[The CPSA leaders had already consulted their members…]

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The CPSA leaders had already consulted their members through the annual May conference, and had been instructed to immediately shut down the airports and the docks.

The Council of Civil Service Unions (COCSU) refused. Instead they just brought out the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) and Department of Employment (DE) computer centres.

And they consulted the members again. The CPSA leaders agreed to leadership unity' under the tive action. And the CPSA guise of • went along with it.

But militants and socialists must • prepare and build for all-out action now. If the leaders will not lead, then action must be initiated by the rank and file.

Militant

We should call for the selective action to close docks and airports immediately. These are the crucial areas: strikes in driving tests, DE/ DHSS benefit computer centres, etc, are not

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neinteprf The power to cripple state power John Lister TOP SECRET radar tracking stations have been forced to close. Monitoring stations vital to the British intelligence services have been strike-bound.

Lethal cargoes bound for nuclear submarines have been halted, and warships kept paralysed at docksides. NATO communications and rehearsals for war in Europe have been 12226 4C2A questions not only for the Tories, the capitalist class, and the military elite, but also for the workers' movement as a whole.

Who can doubt now that trade unionists have it in their power to control, disrupt or hait some of the most basic repressive and aggressive activities of the state?

They can interfere with war plans, block survelllance mechanisms, impede public services - social security, health, education, airports and roads, post and telephones, etc. Some of these public services have been won by working class struggle; all reflect the inability of pure capitalist market economics to provide for society's basic needs. But all are also trimmed and adjusted to capitalist control. •aco el the contrary, the state rests first and foremost on the conflict of interests between the ruling minority capitalist class and the exploited majority which forms the working class. immigrant officials harassing blacks, social security spies harassing claimants, and Special Branch spies compiling files on trade unionists, all play their role in the preservation of the system of exploitation which brings prosperity to the few and poverty to the many.

Yet the civil service unions have shown that this can be undermined by determined actions.