Tuc Disowns Trades Council

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Scanlon

own new-found majority on the AEU National Committee could be submerged in the amalgamated union.

The Stalinists, by attempting to preserve their bureaucratic base in TASS have thus given the right wing an excuse to block amalgamation.

The resolution eventually passed at the AEU conference was to allow even less representation of the smaller unions and for all officers in TASS to be elected. This the right wing hoped would torpedo the amalgamation.

After 89 years affiliated to the TUC, the Oxford and District Trades Council has been removed from the TUC's list of recognised Trades Councils by the right wing bureaucracy led by Jones and Murray.

This move was not unexpected. Since the local bureaucrats and Stalinists, organised by extreme right-wing T&GWU District Secretary David Buckle, walked out of the Trades Council AGM in February, the TUC has been seeking ways of restoring the dominance lost by the right wing and their Stalinist allies over the last two years.

With breath-taking bureaucratic arrogance Murray declares - in a letter distributed to delegates - that the Trades Council Joint Conslutative Committee (TCJCC):

"reached its decision only after very careful consideration of the information available about the functioning of Oxford and District Trades Council".

NO EVIDENCE This "careful consideration" took the form of a mock "inquiry" which sought evidence and views from none of the Trades Council majority delegates and not a single one of the officers elected at the April AGM.

The only evidence it heard was trom the extreme right wing-CP alliance which broke up the February AGM by calling an unconstitutional meeting of • selected delegates 30 minutes before normal starting time and changing • the standing orders of the Council.

Despite a subsequent TUC declaration that this secret meeting was in fact unconstitutional and its results "null and void" the "inquiry" has come out fully in favour of that minority, accepting every charge and demand it has made.

Murray bases his charges.

Firstly, that the Trades Council held its reconvened AGM on April proposed by the TUC. This, Murray ludicrously concludes, "excluded" those branches who had decided not to attend (entirely of their own free will!)

Secondly, Murray accuses the Trades Council of upholding the right "to criticise • the policies of individual unions" , He connects this with a reference to the so-called "campaign" against the cuts by the Oxford Health Service unions, which the Trades Council Health Service sub-committee cofrectly criticised as a sham fight.

Thirdly Murray charges the Council with not being a "representative" body. He means not representative of the right-wing bureaucrats. The charge is one very familiar in Oxford where the T&GWU bureaucrats are now even proposing to disband the District Automative Committee on the basis that it is "unrepresentative" - levelling the same charge against the 5/293 T&GWU branch and the BL Cowley Assembly Plant Joint Shop Stewards Committee. In fact against any trade union body not siavishly subservient to the officials and their policies.

In an attempt to complete the manoeuvre the TUC has called a meeting to "reconstitute" the Trades Council on July 14th. This means that for the next month they will be working overtime to bureaucratically limit and change the delegations from branches to that meeting.

Their aim is a Trades Council controlled top to bottom by the local officials with Standing Orders redrafted for this purpose and full use of the "gag rule" - the new Rule 14.

But their manoeuvres arise from weakness not from strength. The officials know they have no real popular support in the local labour movement.

And in attempting to hamstring those workers determined to fight in defence of the working class they only educate new layers of workers in the methods and nature of the bureaucracy itself - both its right -i- 491 - 1: - :4 1-