This Weighell's under fire

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INDU: VPASu Don't think I'm abandoning it just because it's getting rough."

These words from Sidney Weighell, one of the labour movement's more rabid right wingers came after he had been resoundingly defeated by his union conference on the issue of Labour democracy, and struggled to stave off defeat on the issue of the deputy leadership election in the Labour Party.

The conference had appeared to start off well for Weighell.

Union President Tommy Ham had argued a line which amounted to "make the British Rail Board fight". the management could not get the funds from the Tory government to run the rail service, then they should resign, he argued.

Triple alliance

How this was supposed to benefit railway workers was not made clear. Nor were doubts resolved by Sidney Weighell's insistence that the management would face "triple alliance" strike action if they did not implement the union's plan for increased investment and higher wages in exchange for productivity improvements.

In other words the NUR Icadership is virtually forcing management into imposing more job-cutting productivity increases.

BR chairman Peter Parker is plainly willing to be forced. Speaking to the union conference he repeated his objective of slashing 38,000 jobs in the next four years.

Unabashed, Weighell went one step further and spelled out his latest proposals for a renewal of wage controls under a new Labour government. for an "incomes policy" which would rigidly police wage increases in the private sector, incorporate a statutory minimum wage and protection for the low-paid, and run alongside price controls and the regulation of protits.

Rehashed

This rehashed "social contract" nonsense has been proven time and again to mean nothing other than plunging living standards for the working class-especially the low paid-and rising profits for the employers.

But it sums up Weighell's Weighell Class collaborationist approach. He is atter all, the latest in a long line of right wing general secretaries of the NUR.

This helps explain his argument in favour of the closed shop-which he insists operates to the advantage of industrial relations, since it helps union officials to enforce agreements against any resistance from the membership.

The NUR conference has not collectively broken from this political stance: but it has at least begun to wake up to the movement for democratic rights within the Labour Party which has so disturbed Weighell and his Internatio tellow oureaucrats.

Weighell had vocally denounced the Wembley conference decision for an electoral college •giving unions a majority of votes.

But his own conference embarrassed him by throwing out the Shadow Cabinet's pet plan for a college giving 50% of the votes to the Parliamentary Labour Party, and then voting unanimously to uphold the Wembley decision!

It seemed as if even worse could have been in store had the conference voted to allow the union's executive-now dominated by a left wing majoritydecide which way to vote in the deputy leadership election in October.

Weighell has promised the NUR's 165,000 votes to Healey. But his only chance of securing this was to. put the question to a ballot of conference delegates.

The decision to hold such a ballot was carried by only four votes.

The outcome is far from certain, though Michael Foot will no doubt do his best in his address to the conference on Monday to drum up some support for an increasingly isolated Dennis Healey.

Meanwhile moves by the NUR and the left-wing led ASLEF towards a federation of rail unions seems likely to increase Weighell's political isolation and further question his ability to retain control over the union in the way NUR leaders have done since time immemorial.

Indeed it is not simply on the Labour Party issue that a change is needed: only the building of a leadership committed to act in defence of the independent interests of the union's 200,000 members can protect railway workers against the Tory offensive.

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