Official Strike

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and to address some of the envelopes for Steve Bundred's GLC election campaign.

For most of the old guard they have been concerned with efforts to hold onto some of their positions within the Council, which are now under threat.

• Unti recently the Labour Group was fairly evenly divided.

The defection of Evans and Co means that the SouthgateBayliss group can no longer be certain of dominance.

The anti-O'Halloran group has been portrayed as extreme left wingers and supporters of Militant.

Beside the fact The rotten manoeuvres of the Labour Party's right wing to maintain their domination are once again being demonstrated in Warley East CLP.

Many delegates to the GMC in Warley East were amazed to discover when attending ward and union branch meetings recently that they were expected to submit nominations for prospective MP by March 21.

No GMC meeting had agreed to start the procedure for reselection of the MP, or approved a timetable.

It seems that right wing supporters of Andrew Faulds, actor and MP, on the Executive Committee, were anxious to ensure that the reselection took place on the basis of last year's GM membership in case the composition this year was less sympathetic to Faulds.

To this end a completely false minute was written into the minute book clauming that the October GM had asked tor the process of reselection to

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Over 700 delegates at the CND conference on March 28-coming from a wide variety of union branches, trades councils and Labour Parties-confirmed the spread of the anti-missiles campaign within the workers' movement.

Speakers from the floor reflected • a broad spectrum of positions and ideas on disarmament-ranging from the appeal from an elderly teacher for school youth to be taught the ideals of peace and goodwill (with no politics), to calls for class struggle methods to overthrow capitalism and smash the NATO alliance, with an outright rejection of any prospect of nuclear disarmament of the Soviet Union.

It was positions between these two extremes that attracted the most prolonged applause from the delegates: but there was precious little to enthuse over from the platform speakers.

Opening the proceedings Frank Allaun MP said that he conveyed backing for the conference from the Labour Party NEC. They wished, he said, to fight to implement the Party's unilateralist position adopted at last October's conference as soon as Labour was back in But he stuck firmly to the confused line of that resolution, which called for unilateral disarmament while making no call for Britain to get out of NATO. And he went on to The rents and rates struggle in Renfrewshire in the West of Scotland is daily gaining momentum.

Already thousands of tenants have signed pledges that they will refuse to pay the increased rents, rates and laundrette charges being levied by the District Council.

In an area where tenants associations have long been defunct, they have sprung to lie again in a mood of defiant militancy.

In the Glenburn estate in Paisley a quickly called tenants' meeting received an excellent response leading to the establishment of an organising committee which drew over 30 to its first meeting. Mass campaigning with leaflets stickers, etc., is already underway.

The campaigning leaflet released by Glenburn Tenants Association gives some indication of the mood in the area when it refers to "the cringing acquiescence of the Renfrew District Council in the face of che Tors onsizuți:" atm 3-m On:

"Take heed, Renfrew District Labour Councillors... irrespective of the outcome of the inmediate struggle. the groundwork is act Seats la that will shatter ye du to compound the confusion by talk of reducing British arms spending to the level of other NATO countries!

TGWU National Organiser Ron Todd spoke of the destabilisation of world politics by nuclear weapons and stressed the importance of trade union involvement in CND.

No clue But though he talked of the TGWU heading this fight, his speech gave no clue as to any concrete action that the TGWU leaders are prepared to take, other than the occasional conference speeches.

NUPE delegate George Will emphasised the impact of Tory government forever."

The bitter mood of tenants toward the Labour-dominated council was again expressed at a mass meeting in Linwood last week.

Already infuriated by the closure at Talbot, the tenants were in no frame of mind to listen to the weak kneed explanations of the sole Labour Councillor who turned up.

Tom McNamara,_Secretary of the Renfrewshire Federation of Tenants, expressed the feelings of the meeting in his denunciation of the treacherous role of the Labour Council who misguidedly thought they would buy off the tenants' revolt by changing the initial 50% rent increase to an increase of 35% on the rents plus about 60% on the rates.

Speaking on the same platform, George Grant, AUEW convenor at Babcocks engineering works, exposed the extent to which the tenants were being milked by the moneylenders who, through the interest charges on loans. cream off over S==:sE =0=3 and rates.

