Confusion Corruption

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‹EVIEW OF EDDIE MILNE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "NO SHINING ARMOUR". lespite the frantic efforts Labour leaders including rand Short, to prevent its , Eddie Milne's new autotraphy No Shining our' is reported to be hg like hot cakes. • Labour MP for Blyth from 474, Milne fought a consistent e against corruption in the ar-controlled councils of the -East - a corruption which, ¿ clearly demonstrates, did not with the gaoling of architect Poulson and Councillor ew Cunningham. ! attempting to expose the Live traditions of local governI in the area Milne encountered Rematic cover-up involving all of the Labour leadership the cabinet and the leftmated National Executive mittee (of which Cunningham long-standing member en Transport House) down to Legional Committee and the Constituency Party.

I EDWARD tari Short, the party's ly leader, has been in the foreof efforts both to prop up a jeered Cunningham and E Sire, making him one of pot's "stars" witably, in fighting the I Party bureaucrats, Milne himself increasingly under i from the counterparts in the • kadership. Cunningham, as 1 East boss of the G&MWU fe: all. one of them.

Ma: fraud perpetrated against artine cass are just the sort ng atic Union leaders find it ° intertand and forgive, and that Canningham's ¡ seei Union pension is still pad to him while he recuperates in jail.

Milne, on the other hand, has lost his Union's nomination support, his post as an official and his pension. "Rocking the boat" is the one unforgiveable sin.

The tactics which • the rightwing used against Milne will be instantly recognisable to any socialist who has fought. on principle against the bureaucracy.

FOUR SETS At the Labour GMC meeting in 1974, for instance, which voted to drop Milne as parliamentary candidate, a local taxi proprietor, a new "recruit" to the Labour Party, arrived with four sets of delegate credentials whereas at a previous meeting several NUM delegates who arrived to vote for Milne were refused entry. These are the tactics of weak men who feel the danger of the working class pulling the carpet out from under their feet.

Wherever the actions of bureaucrats are challenged they automatically raise the cry against those who "split the movement" and "rock the boat" • The assumption behind these charges is that the only forces which gain from such a struggle within the ranks of the working class movement are the employers and the Tories.

It is to Milne's credit that he understands that it is precisely the leadership of the Labour movement which suppresses all forms of democracy, that actually splits and demoralises the Labour movement.

MORAL

But Milne's weakness is that he never moves beyond the level of simplistic moral condemnation of corrupt individuals to an understanding of the economic and political roots of this corruption.

He repeatedly trumpets his own Eddie minimal political awareness:

"I was soon to realise that the loyalty that Callaghan and Wilson owed, was less to the Labour Movement than to the cronies they had around them, and that those who suffered as a result were the great mass of ordinary folk whose immense sacrifices had created the opportunities for the Wilsons and the Callaghans to achieve power and influence, built on the great Movement that others had made possible."

Undeniably true, but banal, observations like these cannot possibly provide a perspective for a fight against political corruption.

Corruption is an inevitable product of the development of a capitalist state. In all the recent bribery scandals, from Watergate to Japan, the question has arisen in the press as to how widespread this "problem" is.

SAME REPLY

The reply, from official, politician, or capitalist is always the same: "What constitutes corruption?" For the "problem" whose most shocking exposures elicits such pieties from the press goes by many names and under some of them it doesn't seem like a problem at all, at least to some people.

A certain amount of "giftgiving" is built into the capitalist system: a capitalist must try to PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report influence his market in a more or less competitive situation, and if the market is the State then it is those in control of its administration that he must influence.

The role of the politician in the bourgeois state leaves him open to bribery, for as Trotsky pointed out, no-one who has the power to distribute wealth ever entirely omits himself.

Capitalists can no more give up the struggle for 'undue influence on capitalism.

Their position as negotiators between capital and labour requires a struggle to hold back the struggle of the working class and to prop up capitalism.

To expect that these men will fight consistently against capitalism is to demand that they undermine the system that gives them their privileged positions.

Such a fight would expose them to the same dangers as would a thorough investigation • of corruption within the Labour SECRET DEALS Yet it was these men in whom Milne trusted: it was the leaders of the Labour Party, and the Unions, the men who make secret deals with the employers every day in the year, to whom he turned - with an innocence that begins to seem, as the book drags on, less touching than touched = to appeal for an investigation into the Labour Party.

In fact he turned to every available force, including the police and the in his ant pe To launch a State investigation into the problems of the Labour Movement; every force, that is, except the working class.

Milne's support among the working class in Blyth was certainly considerable, yet he made no serious moves to mobilise that support against the bureaucracy until after he left the Labour Party.

INDIVIDUALS

Within the party his fight, as he roudly testifies, was almost wholly ith individuals. Only when he squired a new machinery to ampaign for him as Independent abour candidate did he bother to ad his supporters against the right'ing.

