucrats will be on the streets asking Thatcher to impose import They Will be joined, not surprisingly, by a clutch of Leicester and District Trades Council has launched an enquiry into the cause of the house fires in steel houses on the City's New Parks Estate.

The decision to hold a labour movement enquiry came after Trades Council delegates heard, at the request of the AUEW 16 Branch, the accounts of conditions on the estate from two tenants.

Graphic account

John Barry and Val Hill gave a graphic account of the fear which haunts the estate following seven fires in as many months and vigorously criticised the local council for its attempts to cover up the real problem: Tory MPs and a handful of local employers-some of whom have given their workforce an hour off to take part in the march, so eager are they to see their workers adopting the nationalist policies of "Buy British. Stop Imports"

At the same time, of course, these employers will no doubt be equally eager to use the implicit class • collaborationist stance of union bureaucrats against their workforce at the next turn of the screw on wages -demanding that in the interests of company viability the workers should forgo their rises as they did in the "I'm Backing Britain Campaign"

This line up, employers, Tories, union bureaucrats and have to begin by accepting that if it is to carry out an effective enquiry then it cannot worry about upsetting councillors.

In fact, more than likely, it will run head-on into the hostility of councillors keen to maintain the cover-up.

A genuine independent labout movement inquiry begins not from keeping a cosy relationship with the local Labour bureaucrats but from a struggle to establish before the workers' movement the real nature of problems which face workers under capitalism.

That may well mean pointing directly to the complicity of Labour leaders in cover-ups and betrayals at both local and national level. Labourites spells out in the most vivid way the reality of the import controls demand.

It is the politics of class collaboration. For workers seeking to fight unemployment it can offer no solution. Supporters of Woman Worker' women's paper of the Workers Socialist League will be intervening in the demonstration arguing for an alternative programme-a programme to defend the independent interests of the working class.

They will argue for the opening of the books of the hosiery employers and their suppliers, opposition to all redundancies work-sharing on full pay to defend jobs and a policy of occupation to halt closures.

The recent Leeds conference organised by the Labour Coordinating Committee proved to be a confused and inadequate affair.

The attendance was little over 100; Arthur Scargill was not there and no resolutions were taken or decisions reached.

Nevertheless its significance lies in the fact that the LCC saw fit to call it at all, an expression of the changing situation within the Labour Party.

Those Labour lefts' linked to the LCC, who have been pushing hardest for the internal democratisation measures, now turn to the trade unions not in the traditional manner typical of the right wing-that is in back door deals with the top echelons of the trade union bureaucracy -but seeking links with the rank and file.

Quite what the lefts' intend to achieve is not clear, and certainly the conference failed to give much of an answer.

It is this type of policy for fighting unemployment that the union leaders wish to avoid.

That is why there has been no action to defend the 5,000 jobs already lost in hosiery this ycar.

That is why the TUC remains passive in the face of 2½ million unemployed The demonstration in Liverpool on November 29 must become the start of a mass campaign to demand action on jobs.

But the action must start not from the problems of the employers and their hatchetmen in parliament but from the independent interests of the working class.

But the day was notable as a forum for discussion on the stage reached in the Labour Party since the Blackpool conference and (to a much lesser extent), the fight to remove the Tory government.

Peter Hain, LCC spokesman, summed up their hesitancy by saying they realised that turning towards the unions was a 'minefield' and it was necessary to get everything worked out first' This no doubt explained the organisers' inability to make even a single concrete proposal for action-postponed until a further conference at some future date.

A clue to the LCC's motives was revealed by Hain's references to the failings of the Textile workers SWP's rank and file movements and the CP-dominated LCDTU.

He correctly referred to the latter's demise as being partly attributable to the Stalinists' keeness to strike deals with the right wing. But then he added mournfully, that we are all suffering from its collapse'!

Ex-MP Audrey Wise made a typically demogogic contribution-calling for a fight in the labour movement to get rid of the Tories and its replacement with a workers' government.

Welcoming the 'straight talking' that was now taking place within the Labour Party, her policies were confined to an appeal for the alternative economic strategy-but with real participation by the workers in companies like Lucas and BL. Zionist brutality on West Bank from their homeland.

To conclude the meeting a motion against repression in the West Bank and another on the coup in Turkey were presented to the meeting to be taken into the labour movement.

The campaign received solidarity greetings from ten organisations including the Labour Peter Hain Bob Cryer, a local left' MP who kept his seat, spent 15 minutes blaming the working class for accepting mass unemployment, closures, etc.

Speakers from Gardners factory occupation and a thoughtful and interesting report from steelworkers in the Llanwern Action Committee in South Wales were examples of the kind of struggles and forces which a Labour Party/trade union membership alliance could attract. But that means providing effective answers and policies-which the LCC has yet to do.

Turkey Solidarity Campaign and the PLO.

A petition was also circulated in support of the Irish republican hunger strikers and the campaign steering committee announced its support for their struggle.

----- pull-quotes -----

Middle East Council, Trade Union Friends of Palestine,