A further meeting has been planned for Linwood and for Glenburn. In the latter estate the meeting this week will be Allaun increased arms spending in increasing the cuts in social services. He pointed out that this had begun under the last Labour government-but, as some later speakers pointed out, he gave no clue as to what NUPE, as a major public sector union, was prepared to do about Bill Niven of AUEW/TASS underlined the need to transfer industrial production away from armaments to socially useful products. He challenged the notion that arms production is essential to maintain employment. • Other speakers from the floor talked of the futility of expecting a right wing Labour government like those of Wilson John Docherty.

Where does the movement go from here? The next step must surely be a massive demonstration through Paisley bringing together the tenants with the youth, the unemployed, Talbot workers and all those facing the onslaught of the Tory government.

The Constituency Labour Party must come out more clearly on this issue. Going on record as being opposed to the increases is not sufficient.

The demand for greater accountability of Labour councillors to the Party can only be meaningfully pursued by the local Party campaigning openly alongside the Federation against the increases.

Approaches

Fresh approaches must also be made to NALGO urging them to support the tenants' action by refusing to process the administrative business essential to the implementation of the INTERsES.

Tre Federamon has displayed energy and initiative throughout the campaign, constantly broadening its scope, and is no doubt considering pro-- i hin s..a Reg Race and Callaghan to do anything to disarm British imperialism or withdraw from NATO.

Some pointed to the danger of towns being missile targets and the nonsensical rubbish being peddled by the Tories on Civil Defence against nuclear attack.

Boycott and They called for unions to boycott and black such arrangements and also to black work on missile installations.

There were calls to build anti-missile groups within the unions and factories and to use the strength of the labour movement to oppose the war drive of capitalism and imperialism.

One political weakness amongst the leadership does need to be resolved. At the Linwood meeting the Councillor present was able, albeit in a very ham-fisted way, to take advantage of the fact that some leading figures in the Federation have publicly stated their willingness to accept a rent increase in line with the average wage increase over the past year and a rates increase in line with inflation.

On this basis the councillor could argue that little separated this position from that now taken by the council.

His claim is undoubtedly exaggerated, but the fact that it can be used at all betrays a weakness in the position adopted by some of the Federation spokespersons.

The position of the Federation as stated clearly in their recent leaflets is that of "No rent rises. No rate rises."

To move away from that stance at this point in the campaign would do nothing but weaken and undermine the struggle. A clear statement of ¡he Federation's firm position on this issue would strengthen the movement politically and draw fresh layers of tenants into the struggle.

But when one speaker attempted to point out the links between: the war dirve and unemployment by allowing a worker from the Lee Jeans occupation to use half her allotted time to describe the fight there, the chairperson, Olive Gibbs, refused the request.

After prolonged jeers and slow handclapping; Gibbs was forced to relinquish the microphone to the organising committee who called for a vote.

Gibbs' position was almost unanimously defeated and she then left the chair and walked out of the conference.

The Lee Jeans speaker then described the background to the occupation, and declared support for the Jobs not Bombs campaign.

Dave Hallsworth from Tameside Trades Council linked the present war drive of Thatcher and Reagan with the continued involvement of Britain in Ireland, and condemned the TUC's role of bipartisanship in this.

The other major note of dissent was the question of whether the resolutions should be taken at the conference.

The organising committee opposed this, but the vast majority of delegates voted that they be taken.

policies Socialist Press pamphlet outlining programme of action against the Tory offensive.

Price 45p including postay rom WSL, BM Box 527. London WCIN 3XX. By Basil Hinton Anti-missiles march We then heard Reg Race MP correctly identifying obstacles to the campaign's success-membership of NATO, secrecy of governments, and the present non-accountability of the Cabinet are babu tys in Cabinet when Labour government.

The conference ended with resolutions being taken on such orientations as opposition to NATO and the Warsaw Pact, for a European Nuclear Free Zone, and other confused positions.

But the best resolutions pointed out the need to build the campaign within the labour movement and, also called for the organisation of a massive demonstration in London next October.

Rallying call

This was the rallying call for delegates to take back to their branches and organisations.

. But to judge from the politics of the platform it is obvious that a sustained fight must be mounted in opposition to the bureaucracy in the unions and the right wing of the Labour Party who will mouth pacifist sentiments but avoid any concrete orientation to oppose the Reagan/Thatcher war drive.

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We publish below the text of a resolution on the civil war in El Salvador adopted by the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee at its meeting on 28/29 March in London. Duarte

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TGWIINIAN TINNE, MININ" LA

Anti BIRMINCHAN