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The recall conference indicated how thoroughly such tactics have been applied by union leaders.

And it showed also that those sections of workers who try to break this vicious circle face the prospect of being ignored and isolated by leaders determined to wage no fight against the Tories.

In the health service, for example, the Longworth Hospital occupation in Oxfordshire is the only work-in currently underway against a hospital closure-yet, as speaker Anne Marie Sweeney pointed out to the conference, it took COHSE three weeks to declare it official and the 250,000 strong union has still not provided the slightest material support or national campaign to back or extend the action.

It is in these conditions that Knight and the Lambeth Labour Group have begun to argue that they must retreat before the Tory offensive in order to "buy time" to build a mass movement.

"We have come to listen to advice", , he told the conference, "but we intend to stay control in Lambeth-not to "I am just amazed at the response" said National Union of Seamen General Secretary Jim Slater on Friday 16 January. "The problem is going to be to get them back at the end.

And militant NUS members who spoke to me are increasingly convinced that is just how the union leaders see it.

Holding Wary of a big with the bosses a they are deliber back the fight.

Slater says the off the action agreed to go to confrontation nd the Tories, ately holding union will call if the bosses arbitration at hand over to anyone, to Heseltine, the Tories or the bankers.

Knight and those who supported him argued that there had been little sign of action in the labour movement against the cuts.

If Lambeth took a stand, they said, and refused to increase the rates, it faced the prospect of isolation from mass support, bankruptcy and a Tory government commissioner being brought in to impose draconian cuts.

This, they argued, would pave the way for far worse cuts.

Far better to accept huge rate increases under a Labour council than allow the Tories in, they argued.

An interesting facet of the conference was that this classical reformist line-the very pretext used by the last Labour government as an excuse for implementing Tory policieswas vigorously defended by members of the self-styled Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party.

The WRP marshalled their supporters to speak and vote against every proposal for serious action to defeat the ACAS. But an NUS branch meeting in Cardiff on Monday 19 January told the union leaders that the rank and file wanted no reliance at all on ACAS.

As we went to press 39 ships were stopped by NUS action in foreign ports and 83 in British ports. 145 foreigngoing vessels and 52 in home waters were affected by overtime bans and other limited action.

A national meeting of branch officials decided last Monday to continue the dispuțe with lightning 24 or 48 hour stoppages on ferries.

But ferry • workers, the biggest section of the National Union of Seamen's 30 ,000 membership, are not being brought out on all out strike. Tories.

They condemned those who called on Lambeth council, to take a stand against rate and rent increases and demand trade union support as "Kamikaze pilots" and advocates of another "charge of the Light Brigade."

Instead the WRP offered workers the futile prospect of an alliance with Tory rateBy Geoff Williams Foreign going NUS members are not striking at all, but only refusing to sail once their ships dock.

The guerrilla action has halted the sailings of British flag vessels, but other tlags are still operating.

The bosses have stepped up the conflict from their side. The Western Shipping Company used scabs to sail two ships from Cardiff.

In Hull 14 crew of the Baltic Valiant have been sacked. The union has now called on all trade unionists to refuse to handle all ships belonging to the Baltic Valiant owners, the United Baltic Corporation.

But NUS branches in many ports have elected disputes committees to organise the action locally, and some of these are linking up. A national framework is needed to coordinate the disputes committees by The Longworth occupation payers' groups and small businessmen in "community councils". What such mythical bodies might achieve other than persuading workers that a tight s impossible was not explaine o the conference But it was quite clear that the WRP had emerged from dormancy to play the role usually filled by the Communist Party in such conferenceschief apologists for Knight's retreat and for the bureaucrats seeking to avoid a fight.

• This une emerged in total contrast to the militancy and defiance of the Lambeth trade unionists who have taken a lead in the fight for a week of action against the cuts, beginning on February 2 . "Heseltine can put who he likes in to run Lambeth. If we don't work with them they can't do anything, ;" argued one delegate from the TGWU 1/763 (Direct Labour) branch.

Disappointment

Lambeth • Trades Council tabled a resolution-which was carried by the conference-calling on Labour councils to adopt a policy of no rent or rate increases . to compensate for Heseltine's cut in the rate support grant.

Other Lambeth trade unionists expressed disappointment at the lack of national support for their action, but made it clear that they were still prepared to give a lead to mass struggles.

And the fact that Lambeth Labour Group itself is far from unanimous on rate increases or avoiding confrontation from the speeches on made clear by speecnes conference and at a lunchtime fringe meeting organised by Lambeth Labour Left.

From Coventry, too, and from Manchester came reports of struggles by a growing minority of Labour councillors, Labour activists and trade unionists for the policy of no cuts; no rent increases; no rate increases' against Labour councils that are obediently carrying out Heseltine's cuts.

From neighbouring Wandsworth came a report of the struggle by the NALGO branch against the 700 redundancies planned by the Tory council.

Impact

And the impact of Tory policies in practice was shown by delegates who described the "hiving off" of refuse collection to private enterprise by Southend council.

Among the resolutions put forward for debate was one from the Labour Party Young Socialists, spelling out in some detal the necessity for Labour Councils to reject any attempt to "balance the books" in line with Heseltine's demands, and to force a confrontation with the Tory government, the courts and the bankers.

This motion was narrowly defeated. Passed, however, was a resolution calling for support for the Lambeth week of action on February 26 as "the first of a series of similar actions"

Also passed, by a majority of 37 votes, was a resolution from the Leicester 5/287 TGWU branch which called for:

*widest possible circulation of the policies adopted at the November 1 conference to Labour Party bodies-in particular stressing opposition to rate and rent rises to compensate for *regional conferences to discuss direct action to oppose rent and rate increases and trade union action against cuts and closures;

A further resolution from Southwark NALGO calling for Labour councils and NALGO branches to defy the law and block the sale of council houses was also carried, as was a CPSA branch resolution calling for nationwide support to Lambeth in a fight against rate and rent increases, and for a lobby of the Labour Party special conference to demand the NEC take up such a policy.

A Greater London Association of Trades Councils resolution supporting the TUC week of action and. calling for a Labour mobilisation in the GLC elections was also carried-but four WRP-sponsored resolutions opposing action and calling instead for cross-class "Community Councils" were defeated, along. with a UCATT Regional Committee motion suggesting that the Lambeth week of action is "a tactical error"

The task now confronting those wishing to put the Lambeth conference policies into practice remains a hard one.

But only in the struggle for policies that defend at all times the independent interests of the working class can a united movement be mobilised to bring down the Tories.

The Scottish Central Region Campaign Against Unemployment demonstration in Stirling on Saturday February 7 is finding growing support in the area.

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