[As if anxious to vindicate the 'Socialist Press'…]

Scan page 10

As if anxious to vindicate the 'Socialist Press' article written a week beforeland, the ASTMS bureaucracy nanoeuvred and squirmed away from any commitment to action for, the three days of their Annual Delegate Conference. emergeg ond result was that they with carte-blanche to continue in the way they see fit.

The key to their efforts was an agenda rigged to exclude any motions calling for action to be taken. And the essential camouflage for this were two 'left' resolutions -one verbally "urging support" for the Day of Action against unemployment on May 26th called by the Assembly of Labour, and the other rejecting the Healey-Jones pay deal.

On pay policy, this apparently puts ASTMS among what Healey has branded "a small minority of "wrecking" that the Jenkins leader- wreckers" . But the sum total of ship is committed to is casting its 360,000 votes against the deal at the special TUC conference in June.

It is safe to predict that as a result of this gesture the number of ASTMS members who get pay increases above the Government noIm could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Indeed the emergency resolution on economic policy passed at the conference pledged "continuing negotiations • and consultations between TUC and government... and stressed what the NEC called "the fundamental need for emergency action against excessive import penetration and for effective exchange controls; the urgent need to build up the manufacturing base"

This call for import controls -implying an alliance of British workers with their "own" employers instead of with other workers internationally, was vigorously opposed by some delegates who pointed out the racialist and nationalist nature of the policy.

UNEMPLOYMENT

No policy was adopted on unemployment by the conference, though a long and vague motion against unemployment was remitted to the NEC, who will be glad of the chance to ignore the tew demands (such as a ban on overtime) which it did contain.

But it was on the government spending cuts on the social services that the bankruptcy of the NEC emerged most clearly.

Speaking against a motion which opposed the cuts, the NEC first tried to claim that the Labour government had not increased to an unprecedented degree the cuts made by previous governments.

Seeing this met little response, they moved on to ridicule the idea that social services should be planned by elected committees of trade unionists, housewives and tenants to meet the needs of workers.

This ridicule was backed not by ugument but simply by the NEC's uwn contempt for the ability of workers to plan such services. But conference was not persuaded to reject the motion by these arguments and it was remitted to the NEC.

CONDEMNED

On the fight to defend the Health Service, conference overwhelmingly condemned the NEC for its inacton on last Year's resolution against all private practice both inside and outside the NHS -and reference back of the NEC's report of action against the cuts in the NHS was only narrowly defeated, despite a vigorous defence of the NEC by Stalinist speakers.

Many ASTMS Health Service delegates at the conference reflected the frustration and anger of the membership at the lack of leadership over the last year against the swingeing attacks by the Wilson government on the NHS' DELETION They were even more angry following the deletion of all motions calling for action against the cuts from the ADC agenda; and nearly universally hostile to the way a national executive member, Jack Williams had bureaucratically closed a meeting of NHS delegates on the Sunday eveining as soon as the topic of the cuts was raised.

Aware of this, ASTMS President Len Wells, carefully selected the few speakers allowed on the issue, before bringing in Williams again, who spent ten minutes dodging, twisting, evading and distorting the record of the leadership; and attempting to blame the members for lack of action, maintaining the NEC only knew of cuts in the London area.

UNCONVINCING

i ne unconvincing show this provided to Conference was reflected in the 4-vote defeat of the reference back motion proposed by the Oxford Health Service Branch delegate which went down 229 votes to 233.

Closing the conference, the President congratulated the staff of appointed officials on the 'smooth running' of the conference, while many delegates thinking back on what little was achieved must have wondered why it was held at all.

The reason is the sophisticated manoeuvres of the Jenkins ASTMS bureaucracy which in a different but equally effective way to Jack Jones' blunt dictatorship in the T&GWU seeks to hold the membership back from action against the attacks of government and employers.

In the year to the next ADC this elaborate left' cover of the ASTMS leadership will be increasingly exposed to the membership.

The building of a principled political alternative in the union to challenge and defeat Jenkins is therefore the clearest task following the ADC.