Wilson Knifes Wilson Knifes Labour's Roots

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Redundancy for 150,000 out of 260,000 railway workers is threatened if the Government's investment plans for British Rail go ahead as announced by Environment Secretary Crosland last week. The plans have far reaching political implications for the There has been a strike on the Taff Vale Railway since Monday • last The Management. are using every means to decoy men here who they employ for the purpose of blàck-legging the men on strike.

Drivers, Firemen, Guards, Brakesmen, If you accept employment on the Taff Vale, that is what: labour movement.

In December, Crosland had denounced the rail unions predictions of just such enormous cuts as 'codswallop'. But his statement to the Commons on February 4th that he is limiting railway investment to £238 million a year must now force him to eat his words.

The present rail system of 11,500 miles cannot possibly be maintained on such a low cash injection. The unions forecast that it would have to be cut to around 4,000 miles - bringing the loss of railways altogether to big towns like Sunderland, Huddersfield and Penzance - while fares, which have risen by 50% over the last twelve months, will be jacked up another 17½% in April, with further increases expected this year.

EFFORTS

This threat to tens of thousands of rail jobs and to any attempt at a public transport system is the latest fruits of the efforts of the Labour Government to solve the capitalist crisis at the expense of the working class. SIGNALMEN, Are you willing to be known Labour ministers each day Tory calls for attacks unproductive labour', transport services and public sector in general.

The resoration of capitalists' profits depends increasingly on attacking such resources. In this sense rail cuts must be seen alongside the offensive against steelworkers and cuts throughout health, education and the social services.

What stands out in this new twist in the anti-working class policies of the Labour government is the way it is directed with particular ferocity against precisely those sections who were at the forefront of building the working class movement, including the Labour Party itself. The railway workers have historically played a crucial role in making a Labour government possible at all.

The struggle of the Taff Vale railway workers in 1901 led to the Headquarters, Cobourn Street, Cathays, echo on like the legal attack on one of their unions by the employers through the courts, and this convinced millions of workers that they needed a political party to defend their organisations.

It was precisely the rail workers who transformed the campaign for political representation into a mass movement with deep roots in the working class. Without these struggles of the past neither Wilson nor any Labour minister would be where they are today.

Yet Wilson and his Cabinet are now busily hacking away at these roots with every new policy. Each attack on jobs and wages is a further threat to the labour movement built in generations of The same anti-working class policies of Wilson lie behind the disintegration of the Labour Party in Scotland. Offered nothing but continual reductions in their standard of living, some Scottish workers have turned to the new Scottish Labour Party, which combines fake left rhetoric with the crassest prejudices of petty-bourgeois illusion. The slightest glimmer of a fighting policy from the leaders of the movement in Scotland would make such a weakening of the movement impossible.

The undermining of the labour and trade union movement is linked directly to the wage-cutting policies of the £6 pay laws and to the deliberate Wilson policy of 1½ million unemployed. Every time the union leaders co-operate with these twin policies they too weaken workers organisations, questioning whether any of the historic gains of the working class can survive under such leadership.

This is why the issue of working class representatives and the responsibility of MPs keeps coming up in the campaign on the rail cuts.

NUR leader Weighell told members in Newcastle last Saturday that "The NUR has remained one of the Labour Party's strongest and most generous supporters" • currently paying £36,000, with £60,000 during the 1974 General Election campaigns.

Weighell hastened to add that he had no intention of cutting off this support (though he did not tell members how he could raise this kind of money from a membership decimated by Wilson's cuts!).

The NUR 10 itself sponsors Crosland Labour MPs. In the fight for j in the industry the question t keeps comng up is this:

to whom are these sponso MPs responsible - to the work class who put them where ti are, or to the Tories and bank who dictate the policies of Labour government?

Last December Weighell tol rally of railwaymen "We shall hesitate to say to the ten MPs t you will no longer support If sustained, this kind militant lead will get a respo cont'd Back page, col 4.