Miners Must Defeat Pay Cuts

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The plans of the Labour government and the TUC leaders for another year of massive pay cuts can be defeated even before they begin to operate. A gigantic step towards this defeat would come from a decisive rejection of the cuts in the miners' ballot which takes place over the next two weeks. This would then set the stage for a national strike which must make its central demand the sliding scale of wages.

In 1926 the whole working class went on strike against a wage cut in the mines. Today the question is wage cuts for all workers. Once again the miners can give a lead against pay cuts as they also did in 1972 and 1974.

Those members of the NUM who accepted the leaders' arguments over the £6 settlement last year have now seen their utter fraudulence.

Through this ballot they can deal a deadly blow to the continuation of these anti working class. policies.

Millions of workers are ready to join them in this struggle. Yet the union leaders say that the working class 'accepts' the sacrifices and is not ready to fight.

LEADERS

On the contrary, as in 1926, it is the leaders who are not ready to fight the demands of capitalism. To avoid that fight they are forced into another, increasingly intensive fight against the members they nominally represent.

A NO vote in the miners' ballot would stop these collaborationist leaders in their tracks. It would be an enormous challenge to their authority and to that of the Labour government.

A fight against the pay cuts, therefore, cannot remain a question of ballots; it must develop into a full-scale political. battle for leadership of the labour movement.

number of leading trade unionists have made statements against the pay cuts policy. We welcome these, as well as the decision of some members of the NUM executive, such as Arthur Scargill, to campaign for a rejection of the executive's narrow vote in favour of the cuts.

MEANINGLESS

But we warn that in many cases such statements of opposition is nothing more than a meaningless token which does not imply any readiness for a real, political fight.

For instance, several members of the T&GWU executive are known to have been against the policy and to have spoken against it in the executive meeting.

Yet they meekly squirmed before Jones' wish to make the decision unanimous in order to help sterling.

Thanks to Jones and his lilylivered 'opponents' , quite a few speculators got quite a bit richer that afternoon, while the interests of the working class were abandoned. Such 'opponents' of the policy are at least as dangerous as its supporters.

Another example, is Clive Jenkins, ASTMS general secretary. Jenkins agrees with the large vote in the ASTMS conference against the wage policy. But at the same time he tables a resolution which contains no call for action.

The function of this opposition' to the pay cuts by Jenkins and other left' leaders not prepared to fight, is to try to hypnotise their membership into believing that real opposition is taking place.

Conference votes will not guarantee this. The members of all unions, including those whose unions, oppose the policy must wage an unremitting fight for words to be converted into action.

The union leaders and the Labour government are evidently alarmed at the speed at which rank and file opposition to their wage policy is growing.

Jack Jones has been making a desperate attempt to rebuild his shattered image as a defender of the working class by more attacks on the capitalists.

"SACRIFICES"

Speaking to tinplate workers in Swansea on May 13th, Jones called on "city bankers and industrialists' to 'show the same sacrifices for Britain as ordinary working people have made and have shown they are prepared to continue making'.

Jack Jones knows full well that this is rubbish. The working class have shown no willingness whatever to take huge cuts in pay. Jones and his fellow TUC leaders have decided it in their secret meetings, making sure that workers got no opportunity to express their views.

And Jones also knows that capitalists will not make equal sacrifices, because the whole purpose of the policy he himself did so much to design is for the working class to take wage cuts so that capitalists should get higher profits.

Callaghan, explaining the policy to Tories in the Commons, was a bit more honest than Jones talking to workers in Swansea. Callaghan said:

"It is essential that there should be an improvement in profitability"

The Labour government clearly fears that the combination of Jones' lies and Jenkins' 'opposition' will not be enough to impose the wage cuts.

So they have appointed Lord Cudlipp, former head of the Daily Mirror IPC publishing group, to. head a £1 million publicity campaign in support of the wage-cut policy.

SALES TECHNIQUES

There could be no clearer acknowledgement that it is a policy for which they dare not fight openly and democratically in the labour movement but which they will instead try to "sell' with the techniques of capitalist advertising and the bourgeois press.

But the miners' ballot is so important because a large and crucially important group of workers do have the opportunity to exercise their democratic rights through their union organisation.

In voting 'no' they can begin a decisive offensive, which through subsequent determined strike action can put to rout a leadership devoted by all available means to sacrificeing the wages and conditions of their members in support of the needs of capitalism.

The WSL policy *For a NO vote ballot! *Force the lefts' to fight the pay cuts! *Remove the collaborationist *Forward to striké action against all wage control! *For a sliding scale of wages!

The strikes and demonstrations on May 26th must have as their central point preparation of actions against unemployment and programme for that action.

The leadership will want to limit the day to protest and such nationalist demands as import controls. For us it must be a day in which we demand of the 'lefts' in Parliament that they fight for the removal of Callaghan and Healey and that they support workers in action.

All trade unions, factories and branches involved on that day must be committed to a fight against redundancies, demand work: sharing on full pay, fight all the cuts in social services and demand a sliding scale of expenditure to defend the social services.

The WSL continues to campaign for the widest possible support for May 26th whilst maintaining our criticism of the leadership. We must not allow union leaderships such as that of ASTMS (which supported the Day of Action at its conference) to get off the hook. They have not called strike action for that day, nor have they led a single fight against unemployment.

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BENN MELTS LT