[HE The TUC Congress starting on September 6th…]

Scan page 10

HE The TUC Congress starting on September 6th will be the scene not simply of more betrayals by the union leaders, but also of lobbies by several organisations.

Since the Special TUC which accepted the wage-cutting 4%% deal on June 16th, the first round of new spending cuts, which every union leader knew were coming but purposely concealed, has been announced.

This has stepped up the pressure from members of those unions which will make up the bulk of the admitted 70,000 coming redundancies, and has even forced some union leaders like Alan Fisher of NUPE to declare against the cuts. This opens the possibility of conflict between him and Jones and Scanion, who have consistently supported the cuts.

The depth of the betrayal of the June 16th Special Congress is shown by the latest unemployment figures - standing at 1½ million, a post war record. In this is included a huge number of youth on the dole - over 200,000 without jobs.

The International Socialists are organising a Right to Work March from London to Brighton where they will lobby the TUC on September 9th.

This march is along the lines of their previous march, against "excessive overtime", , тог a 35 hour week, and a number of other mainly straight trade union demands.

HOT AIR

None of them in any way direct the working class to the fight for workers control as a transitional step towards the struggle for nationalisations, and towards state power. Without this, the Is talk of 'socialism' remains simply hot air.

The call by the Workers Revolutionary Party and their Young Socialists for a lobby against youth unemployment puts forward such correct calls as "full training on demand" at "trade union rates of pay." But this is coupled with the incorrect, sectarian-propagandist call to "force the Labour goverıiment to resign!". detacher from any programme for action.

Indeed the demands advanced by the WRP are all simply governmental demands - which without programme for local, particular struggles, become simply abstractions.

It is important to direct every struggle towards the question of government, but this must be connected with the immediate struggles of the working class.

For a real fight to begin, the demand for work-sharing on full pay must be put forward wherever redundancies are declared.

The betrayal of the working class has not just taken place at national level, but at Jactory level also, where leaderships have come out in favour of voluntary redundancies or simply allowed redundancies or closures to take place.

OCCUPATION

Similarly, if the employers claim they cannot pay, the demand must be 'open the books' of that particular firm, backed by occupation. This directs towards the necessity of nationalisation without compensation.

The demand for a programme of public works to create new jobs ties in with the fight of the socjal services unions, and the struggle for a sliding scale of state expenditure on social services.

Both these demands show the necessity for a massive government injecțion of finance and programme of nationalisation of building and supply industries, which would open up new jobs for employment of youth at trade union rates.

RECRUITMENT

The WSL will be lobbying the TUC on September 9th on this programme of demands, linked to the necessity of new leadership in the unions and the recruitment of unemployed workers and youth into the unions.

Only in this way can youth and workers opposed to the TUC betrayals be enabled to fight inside the unions alongside employed workers on the central political questions in the struggle against unemployment.