[FORCE LEFTS contd from page 1 produce that…]

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FORCE LEFTS contd from page 1 produce that objective.

Healey's "promise" to reduce taxes on wages is a complete fraud. This becomes all the plainer when it is seen that one item of government spending not included in the overall freeze is the interest the government pays out on the national debt.

This is predicted to go up 50% over the next three yeals, reflecting the huge volume of government borrowing to finance its present expenditure. Even with the planned reduction in government programmes the burden of taxes on workers will have to rise simply to pay out interests to those capitalists who hold their wealth in the form of government bonds.

There has been no shortage of verbal opposition to these cuts since they were announced. NUR leader Sid Weighell promises a last ditch' stand against them. The Tribune Group called the White Paper ta document of shame' At a 3,000 strong single job We say that if they refuse to take these actions they are as guilty of the consequences as the totally anti-working class leadership of Wilson and Healey.

Eric Heffer has already shown where he stands on this. "If anyone says bring down the Labour government you will have Maggie Thatcher" . This statement is a complete abrogation of the responsibility of leadership by the lefts'.

The policies of the Labour government cotalt indefensible. They will be reversed only by an all out struggle for an alternative leadership in the working class.

One step towards that would be for the Labour 'lefts' to fight for the ousting of the treacherous Wilson-Healey leadership. Yet Eric Heffer rushes to defend the continuation of that leadership, whatever it does.

We support the call for a recalled Labour Party conference now being made throughout the party. At this conference the cuts and the rest of the Labour government's policies must be On January 27th a strike began when Ted Heslin was sacked • by Blackwells the town, for demanding trade union representation on a job change.

Yesterday he walked back in, not only reinstated but as an elected shop steward after management conceded union recognition.

This neat unprecedented achievement is a great tribute to the 70 young workers who fought through three weeks of bitter dispute.

The strike as soon as it began was faced with the withdrawal of crisis.

This means not the divisive and bankrupt nationalism of import controls advocated by the Communist Party and the Tribune Group; nor the 1974 Labour manifesto on which Heffer and the left' MPs pin their hopes.

CAPITALISM

In the present crisis a fight against the cuts, let alone a fight for further reforms, depends on challenging the continued existence of capitalism which, in its desperate thirst for profit, attacks the working class; through the agency of the Labour The necessary demands remain the ones which the WSL has consistently fought for in the Labour movement, flowing from the method of the transitional programme of the Fourth * Oppose all cuts! official union support, with 1 T&GWU officials agreeing w the employer to take the sack to an industrial tribunal.

SUB-ZEROR

Fighting this betrayal in sub-zero temperatures and icy winds on the picket line with 500 working and 70 of the 115 union members on strike, only a clear perspective and determined leadership could carry the struggle forward.

The struggle directed both at a solid picket and right into the local labour movement. The response was so widespread that the officials were eventually forced to give support. he ith ng The strike, once made official, rapidly resulted in the employer conceding all the strikers' demands - reinstatement of Ted Hestin, the signing of an acceptable procedure agreement and the establishment of shop stewards.

Support, particularly from the university and Polytechnic, Ruskin College and from Dillons Bookshop in London, together with the UPW and many other union branches, was of great importance.

In the next edition of Socialist Press we will carry a more detailed article drawing the political conclusions from this important

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booksellers in Oxford, a major anti-union employer in