Bl: Convenors the Weak Link

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For the second year running BL workers have voted 2-1 for strike action to pursue their wage claim.

And for the second year running they have been miserably betrayed by their leaders.

Last year in a sceret ballot the workforee threw out a 5% offer. Union officials and convenors stepped in to create maximum confusion. And eventually Edwardes succecded in imposing the deal on angry shop floor workers.

Came as shock

This year, mass meetings throughout the BL factories produced a convincing 43,00021,000 vote for strike action to press the union's €17 claim and reject Edwardes 6.8% ultimatum.

The vote came as a shock to union leaders, employers and lory press-al of whom had formed the vicu that BL workers, atter ycars of betrayals, would never fight again.

Under pressure from their members- bitter at three ycars of savage wage cuts-convenors on Monday November 3 voted -with heavy abstentions for ali out strike action the following Tuesday.

But this decision proved to be the starting signal not for preparations to win the strike but for frantic manocuvres by top officials to force home d sell-out.

Union Gencral Secretariesmany of them (like David Basnett and Clive Jenkins) with little or nothing to do with the claim -were immediately closeted with Edwardes, who whecled out his usual threat to shut down the company.

The General Secretaries immediately collapsed before Edwardes' threats.

They grasped at once onto the ludicrous proposal by the company to pay £l.25 bonus per week for 12 wecks-a mere tl5 per worker over 3 months! -as a supposed "concession" that would excuse calling off the strike.

Steamrollered

Next to fall before Edwardes was the Joint Negotiating Committee. Having initially been divided on whether or not to even light the 6.8% offer, the Committee was soon steamrollered into voting overwhelmingly to call off the strike few of them had wanted.

But while the JNC is itself notoriously unrepresentative the numbers being packed by the attendance of full time union officials and convenors representing only tiny handfuls Workers at BL Cowley Body Plant tion of the previous political status for these prisoners, and draw attention to Annual Conference Report 1980, page 66, policy resolutions of the NEC. port to four phases of wage controis, to huge public spending cuts, mass unemployment, cash handouts to private industry, and intensified repression of the Irish people.

Since the election of the Tory government Foot has devoted his main energies to forestalling moves towards Labour Party democracy and bolstering the discredited Callaghan leadership.

Like Callaghan, Foot stands resolutely opposed to mass action to bring down the Tories. But his methods of argument for a perspective of seeking to pressurise Thatcher into a change of policy are more subtle and flexible than those of his main rival for the Party leadership, Dennis Healey.

While Healey bluntly and arrogantly argues the need for capitalist policies-wage cuts, public spending cuts and unemployment-to resolve the capitalist crisis, Foot seeks more tactfully to dress up the same policies as a variety of socialism.

It is 'on this basis that Foot has clearly won substantial support from the right wing dominated PLP, who recognise that they now face a battle to retain control of the Labour Party in the face of rising rank and file militancy.

Bamboozle

Sooner than further antagonise the new left wing within the Party, the PLP have chosen Foot-whose flights of windy rhetoric will, they hope bamboozle them and defuse their The fight for a principled socialist leadership in the labour movement must now proceed against Foot as it did against Callaghan. With the extreme right wing's chosen leader defeated, the battle will now be further out in the open in the run-up to the Special Conference in January ANNIVERSARY RALLY Six years of the League Speakers from Socialist Press Woman Worker And the Trotskyi! ternational Liais Committee plus film SATURDAY 6 DECEMBER 3 p.m.

New Ambassadors Hotel Upper Woburn Place London WC!

Tickets £1.50 (£1.00 outside London in dvance), unwaged 50p

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BL's 70,000 workforce-a Cont'd page 11