Liberals' Diversion

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On the same day as Norman pott was making allegations i a Barnstaple court about tremy Thorpe, John Pardoe as announcing in London Jat the first priority in iberal Party economic policy as the complete emasculalon of the Trade Unions. Pardoe, who makes no secret of • ambition to replace Thorpe as iberal leader, is one of the most *ciferous opponents of the trade lion movement. : He insisted that trade union gaining power must be reduced, id that "the sacred cow of free lective bargaining" must be placed by a "new wage determ"tion process"

No doubt his speech was music ! the ears of Jack Jones. Jones, chitect of the £6 pay limit which is already cut deeply into living endards, is now pressing for ¡other limit - expected to be bout £3 a week.

And Jones himself is no stranger • the conferences organised by the mancial Times and the investors tronicle, at one of which Pardoe # speaking to an appreciative •dience of businessmen.

The audience on this occasion, however, was unlikely to include Gerald Caplan, who prefers to live in Monte Carlo rather than London at the moment.

Caplan was chairman of the collapsed London and County Securities Group, the spectacular record of which, according to Thorpe, "was almost entirely due to the genius and drive of the chairman and managing director, Mr. Caplan..."

The inspectors appointed by the Department of Trade to investigate London and County also noted MT. Caplan's "genius"

Making allegations of frauds relating to loans of up to £5 millio the inspectors refer to "Mr. Caplan's inherent deviousness, a capacity almost amounting to genius not to give a straight answer to a straight question"

The full story is consequently hard to unravel, involving cheques with no backing, but with a face value of £4 milion; the invention of a non existent J. Cartwright with whom to do deals; Avon, a company with an issued share capital of £2 which was owned by Caplan and his wife and which kept no books of account.

The meticulous attention given by the capitalist press to the alleged payments to Norman Scott by ex-MP Peter Bessell (a fiver a week), contrasts sharply to the payments by Caplan's company to Jeremy Thorpe - £100 a week, or twenty times as much.

As the Department of Trade inspectors point out, Thorpe was "mainly of use to the London and County group in opening a number of in-store banks, with considerable publicity..No doubt this helped to create confidence in such banks on the part of would-be depositors.

RESCUE

In fact, most depositors lost nothing because of a rescue operation organised by the Bank of England - a nationalised industry. But as many as 13,000 depositors with Fidelity Life may suffer as a result of the London and County collapse.

The titillation and trivia in the capitalist press converning the private affaits of Scott, Bessell and Thorpe are being used to obscure the tip of the iceburg discovered when London and County was investigated: the deliberate manipulation of company accounts in the interests of shareholders.

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Jack Jones - holds office 'during the pleasure of the Union'. rules which conclusive and ballot There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from the manoeuvres of the Region 5 bureaucracy of the Transport and General Workers Union to block an enquiry into the December ballot for. regional and national positions.

This is that the non-elected full time union bureaucracy of the T&GWU treats the democratic rights of members within the T&GWU with complete contempt.

NO RULE It emerges for instance, that within the T&GWU there is not a single rule which provides for disciplinary action of any kind to be taken against a branch, district or regional officer who violates the rules of elections or rigs a union ballot.

The sole action within union could flow even from proof of corruption rigging is that the particular branch result be declared invalid!

Not only that, but there no procedure whatever for complaints or queries by branches or individuals in relation to ballots to be dealt with. This is what has left the Region 5 Committee free to ignore complaints and demands for an enquiry trom branches representing over 5,000 workers, together With documented evidence which shows conclusively that anything over 5,000 votes in the publicly announced December ballot figures can not be accounted for.

Two of the major Oxford cars branches, the 5/293 (BL 3,500. member 1,500 members, Assembly Plant) Branch, with and the 5/55 lodged demands for an enquiry into the election in which the extreme right wing slate supported by the Oxford District Committee returned huge and completely unsubstantiated votes in the Regional ballot for General Executive Council, Regional Committee and National Committee positions.

Most blatant of these results was the 6,134 votes claimed for Jack Addams, the unknown right winger the Oxford District put forward for Regional Committee as an automotive group candidate. Addams comes from the tiny MG factory at Abingdon, where ne has less than 100 T&GWU members.

In the Cowley Assembly Plant 5/293 Branch he won only 167 out of 3,500 possible votes. The 5/55 Branch cast none of its 1,500 votes (having decided not to praticipate in the ballot). This meant that Addams' votes had to come either from the 6,500 members in the Cowley Body Plant or from Coventry, the other main area covered by the election.

COVENTRY All the available Coventry votes can be seen to have been cast for Coventry candidates in the election, while a major branch in that area, the 5/920, with 6,000 members, also dia not vote at all.

In other words, to amass 6,134 Addams would have needed upwards of 5,000 votes from the Cowley Body Plant. But it can be shown conclusively that only a few hundred workers in the Body Plant voted at all in the election! And, despite continuous pressure from stewards, the leadership of the Body Plant (5/60) Branch will not reveal the voting figures from that factory ballot.

The case is similar for the other two positions, in which Body Plant convenor Bill Roche was elected to GEC with 11,442 votes, and Assembly Plant convenor Reg Parsons polled 6,700 votes coming second in the election for National Committee.

There is a discrepancy in each case of comething like 5,000 5,000-5,500 votes between published results and possible votes cast.

And in each case the 5/60 Branch leadership refuse to answer questions or give figures. And now the intervention of Region 5 bureaucracy has given deputy convenor of the Assembly Plant, and the stewards campaigned for his election on the tracks. As a result he won 3,500 votes trom his own plant, while the Oxiord District nomination won him a further 3,000 votes from the Body Plant. Thus fom only two factories 6,500 of the 7,000 votes can be accounted for. Yet Mathers is now expecting workers to take seriously the election of Addams with 6,134 votes when no more than 500 -600 of his "votes" can be accounted for!

Mathers- unelected.

For the bureaucracy the unanswered questions of the December ballot are now a thing of the past. They do not intend to start an investigation which could only raise serious questions as to the role of the extreme right wing 5/60 Branch leadership and serve to further discredit them in the town.

But most workers in the Cowley Body Plant are in no doubt on the question. They know only a handful voted in the last election, and why the If the bureaucracy can vade an enquiry and exonera branch leadership simply by declaring a result invalid and reballotting, is there any way forward?

This is a particularly sharp issue when we remember that none of the full-time T&GWU District and Regional Officers is elected, and none answerable to anyone other than the General Secretary Jack Jones who in practice carries the power of the union's elected General Executive (ana who himseli, once elected, "shall hold office during the pleasure of the union").

WIDE OPEN

The biggest union in the country thus has a rule book which is wide open to the most flagrant breaches ofdemocratic procedure by its officials. This is the politica platiorm on which Jones stands in leading the fight for wage-cutting pay laws and suppressing the struggle against speed-up and redundancies. To fight this bureaucracy workers now need to take more than a political programme - they need to take up an unremitting struggle for the most basic guarantees of democratic rights within the unions.

To do this every avenue for manipulation and corruption must be shut off, and the process of elections brought out into the open where they are beyond dispute.

The secret ballot, in which all information is concentrated in the hands of the bureaucratic apparatus itself, must be opposed on principle, and the fight taken up for all elections to be conducted by show of hands at branch meetings with candidates having equal rights to address the meeting prior to the vote. In this way votes would be visibly cast and the voting system no longer open to corruption by branch officials.

This system would also make witch hunting by the capitalist press more difficult. Candidates would have the chance to answer these slanders before the vote was taken.

In instances where ballots do take place, workers must pressure