Two Faced Opportunisi

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After just over a year of manoeuvring and opportunism, the "Trotskyist" Workers Revolutionary Party has now reached the point where Tom White, its only member in British Leyland's Assembly plant in Cowley, is aptly described throughout the capitalist press as a "moderate"

This fact is clearly a major embarassment to the WRP leadership as a whole, and General Secretary G.Healy in particular, who takes personal responsibility for every one of White's unprincipled actions.

Even more of an embarassment is the fact that the WRP membership and the readers of Workers Press are being given a story completely different from the WRP position in Cowley. This has reached the point where their latest article in defence of White "A Policy for Cowley Workers" (almost unread in Cowley) includes a number of arguments which would be rejected out of hand by workers in the factory.

As a result, when they decided to leaflet the plant with a shortened version of the article, they omitted some of its more • ludicrous positions - notably its lengthy defence of White's position as a stand-in delegate to the factory's Ryder "participation" committee, and its attack on the Open the Books Committee set up by the Joint Shop Stewards on the plant, coupled with the contradictory demand "open the books for inspection by an elected I workers' committee"

The WRP has wriggled to avoid or distort every principled question - and each move shows more clearly the political degeneration that has gripped the movęment in the last twelve months. It is for this reason that we must take up some points from this latest WRP leaflet.

1. Healy chose to leaflet the Cowley plant one day before the elections for deputy convenot, and in the teeth of a national press witch-hunt with a statement aimed entirely at Alan Thornett and the Workers Socialist League entitled Lies and Liars. This could only play into the hands of the right wing and the employers who aimed precisely to discredit and isolate Thornett.

2. The WRP leaflet claims that the Tory Press seek to "discredit" White by calling him a "moderate". They do not explain however why White alone in the whole country should be treated differently trom other militants, and branded a "moderate" , while claiming to be a revolutionary. For the Tory press the term "moderate' in distinction to 'extremist' is precisely a seal approval.

The WRP do not, and cannot explain why extreme right-wing convenor Parsons originally endorsed White as a "suitable" candidate for deputy convenor, voted for White in the election for Chairman of the S/293 TGWU Branch, and still endorses him to this day on his short list of seven prospective deputy convenors.

Or why Parsons told the Uxford Mail, that while "aware of his politics" he was supporting White because he considers him a "good steward"!

3. The leaflet states White has "publicly denounced" his inclusion on Parson's slate in the plant and in the branch. Workers Press, trying to cover the fact (exposed in the last Socialist Press) that White took a whole week to separate himself from Parsons' list and did so only after the allotted date of the deputies' elections had passed, goes further and descends here to barefaced lies.

Justifiably confident that nobody in the factory will be reading the article, they state that White held back on issuing a denunciation because the deputies elections were postponed:

"Any statement from White, herefore, was equally delayed until after the New Year when it would have maximum effect ..."

In fact, the original arrangement had been to hold the plant ballots for convenor and for the seven deputies' positions all on the same Wednesday. Parsons' 'slate' was published on the Monday in preparation for this. In the event a late objection was raised on the list of candidates for deputy convenor, and these elections were postponed - while the ballot for convenor was allowed to continue.

What Workers Press readers would not know was that the deputies' election was not postponed until half way through the morning of the actual day of voting - in fact some sections had already voted!

So when Workers Press tells us White was waiting for the postponed elections, what they really mean is that he had issued no denial at all between Monday and the actual day of the election. And of course Parsons stood that day as convenor using White's name on his election platform!

4. The leaflet goes on fraudulently to cash in on the mass cipation» to the Ryder "particommittee in the Assembly Plant, claiming:

"Step by step we have exposed the attempts of British Leyland to draw the leading shop stewards into the participation scheme."

And step by step Socialist Press has charted Tom White's headlong dive into that self-same participation scheme, and the WRP's activities in giving credibility to its joint investigation Cuts already under way in le, Port Talbot and Corby, widespread anger at Sirs' must be linked together a programme against Sirs present union leadership.

DEMANDS

This programme must involve a rejection of all redundancies and plant closures. The shop-floor fight against management's demands for an end to the manning level agreements and the guaranteed week must become a fight for work-sharing on full pay.

In taking up this fight steel workers must pose the necessity for a rational socialist plan for steel, starting not from the world capitalist crisis and its destruction of productive resources, but from social needs.

To make this a reality the fight must now be taken up to force BSC to open the books of the steel industry to elected trade union committees - preparing for full workers management to run the state-owned industry as part of an integrated plan of production. committee! Workers Press contains a lengthy defence of this thoroughly reactionary position -but, knowing it would get scant support in Cowley, this is omitted from the leaflet.

Stung by our exposure of the solid • right-wing vote which backed White in the 5/293 TGWU branch elections, Healy is forced to further absurd lies and distortions. His leaflet claims:

Firstly that Parsons "took little interest" in the 5/293 elections. But Healy cannot account for the fact that the right wing mobilised 54 hard core supporters - more than at any Branch meeting held out of working hours - or for the fact that Parsons himself took the unusual step of attending the meeting to vote for White. Indeed one right-winger at this week's 5/293 branch meeting revealed that Parsons individually canvassed every member in his strongest area - 'E' Block -urging them to attend!

Secondly that "ten supporters of the openly right-wing candidate Paintin voted for Thornett when Paintin dropped out of the election". Healy has to ignore the fact that, allowing for the Stalinists and a couple of waverers who voted for White against Thornett, the same right-wing bloc vote of 54 voted for right-wing secretary Jim Barsons as had voted for WRP member Tom White for Chairman. Not one militant voted for White. Nor can Healy answer why the right wing decided to withdraw Paintin in favour of White for the Thirdly: To cover White's unprincipled role in the election, the WRP claim that the election not important anyway! lyingly claims that Parsons all along was preparing to launch a new "moderate" TGWU branch in Cowley. In fact the WRP leaflet was issued two days after the plan had been finally deciared dead by Parsons, who never even mentioned it in his "news conference"

And what killed the "new branch' idea was precisely the fact that even right-wingers could see it had been announced only after Parsons and the right wing had taken a crushing defeat in the 5/293 Branch elections! Such details of fact do not trouble Healy, however, who becomes one of the few people in the country to believe Parsons' story on the Socialist Press therefore challenges Healy and the WRi to answer the following questions unanswered from our previous articles:

Why was Tom White drinking and chatting with Parsons around the same small table in The Swan pub in Cowley immedistely after Parsons' victory in the convenor Why did the Stalinists. vote WRP when the alternative was to vote for WSL member Thornett?

Why did the right wing, meeting two hours. before the 5/293 branch meeting, decide to withdraw Paintin in favour of White? Ip to eider politicipation* WRP to enter schemes? And if the claim is