STUC ducking fight

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The threatened closure of Talbot's Linwood car plant, of Scottish pits and the threat to the steel industry brings to a head the mounting crisis facing industry in Scotland.

How will the Scottish TUC react to this crisis? The STUC exists separately from the British TUC and likes to consider itself as being more radical.

About one million trade unionists are affiliated by unions with members in Scotland.

It has its own women's advisory and youth committees. The 44 Scottish Trades Councils affiliate to the STUC rather than the TUC, have a direct voice in the STUC Annual Congress and a seat on its General Throughout the 1970s the STUC was seen as being to the 'left' of the TUC. There was always a large part of its Congress, usually led by the Scottish Area NUM, committed to opposition to all forms of incomes policy.

During those years the STUC identified itself by leading the struggle for the Scottish Development Agency and for a Scottish Assembly.

However, the policies pursued. • during the 1970s bore the seeds of the current crisis. While many resolutions were passed acknowledging the crisis as a crisis of the capitalist system, the remedies were always reformist ones, designed to ensure the smoother working of the mixed economy.

Investment grants and regional development grants to attract private investment were the main core of the demands of the General Council. It is those companies thus attracted to Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s who are now pulling out or creating large redundancies.

Far from learning the lessons since the Tory government took over, the STUC General Council seems now to be. totally disoriented and is turning in all directions rather than give leadership to the workers movement in Scotland.

Import controls are now centrai to their policies and provide yet another way of avoiding confrontation with capitalism.

The Convention on Unemployment in December put out a clear call for alliances with employers in a chauvinistic campaign of token opposition to the government's policies. Delegates to the conference for chairmen and secretaries of Trades Councils, again held last December, were told that the main work in 1981 would be to build local committees of the broadest possible nature to resurrect the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly.

Emphasis was to be given to getting bodies such as churches and small businesses involved in these campaigns. Members of the General Council have consistently argued these disastrous policies since then.

At a time when working people in Scotland are looking for a. fighting lead to stop closures and redundancies, when Labour-controlled councils need to be encouraged into a policy of refusing to implement Tory cuts, the STUC is avoiding the issue of working class leadership.

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