Gormley's Bid to Save Heath

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Bolshevik factory • The Petrograd Soviet met and calls by the Bolsheviks and even others that all power go to the Soviets were received with applause. One speaker summed up the truth, however, when he asked:

"Who will take the place of the government?. We? But our hands tremble....

The following day even larger numbers of workers and soldiers came onto the streets, this time partly organised by the Bolsheviks. They planned a peaceful demonstration, but shooting began when officers tried to tear down slogans attacking the Provisional Government.

Lenin later held that Bolsheviks were to blame for the violence because they were being adventuristic. During the demonstration the reactionary military commander Korniloy attempted to bring armoured vehicles onto the streets against the workers.

The Soviet asserted its authority under Order No. 1 to stop this. This order which forbade troop movements without Soviet permission had been the first act of the Petrograd Soviet, and according to Trotsky, its only worthy one during Its domination by the compromisers.

In spite of this decisive move the Soviet's hands trembled too much to take any action against Kornilov who was left to play an even more dangerous role a few months later.

DISLODGED

The disturbances subsided and Miliukov softened the words of his statement. But the events - Trotsky called them a 'quarter-insurrection' " had delayed reaction. Miliukov's position had been fatally loosened and ten days later he was dislodged from office.

The Provisional Government was restructured and now admitted six 'socialist ministers' i, one of them being Tseretelli, the main Menshevik leader in the Soviet.

• The other main consequence of the April events was the enormously strengthened position of the Bolsheviks.

They had been seen to be the only, party giving voice to the growing feeling among the masses that the leaders of the February revolution were increasingly ready to throw away the gains which had been made.

• By the start of May one third -and the most active third - of the Petrograd workers were behind the Bolsheviks.

The strength was further enhanced by the return from New York of Trotsky on May 4th (he -had been held for five weeks by the British in Nova Scotia). • Trotsky was not yet a Bolshevik ut he strongly supported the line •hich Lenin had taken in the Horil Theres and rame increasinols meeting in 1917 Trotsky used his immense personal prestige, as leader of the 1905 Soviet, and his extraordinary speaking powers, to spread these revolutionary positions both in the Soviet to which he was coopted and in daily meetins of thousands of workers and soldiers which he addressed at the Cirque Moderne.

The economic situation,, too, was partly responsible for the more uncompromising mood among the masses. The standard of living was falling and food was becoming more scarce.

In May and June protest strikes developed especially among the less experienced groups of workers. The more organised groups, like the metalworkers (whose union doubled in size during the month of May) gave a restraining lead.

These workers were increasingly aware that the problems could not be resolved by strikes but needed much more fundamental measures.

HOUR DAY The capitalists for their part had begun by being forced into concessions, especially over the introduction of the eight-hour day in March and April.

Now they switched to a policy of toughening resistence. From the beginning of May they initiated a "creeping lock-out' and the resulting unemployment became a new source of both hunger and of revolutionary political ideas.

At the beginning of June the first all-Russia Congress of Soviets assembled. There were over 1000 delegates (representing over 20 million workers and soldiers) and less than one fifth were Bolsheviks or their supporters.

The compromisers' huge majority, however, gave them no confidence. They knew that the Bolsheviks' strength was growing throughout the labour movement.

On the day the Congress opened, the Petrograd conference of factory and shop committees passed a Bolshevik resolution by 335 out of 451 votes. They were already the The Petrograd Soviet.

Largest party in the Moscow Soviet and were winning nearly every byplertion in all the other the demand for the eight-hour day and refused to condemn the government's plans for an offensive. It seemed more intent on taking action against the Bolsheviks than on anything else. The opportunity arose when a bomb exploded at the Chkeidze linked this to the Bolsheviks call for a demonstration the following day (June 10th): if this were allowed to go ahead it would be 'fatal'. The Congress banned all demonstrations (thus asserting its share of the dual power which it claimed not to exist!).

Tne Bolshevik Central Committee after some debate called off the demonstration (a decision condemned by numerous Bolshevik workers). The Congress delegates toured the Petrograd suburbs at night in support of the ban and were received with great hostility by the workers.

Two weeks later on June 24th the Congress organised its 'own' public demonstration: The Bolsheviks decided to participate. The result was a sensation.

Instead of seeing the cautious slogans of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries which had been planned, the organisers were faced with a great ocean of Bolshevik banners - "Down with the ten capitalist ministers!" "Down with the offensive!" "All power to the Soviets!" - dotted with the occasional island of banners supporting the Soviet majority or the Provisional Government.

It was a triumph for the Bolshevik policy of 'explaining carefully' to the masses.

CHALLENGE

The Bolsheviks were now direct challenge to the power of both the Soviet majority and the Provisional Government. At the Congress Iseretelli had made the statement that:

"At the present moment there is no political party which would say: 'Give the power into our hands, go away and we will take your place. There is no such party in Russia"

But Lenin, from his seat had replied: "There is!"

The demonstration of June 24th had made the compromisers realise that indeed there was a political party ready to take power. For the Mensheviks this meant, as Trotsky put it:

"The policy of union with the bourgeoisie had arrived at a point where it became necessary to paralyse the masses who were not reconciled to the coalition. To carry the compromise policy through to a successful end.....demanded the disarming of the Bolshevik party. And it was not many days before an attempt would be made to carry this out during the crushing of the "semiinsurrection" of July.

