No Enquiry Intu No Enquiry into Impossible' Votes

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| Following demands for an le Oxford area, the Finance General Purposes ommittee of Region amber 5 has declared the cent elections for Regional emmittee, National emmittee and General recutive Council for the buthern Division (basically aford and Coventry) invalid i have ordered a newballot * Questions were raised Howing the publication of the sults at the end of December. ne votes received by three of the nord candidates were insidered by many workers to be accountably high.

HANDFUL Jack Adams, who has only a adful of members in his own story (MG Abingdon) received 134 votes. Parsons, the *chunting convenor of the sembly Plant received 6,78l, ten only 287 of these came "m his own plant. Bill Roche, ¡venor of the Body Plant beived 11,442 votes when the P. vote possible in Oxford was 1,000 (after those branches who inst not to vote are deducted) idl is unlikely to have received ay votes outside Oxford. Since the Coventry vote could be largely accounted for as having voted for Coventry candidates, it appears that the only place that such figures could have been recorded was the Cowley Body Plant - which has 6,000 members.

Yet everyone knows that only a tiny percentage of these members voted. The two ballot boxes were in the canteen and workers were able to see how many voted whilst they ate their meal.

"SUB-JUDICE"

When workers in the Body Plant saw the high votes in the Regional results and asked for the figures for their own palnt they were told that the issue was "sub judice" - a term which has nothing to do with the trade unions and only applies when court proceedings are involved.

Using this excuse the bureaucracy refused to reveal the figures even to the Body Plant branch meeting which took place the following weekend.

On Wednesday January 14th the Regional Committee met and discussed the demands for an inquiry. Presumably they decided to avoid an inquiry, against revealing the suspect Body Plant voting figures and in favour of declaring the whole election null and void.

"TECHNICAL"

This decision was only • TGWU Regional Secretary Mathers eagerly invetigated Trotskyists at Cowley in 1974, but now avoids enquiry into right wing votes.

announced a week and two days later after the meeting of the Finance and General Purposes Committee - on the basis of a "slight technical infringement". "infringement". they explained, was the destruction of the ballot papers, by the scrutineers one month after the date the returns were posted, rather than after 3 months as required by the covering letter detailing the arrangements for the elections:

NO COMPLAINT Theypicked on this 'technicality' knowing that no-one had complained about it. In fact the only people who would have known that the papers were destroyed were the scrutineers.

The only complaints raised were on the unexplained size of the vote and the refusal of the Body Plant leadership to reveal the results of the ballot on the plant.

As Tony Bradley, secretary of the 5/55 branch, put it in last Saturday's Oxford Mail: "What we still want is a breakdown to show how the individual branches voted. This information has to be given by each branch secretary and should on record.

If the union has nothing to hide, why does it not reveal them?

We already know how most of the branches voted. What we don't know and what we want are the voting figures for Pressed Steel (the car body plant). We believe that 90 per cent of the members there did not vote.

And the factory's voting figures have been refused even to members who work there.

It is because we know how almost every other factory voted that we find it difficult to accept the voting figures which were announced. That is why we complained of abnormally high voting figures".

Bradley is right. The decision will not satisfy any T&G member concerned about the conduct of the election and the procedures used in the T&GWU. A full inquiry must be held immediately to establish the true facts. incentives to stimulate capitalison, not one has demanded socialst policies to aefend jobs and create employment.

But the working class is now posed with the urgent battle for jobs and conditions. Ine demands necessary to lead such a fight are those from the .. Trotskyist Transitional Programme: * No redundancies • work sharing on full pay! * Occupy factories where this is refused. * Demand the account books be opened to elected trade union committees. * On this basis, nationalise, under workers' management. * A full programme of public works, paid at trade union rates, for nationalised industries. * Full union rights for tbe unemployed!

In fighting for these demands workers will see in practice the union and Labour leaders as Trotsky described them in 1926:

"The whole of the present day superstructure of the British working class - in all its shades and groupings without exception represents a braking mechanism on the revolution."

As this is learned by broader layers of workers in struggle, the base will be established for the building of a new revolutionary leadership the working class.

SPAIN (cont'd from front questions of amnesty and democratic reforms these organisations are attempting to suppress the loud and clear demand for the overthrow of the government which the working class is making.

Nowhere was it louder than at the Real Madrid football match on January 11 which ended with the chanting of political slogans familiar from the Portuguese revolution and the Spanish republic of the 1930s.

In sharp contrast to this, the

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quiry from two of the ajor T&GWU branches in