Break Chapples Grip on Eetpu!

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Jackson Tory monetarism is now having a disastrous effect on the working onto the dole as a sacrifice to the employers' profits.

Yet for those EETPU members fighting for a socialist alternative to blatant class collaborationist policies of Frank Chapple, this year's conference platform has produced the most politically gutted agenda in recent memory.

With only 136 resolutions actually accepted by the standing orders committee, this means that over 550 branches have either failed to submit resolutions or have been bureaucratically disenfranchised.

If the • latter case is true then this clearly reveals an attempt by the Chapple leadership to smother any fightback seeking to defend the independent interests of our 450,000-strong rank and file.

Why do none of these resolutions demand general strike action to bring down this hated Tory government? Where are those resolutions calling for concrete defence of jobs and an end to debilitating unemployment? Why has Chapple barred democratically elected delegates to this conference?

Because like any other Chapple parasitic union leader Chapple fears loosening his vice-like grip on the policies of this union-policies which have resulted in the loss of jobs for thousands of EETPU members.

All this goes to show that workers face a dual assault on their hard-won gains.

Not just from Thatcher's government of the rich but also from union autocrats like Frank Chapple who have junked any pretence to representing organised labour by the sheer magnitude of their betrayals.

Isn't that why he:

-Branded striking hospital workers as "terrorists" during their low pay strikes of 1978 (directly resulting in the shutdown of the Cardiff branch).

-Threatened to ballot EETPU members in a move to break ranks during the Confed engineering strike.

-Initiated elitist private health care for some of our members, adding further to the demise of the NHS.

-Encouraged scabbing at the Isle of Grain power station in a bid to smash the GMWU action there.

-Vetoed the rights of 10,000 electricians to £1.8 million benefit during the steel strike.

Chapple has also declared his support for five years of Thatcherism even to the extent of circularising his members not to support the TUC's Day of Action last Indeed, under Callaghan's Labour government signed the Concordat as a 'dry run" for Prior's notorious anti-union Employment Act.

And he has been an almost solitary trade union supporter for the reactionary Campaign for Social Democracy and the SDP, whose main energies are focussed on opposing socialist policies and sabotaging the possible return of a Labour government.

Internally the EETPU stands revealed. as the most highly bureaucratised and undemocratic union affiliated to the TUC and the Not one of its 120 fulltime officers from national to branch level is elected by the rank and file. rank and fi None of the are accountable to US.

Rank and file appeals committees have been abolished.

The notorious JIB, enforced by Chapple, is nothing but a 'bosses' National conference resolutions are contemptuously ignored by our executive.

Militant branches such as Cardiff, Birmingham and now London Central have experienced bureaucratic closure, with elected members banned from holding office.

This denial of political rights can only cement Chapple's vice-like grip on union policy and This gang who hold sway within the EETPU must be challenged and beaten on the demand for a full return of power to the rank and, file. suspension and then the sack.

Both day and night shift walked out demanding the withdrawal of the warnings.

The Communist Party-led works committee then negotiated a 'compromise': the warnings would remain, but the shop stewards would be allowed off their job to talk about the issue.

This was rejected unanimously by the strikers, who said they would not return until the warnings were withdrawn.

fight

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class. Over three million men, women and young people have been thrown