The abject collaboration of the NUM bureaucracy with the Heath government is revealed clearly in a recent series of articles in the 'Sunday Times'.

For the past twelve months, the trade union leaders have been . the main support of the Labour government's attacks on the standard of living of the working class.

Instrumental in this concerted effort to cut the wages of the working class was the decision by the miners last summer to abandon their claim for £100 a week.

The right-wing of the NUM opposed the proposed claim on the grounds that a Tory government would be the inevitable result of a split between the trade unions and the Labour government. All that was needed was for the 'lefts" led MeGahey and left-talking Yorkshire President Scargill to back down and this vital section of the working class was prevented from taking on the government and defeating the wage cutting.

The argument of the trade union leaders, that workers must accept wage cutting in order to prevent a rift with the Labour government and the return of the Tories is false to the core.

This is proven by the fact that trade union leaders were prepared, at the time of the miners strike in 1973 to hold secret talks with Heath and other top Tories, aimed at reaching a settlement well below the claim and when that proved impossible, to promise the Tories that any wage increase given to the miners that overstepped Phase Three of the pay laws would not be used by other unions as the basis for further breaches of the pay These revelations appeared in the articles on the fall of the Heath government published recently by the Sunday Times Review.

According to these articles, secret meetings between Gormley and Tory cabinet ministers took place in the summer of 1973, six months before the miners strike.

Fearing that the militancy of the miners which - had been displayed very effectively in the winter of 1972 might endanger Phase Three of the pay laws, Heath, Gormiey and Armstrong (head of the Civi Service) met secretely to arrange a deal whereby the government would concede everything possible to enable the miners' leaders to accept Phase Three. This would then leave the way clear to foist the pay laws onto other sections of the working class. Mil The mood of the miners that winter was very militant. The coal industry had been run down over the previous ten years and wage levels had fallen considerably in relation to other industries.

With the price of oil increasing in leaps and bounds and the Arab leaders threatening to cut off oil supplies altogether, the miners now knew they were in a strong bargaining position.

Support for strike action amongst miners was greater than at any time since the 1920's and this was reflected on the NUM executive where the right-wing opposition to the strike collapsed.

The Tory government was in no mood to surrender to the miners however. Heath had introduced the three-day week, electricity supplies were rationed and as each day passed thousands more workers were layed off.

At this point Whitelaw was brought in, and he immediately arranged a secret meeting with Gormley. This right-wing leader of the NUM offered a way out of the impasse through the idea of payGormley was trying, in effect, to reach a settlement within Phase Three of the pay laws, whereby the miners would be paid a pittance over the offer for time spent waiting for lifts and washing at the end of the shift. This attempt at a compromise came to nothing.

If Garmley was eager to settle the strike as quickly as possible. then the same was certainly true of the rest of the TUC. At a meeting of the NEDC, the six TUC representatives, without, it would seem, any consultation with the NUM (and certainly unknown to the striking miners!) proposed to the government that if the they treated the miners as a special case and allowed them to settle outside of Phase Three, then other trade union leaders would promise not to use the settlement as a precedent for wage claims submitted by members of their own unions.

Chancellor Barber was not prepared to accept this offer and demanded to know if the TUC felt the miners should get every penny they were asking for. The TUC representatives stated that in their view the miners were not entitled to the full claim.

Barber then wanted to know if the TUC were prepared to tell the miners what they should settle for?

The TUC were even prepared to agree to this providing the government were prepared to promise that more money would be made available to the miners outside of Phase Three. This, the government were not prepared to do.

The failure of this TUC offer to get off the ground and the continuing impasse led Heath to call a General Election which he lost while the miners remained on strike until the minority Labour government was returned and then forced to concede the miners' claim in full.

is clear from this account that the tailure of the TUC and the right-wing of the NUM to sell out the miners' strike was not due to a lack of trying on their part. Given the extremely militant mood of the miners these "leaders" of the working class were prepared to give up everything they thought they could safely concede.

What prevented them going any further was the militancy of the miners on the one hand and the "No Surrender" attitude of the Tory government on the other.

Heath and the Tories sorely wanted to inflict a defeat on the miners, realising the effect it would have on the organised working class. The Tories went to extreme lengths to inflict such a defeat, putting the whole country on a three-day week, cutting electricity supplies and conducting an ideological wat against 'militants' 'wreckers' and 'extremists' political representatives cannot do just as they please. The working class is organised and remains undefeated after 30 years of struggle. The strength of the miners and the passive but sympathetic support of the working class for their strike, support which would have become active, as it had been the previous year, if the need had arisen, thwarted the plans of the Tory government and the betrayers of the TUC and led to one of the most significant developments in the class struggle since the war, the downtal of the Tory government as the result of industrial action.

But the revelations in the Sunday Times series show once again that a crucial preparation for further • class confrontations and opposition to the government is the exposure of the treacherous role of the bureaucracy and the

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PRESS, Wednesday 7th April 1976

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Undefeated But the bourgeoisie and its