Jenkins offers words not action

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Even before it starts it is obvious that the bureaucratic leadership of ASTMS is aiming to suppress al motions demanding action Eastbourne on May 8th-10th.

The time tabled 'Programme of Business for 1976" • was issued to delegates at the end of last week. It consists of priority subjects determined in consultation between the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) and' the National Executive, Contained within it are 9 composites (covering 29 motions), 15 motions and 38 amendments. But the original agenda had 262 motions and almost as many amendments which means the SOC. and NEC have discarded 218 motions according to their (very dubious) priorities.

The suppression of motions demanding action is very ciear in the section on Women's Rights. The ASTMS leadership often boasts of the support it gives to the fight for women's rights but this support is only verbal.

This year all the motions on women's rights except one have been deleted from the agenda. The one that remains is the only one that does not call for anything specific but simply expresses solidarity with women's rights.

Union leaders.......cont'd from Pr That is why democracy and independent action are now under attack throughout the trade union movement; in the AUEW, Scanion and the NEC order members to abandon toolroom strikes British Leyland; in Hull, the T&GWU Regional Committee deprives 19 docks stewards of their credentials after a mass pushed through threatening to expel members disobeying Executive instructions, while the TUC itself attempts to railroad the Rule 14 "gag" measures through Trades Councils.

The leaders, of course, attempt LEAGUE MEETINGS Liverpool Programme to Defend and Wages Tom Halls Tavern (formerly The Strand) swick St, Near Pier Head 2.30pm May 26th.

Skelmersdale

Programme to Defend Jobs and Wages esday 25th May at 7.30 Qua rybank Community C ntre, rmskirk Rd, Skelmersdi Coventry Fifty Years After the General Strike 'ay May Ilth at 7.3 Lanchester Polytechnic Room 7128 No motions on specific problems like abortion are included.

Both wage controls and import controls are on the agenda - one composite resolution of three motions for controls and one motion against.

But if the past record of the ASTMS leadership is anything to go on they will again express verbal "opposition" to any form of wage control only to toe the TUC line.

ACCEPTED

So far, regardiess of firm conference policies for free collective bargaining, the Jenkins leadership has completely accepted the Government cuts in the living standard of their members.

No resolution on the preliminary agenda included the neces sary policy of a fight to defend Living standards through a sliding scale of wages clause linked to the rising cost of living.

But it is crucial that ASTMS delegates reject all forms of wage control and expose the capitulation of Jenkins on these questions.

• On another key area of policy -the fight against redundancy and unemployment - some careful compositing by the Standing Orders Committee has "lost" an amendment and two resolutions to cover up their assault on democracy. The £6 limit (which has cut real take home pay by ten per cent in a year) was, they say, a "great achievement" for the trade union movement. They (from the Charing Cross and Thameside Branches) calling for a policy of fighting for work-sharing on full pay to counter employers' attempts at voluntary or compulsory redundancy.

They also in this way eliminated the linked call in the Thamesside Branch for the "opening of the books for inspection by trade union representatives"

Instead a composite resolution on economic policy steers a vague course between various motions avoiding any commitment to action.

The most blatant suppression of motions is in the section headed Public Expenditure Cuts. Out of approximately thirty motions (many of them detailed) on all sections of Public Services only one motion - on Education Cuts -is on the final "Programme of Business"

All twelve motions calling for the defence of the Health Service are dropped from the agenda. In the view of the ASTMS bureaucracy, the increase in private practice and catastrophic cuts in the NHS, posing the prospect of the collapse of the service in any meaningful form, is not "priority"!

But a motion calling for the replacing of the House of Lords with a democratically Publication TUC.

elected second house in apparently is a priority.

LAST YEAR At last year's conference, a policy for the defence of the NHS was adopted. It called for the abolition of private practice both inside and outside the flealth service, an injection of finance and a sliding scale of state expenditure to protect the Health Service from inflation, and the setting up of elected Trade Union committees to look into the day to day running and finance of the Health Service.

But since the passing of this motion the NEC has done nothing to defend the NHS.

The Conference Annual Report has just one paragraph on NHS cuts, which says there "might be problems" in Merseyside and London!

The officials blithely ignore the fact that there are problems nationally; there are proposed closures in most areas and cuts are Spain ........cont'd from Page 1. being carried out hospital!

The excuse given for excluding most of the NHS motions will no doubt be that they "reaffirm existing policy" - but the difference this year is while certamiy reaffirming correct policy, many motions are calling on the leadership for action - not words.

Oxford Health Service Branch wants strike action; Central London Medical, a conference of Health Service members and a Trade Union 'enquiry, while st London Medica calls for an active campaign for industrial action to put an end to private practice.

CHALLENGE

Delegates at the ASTMS conference must fight"to have vital questions like the Nis, included in the agenda, and challenge the leadership's scandalous inaction against the cuts - which violates union policy.

The latter have been allowed to hold several meetings in Madrid and in eariy April the UGT was permitted to hold an open congress at which representatives of the Workers' Commission and

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from them, at the union's Eighth Annual Conference in

meeting rejected its recommen- dation; in the NUT new rules are