Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

[An essential part of the fight against unemployment…]

Socialist Press no. 31, 7 April 1976 · scan p. 11 · about 539 words

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An essential part of the fight against unemployment is the struggle for the organisation of t inemployed worker, women and; into the trade unions.

In this way employed and unemployed can unite in the common fight against the trade union bureaucracy and their reactionary policies.

League members are leading the fight for this policy in trade union branches and Trades Councils.

The following resolution was passed on April Ist at the Skelmersdale UCATT Branch for submission to Skelmersdale Trades Council "Unemployment and rising prices are now at the very centre of all trade union struggles - ie the defence of jobs and wages - a situation where the trade union movement has to assume responsibility for all the unemployed and not only those organised within the trade union movement.

Unemployment is a product of human economic relations, and not something mystical or necessary, that has "acceptable" levels.

The cuts in public expenditure are in order to release cash for the subsidizing of private industry, through the National Enterprise Board.

The proposals of the Manpower Services Commission, to categorise the unemployed (a "humanised" redress of the attempt recently opposed by the TUC and the CPSA) are proposals that fully äccord with those of Sir Keith Josephs and the, Tory Centre for Political Studies.

The conclusions recently published by the Cambridge Economic Policy Group "unemployment soon to exceed two million" is based in our opinion on a false optimism and a misplaced faith in import controls and British capitalism's ability to sape a trade mar.

The following resolution was passed on Thursday April 1st at a well attended meeting of the 5/166 T&GWU (Nuneaton) Branch:

"This 5/166 T&GWU Branch calls upon the Transport and General Workers Union to imediately initiate a campaign both locally and nationally to recruit unemployed workers and youth into the union. Also, that we call upon the Nuneaton Trades Counci to set up a sub-committee to organise and recruit unemployed workers and youth"

dangers for the whole working class, central to which is the attack upon living standards, through wage cutting and unemployment.

The Right to Work is the only serious right left to workers: This right can only be fought for and defended within the organizations of the working class and its trade union movement, around the demands for public works, a sliding scale of hours, a sliding scale of wages and the occupation of plant threatened with closure, around these demands.

This trade union branch therefore calls upon the Skelmersdale and District Trades Council to set up an unemployed workers committee as a sub-committee of the Trades Council, in order to organise these workers within the officia Labour and trade union movement. That they may be represented on the council's action committee, and that the council may facilitate their recruitment into the trade union branches.

Such a committee is, in the opinion of this branch, the only way that unity between employed and unemployed can be achieved. This is surely the lesson of the Council's recent struggle at Thorns.

The only alternatives to such organisation for the unemployed are to become involved in such futile activities as the opportunist IS-organised Right to Work March.

Or to become fodder for recruitment to the National Fron

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 31, 7 April 1976