TUC straitjacket
Socialist Press1981 1981-06-25Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 3 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 3
THE T.U.C.-appointed organisers of the 'People's March' have decided to keep the campaign going -but it will remain firmly under their bureaucratic control.
The major proposal is. for a 'Youth Festival for Jobs' combined with a lobby of Parliament in November. There will also be a trans-Pennine march from Leeda to Blackpool, to lobby the Tory conference.
The marchers are being encouraged to turn up in their green 'uniforms' and march as a contingent on the Cardiff demonstration on July 4th, and local demonstrations are planned in most major towns the 'People's March' passed through.
All these initiatives must be supported, but we must ensure that they aren't used bý the TUC to channel the anger of the unemployed into a futile round of protests, divorced from the fight against closures and redundancies.
The national 'Coordinating Committee' and the local support committees must be made accountable to the rank and file of the labour movement lat the moment they are appointed by the Regional TUCs] and - most important - the campaign must be thrown behind struggles like Lee Jeans and Rover SD1.
In the West Midlands, for instance, rank and me marchers are pressing ror maximum support for the 'Save Rover SD1' march called by the BL Combine Committee for August15th in Birmingham.
ag. sone unions only keep members on their books for twelve months after they have been made redundant.
At the conference, amendments will be taken to the main resolution drafted by us, the Statement of Aims, and the Draft Standing Orders, already circulated to over one hundred groups and to contacts made on the People's March.
We've also allocated plenty of time for discusslon on the tight to democratise the TUC unemployed centres, and how the UWU relates to the task of organising YOPs schemes and jobless youth.
To help link the UWU with employed workers' fights for jobs, speakers from British Leyland and Ansells (the latest victimş ot trade-union sell-outs of rank and file action to defend jobs) and from the National Union of Mineworkers will be speaking in the afternoon session.
Over 50 groups have replied and will be sending delegates. All indications are that this will be the take-off point for the building of a mass national unemployed workers' union.