As US workers abstain MAJOR UNION CALLS FOR

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own, it not a betrayal, to have 'arter stumping for the ERA, or not stopping federally-paid bortions, for advodating homoexual rights."

Darwin challenged

Reagan, on the contrary, lainly intends to hold on to uch supporters. His election peech to a rally of 15,000 vangelical Christians in Dallas ven went so far as to question he theory of evolution, in a bid o prove his mediaeval credenials.

As bigots and reactionaries hrew their weight behind leagan, he drew into his camaign seasoned reactionaries uch as Lyn Nofziger, a former rember of the extreme right ring John Birch Society, who ecame campaign press secreary.

Yet Nofziger and his olleagues were prudent enough ot to allow Reagan to parade is most reactionary statements nrehearsed before the press. Instead the Republicans' icious strategy was giftrapped in a, manner again eminiscent of the Saatchi and Saatchi campaign which brought Thatcher to office in Britain.

And Reagan's tendency to blurt out ludicrous and unsupported statements was squashed by virtually screening him from the direct access of reporters for the duration of the campaign.

But Reagan's trump card was the disillusion and anger amongst many sections of American society at the appalling record of the Carter regime, which in its own ham-fisted way had spent four years at least initiating-if not completely accomplishing-many of Reagan's economic and military policies.

Reagan is therefore now set to take office in a period of continuing profound economic crisis. The whoops of enthusiasm for his election amongst Wall Street speculators and industrialists will be echoed by the oil monopolies and others who will look for quick cash returns on their investment in his campaign.

At 69, Reagan is the oldest man ever to take office as President. The next oldest was William Henry Harrison. He took office aged 68 in 1841, caught pneumonia the same day, and died a month later.

Tens of millions. _ of Americans would no doubt now welcome a recurrence of such events. But it seems more than likely that Reagan will be around busily terrorising, starving and repressing men, women and children the world over for the next four years.

Only the independent struggles of the US labour movement in defence of jobs, wages, social services and hard-won 'democratic rights can halt the Reagan offensive. milli Assc over Sept hold tial c was l and to While the British press echoes the American ballyhoo about the "landslide" election of Ronald Reagan as the new American President, the fact remains that his Republican candidacy attracted the support of only 26.5% of the adult population.

While 43 miltion men and women went out to register their support for Reagan's blend of Thatcherite economic policies and Cold War propaganda, they were heavily outnumbered by some 77 million who had been so alienated by the choice between Jimmy Tweedledum Carter and Ronald Tweedledee Reagan that they did not vote at all.

Participation in this election -with a miserable .52% turnout -was lower than in the 1976 election and lower than the previous post-war rock bottom, 53% in 1952.

Thus in the world's most celebrated "democracy" • the biggest single political tendency is one of opposition to both of the multi-million dollar capitalist electoral machines and the anti-working class policies on which both mass parties and the so-called "independent" John Anderson fought the election.

Not registered Included in this -77 million tendency will be tens of millions of workers who have become so hostile to the politics of the bourgeois parties that they do not even bother to register to vote.

But this does not mean that their trade union leaders have adopted a similarly neutral stance-or drawn the obvious political conclusion: that it is necessary to break from both Democrats and Republicans and to construct a Labour Party in the USA to carry the fight for the independent interests of the working class and oppressed minorities.

Instead the bulk of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy threw their weight behind either Carter or Reagan.

The bureaucratic leaders of the 2 million strong Teamsters (transport) union, together with the National Maritime Union, threw in their lot with Reaganwhile most others, having failed to secure the nomination of Teddy Kennedy as candidate, rallied around Carter as a supposed "lesser evil" to Reagan.

Withhold 3ut significantly, one of the I's biggest unions, the oneIon-strong International ›ciation of Machinists, voted whelmingly at ember convention to withI support from any presidencandidate. nstead the IAM leadership mandated to: "join with other progressive liberal groups in our society determine the extent to which grass roots support might be developed for an independent pro-labor party."

