[We have received the following r from delegates…]

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We have received the following r from delegates to Camden Trades issue.

As members of IS and Camden Trades Council Executive Committee we deny the implication from Geoff Bell & co (Open Letter 21/4/76) that we have stopped fighting Rule 14.

Our tactics in Carden are geared to the peculiarities of Camden, yet they misleadingly fail to mention these peculiarities and indeed have shown little appreciation of their significance.

Geoff Bell for instance argued that Camden should continue defying the TUC as Clay Cross defied the government absurd analogy. We support the idea of Trades Councils holding out where possible and in situations where they will be able to continue operating in defiance of the TUC. Unfortunately Camden is not such a situation at present. No amount of windy rhetoric can hide the fact that whereas Clay Cross was solid our Trades Council is split down the middle and the secretary is doing the TUC's dirty work for it.

The secretary, Sid Gregory, a CP member, actively pushed the TUC to suspend Camden, making acceptance of Rule 14 the condition of entry to the Mayl1th delegate meeting. He did this to weaken the left; left delegates excluding themselves would restore the majority which the CP/right Labour bloc once enjoyed.

Accepting the entrance condition is not an issue of principle but a matter of tactics. Treating it as a moral issue would give Gregory the result he wants. And we need to be at full strength inside the May meeting to win resolutions already tabled to remove Gregory and to initiate a campaign from within the Trades Council against Rule 14.

course supports the May 7th meeting but we don't accept counterposing a Londonwide campaign to the perhaps less glamourous local struggle. Support from Camden for a wider campaign means removing Gregory and changing the balance inside the Council. His removal would be a warning to other unpaid bureaucrats who collaborate with the TUC's anti-democratic manoeuvres.

Most branches with left delegates including signatories of the "Open Letter" have voted to accept Rule 14 under protest as the only way of now continuing the fight against it inside Camden Trades Hopefully we will have the voting strength on May lith to insist that all delegates be allowed in; to remove Gregory; and pass the resolution for joint action with other Councils leading to a national campaign against Rule 14 within Trades Councils and Trades Unions.

Yours fraternally, James Anderson Alaister Hatchett Nigel Siederer ply to the Letter to Socialis : Wo ker Council' which appeared in 1n0 last Reply by Socialist Press.

We are very pleased that after almost a fortnight, and although two issues of Socialist Worker have not printed the letter, three IS members can be found to take up the issues to which it refers. Although we have received the letter too late for a full reply to the points raised, we feel sure that the original signatories will be able to do this in due course.

It seems to us however that what the authors of the reply precisely fail to understand is what they take as their own starting point - the peculiarities of Camden. So obsessed are they with the replacement of one Trades Council Secretary that they fail to see the importance of making a stand against the bureatcratic machinery that is massed behind him.

It is always possible for opportunists to find 'peculiar' reasons for "tactical' retreats. However, the importance of the situation in Camden is that resistance has begun and this can provide a starting point for a more general battle.

The manoeuvres of the Stalinists and the right-wing in Camden are an indication not of their strength but their weakness.

We will not achieve anything in this battle if we accept the narrow terrain provided by our enemies. We will only succeed if we bring the whole issue of union democracy before all London trade union bodies, and indeed into the entire Labour movement.

The issue of collaboration between the union leaders and the Labour government to cut the Living standards of their members and supporters is now at the centre of the questions facing the working class movement.

This is carried on without the consent of any section of the trade union membership. Rule 14 is a small part of the efforts to gag any fight back by the working class for decent living standards.

None of this is a matter of a particular Trades Council or a. particular Secretary. Trade union democracy is a question of principle and we must be prepared to take a stand until actually compelled to do otherwise.

Unless we act in this way on smaller questions, we will not prepare ourselves for the bigger struggles that lie ahead.

Of course we support genuine attempts to remove Stalinist bureaucrats such as Gregory, but we do not believe that the opportunist "tactics" being proposed by the authors of the reply will serve to further this aim.

It is those "tactics" and not the principled stand of the signatories of the "Open Letter" which have provided a way out for those pulling back from the fight.