Yet the IAM in a schizophrenic move ' also voted to maintain its support for Democratic candidates for Congress and the Democratic Party platform.

This contradictory stance reflects the position of. IAM President William Winpisinger, who was one of the foremost union supporters of Kennedy, and one of the few who then refused to swing obediently behind Carter after the Democratic Convention.

Winpisinger declared himself in favour of a "pro-labour" party, though opposed to one tied simply to the trade union movement.

In the debate on the issue, one of the delegates, Bro. Smith from lAM Lodge 1005 vigorously underlined the necessity for an independent party of the working class.

"In the past our approach to politics has been to support the Democratic Party. What good has this done us? Are they really our friends?

Let us not forget that every time a piece of anti-labour legislation was passed, the Democrats were in control. They were in control when our constitutional right to protest and peaceably picket were taken away from us by the Taft Hartley Law. How can they limit our pickets to three or four at a plant gate. When a scab crosses our picket lines we want them to know we don't like it; we want them to know we are not going to stand for it. It doesn't take too much courage to cross a picket line where there is only one picket there, but a picket line of hundreds or even thousands is a different story and I think you will all agree that scabs are not noted for their courage or idealism.

Let us not forget that the Democratic-controlled Congress now is in power and they control the interest rates as they escalate. We need to build the picket lines like they did in the thirties; we must demand our constitutional rights; we must return fo the solidarity of the TRINTIGn- lalo mitts pano tho nemomo cruits, we must nave crit ryant L AL. _L. to strike in our contracts; we must have the picket lines where we control who crosses these lines, not management. We have to stop the scabs. Show the unions our militancy and determination and people will flock to the IAM as they did to the CIO in the thirties. Show this militancy and the people will flock to the IAM as the Polish workers rallied to the leadership of the shipyard workers.

We are not going to dump the Taft Hartley Law and other laws by supporting the Democrats. The Democrats and Republicans both are parties of big business. We have to form our own party, a party of working people, like those here in this room today. We have to get all of organised labour together to hammer out our 'own political programme. We have to create a platform that all of the working people can support. We have to have politicians that will stick to what they say and stick to a platform and if they don't we will throw them out just as the British workers threw out the party of Prime Minister Heath in England.

Learn. from our Polish brothers and sisters; occupy the plants when you see they are going to close down. What would happen to the labour laws in this country if all of the Machinists on this continent were to lay down their tools at the same time? All we have to do is put our hands in our pockets and stand firm like the Polish workers did. Our Polish counterparts now have more legal rights than we do and they live in a communist country. Our coal miners, just a couple of years ago, stood firm. They fought for the right to strike during a contract, fought for a pension for retired workers and fought against every injunction.

When Carter invoked Taft Hartley, they ignored it. While they were striking the railroads, the barges carried in scab coal. The miners built the CIO. Eighty percent of the finances for the CIO came from the miners.

Let us stand together as the Polish workers did and we will gain victory. We must have a labour party and must start building it today."

Class consciousness

Another delegate again showed the emergence of a new level of class consciousness among IAM members, spurred on by the evident bankruptcy of both Presidential candidates:

"Delegate Kelly (Lodge 79): The working men and women of this country have been consistently given less and less choice of political candidates, as exemplified this year by big business controlling Reagan and the so-called lesser evil, Carter, and the United States is the only major country in the world where the working men and women do not have their own political parties that function on a day to day basis, leading and fighting for their interests, in the community and the political arena.

The IAM should take the initiative to build an independent labour party. We should empower President Winpisinger and Secretary Glover to call a conference for the purpose of building a working people's party and that this Convention should call upon all of organised labour in the United States to join in building an independent American labour party. If we do not start now, we will not have a labour party."

Such a development in one of the USA's largest unions must be driven forward in the next period-exploiting to the full the sharpened situation Reagan and the crisis within the Democratic Party.

The fight must be to break the US labour movement from the grip of the bourgeois parties and carry through the fight for an independent party of the working class.

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