In the event, he received nearly 3,000 votes. It is not difficult to nagine the huge effect his struggle ould have had it, instead of pealing to Wilson and even Heath • set up a koyal Commission, ilne had fought within the local abour Movement for a workers' quiry into the affairs of the ouncil and for the demand that le full details of all transactions be ade available to elected workers' ›mmittees. snett, GMWU General Secretary. His t This weakness leads him to rely on forces such as the police whose interests are opposed to those of the working class. He has a particular faith in the press, even the right wing press; his book has been serialized in the Sunday Telegraph.

In his obsession with the honesty or dishonesty of isolated individuals, and the revelation of "the truth"

he has lost sight of the fact that selected aspects of the "truth" are used as well as lies by the capitalist press to damage the Labour Movement.

Milne only confuses his supporters and weakens his fight by seeking anti-working class allies. He cannot recognise that what he is fighting is a manifestation of class-collaboration; and is therefore equally unfit to recognise class-collaboration in his own tactics.

Since its foundations Eddie Milne's new ILP has won one parliamentary election and at least eleven seats in the local Council.

Yet at no point in the book does Milne make any reference to the programme of his party on any issue other than that of corruption; and even on that he prefers rhetoric to specific proposals:

"We must compel authority to tackle the problem of corruption in its midst. Or let those in authority get out and make way for those who can and will."

Only a genuine working class party committed to the destruction of capitalism can successfully fight the corruption which thrives on the capitalist system.

Milne says nothing of his record in this other, broader struggle. He mentions none of the major struggles which have taken place in his area - including two miners' strikes or what direction and support he gave them.

POLITICAL FIGHT

For Milne the issue of corruption is an isolated one. But for the working class, on the other hand, a leadership which assists in the ruling class attack on workers' living standards must be opposed, not by allowing the Tory press to feast on their personal corruption, but by a political fight both for democracy and for an alternative leadership the workers' movement. inion pays Cunningham £60 a week!

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SOCIALIST PRESS, day I1th Arguest 1976 • UNI ILL LAI U "WHAT'S OPPRESSED AND RARE AS A DODO? - A SUCCESSFUL APPLICANT TO THE TRIBUNAL!"

Police pave way for scab lorries through Trico picket line The willingness of the Labour government to use the full force of the police alongside scab forces hired by the employers against pickets at the Trico-Folberth factory exposes the fraudulence of both the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act and the Equal Pay Act.

Both these measures had been described in glowing terms as "reforms" by the Labour leaders who of course have sided with the employers and against militant workers in every dispute since they came to power in February 1974 -ironically as the result of the miners' strike.

The Trico factory in Brentford, which manufactures windscreen wipers for British Leyland and Chrysler, has been hit by a solid twelve week strike of 400 women demanding increases of £5-€6.50 to bring their pay level with five men workers doing the same job.

Management at first attempted to level out pay rates by refusing the five men any increase - which drove the men to join the strike action which began on May 24th.

Since then the company have offered the women a £2.50 pay increase - which was rejected by the last mass meeting.

The strikers have maintained a 24-howr picket on the factory despite attacks and harassment by police and gangs of scabs coordinated by management.

But on July 29th came the most blatant attack, when a convoy of lorries driven by scabs employed by General Express Services was forced through the picket line by five coachloads of police.

Despite the peaceful picketing that had taken place up to that date, the police set out by force of numbers to enforce an arrangement whereby only six pickets were allowed to approach the lorries as they passed.

In theory this is illegal under the much vaunted Trade Unions and Labour Relations Acts.

But for those who retained any illusions in the "impartiality" of the law, the police soon dispelled them by their obvious determination to intimidate and arrest pickets. As the convoy arrived, the police used physical violence to keep strikers back as the first driver refused to talk to the picket.

In the event no pickets were allowed even to approach the lorries or communicate with them. AUEW Divisional Organiser Bill McLaughlin was manhandled by police who waved the lorries out of the gates.

This attack on the right to picket - reminiscent of the police action during the strikes by the miners and building workers during 1972 - comes only a week before Shrewsbury picket Des Warren was eventually released after serving all but one month of a savage three year jail sentence for picketing, enforced by the Labour government.

DEMOCRATIC While the TUC strikes wage-cutting deals with the Callaghan-Healey leadership, claiming it is necessary in order to prevent a Tory government, the Labour leaders are supervising an all-round attack on the democratic rights of trade unionists, through the ponce, the courts, and full support for the employers.

The bitterness of the Trico strike also confirms the futility of the feeble provisions of the Equal Pay Act, hailed by the reformists as the day of women's emancipation.

The women strikers have correctly understood the way in which the Tribunals set up under the Act are a conscious attempt by employers and trade union bureaucrats to prevent widespread struggles for equal pay - siphoning the fight off into interminable individual legalistic wrangles.

The Trico strikers have refused to go to the Tribunal - and point out that both management and union leaders have agreed the women workers do identical work to the five men. Management's refusal to concede equal pay is therefore simply an open expression of the task of the tribunals to prevent women winning equal pay legal quibbles.

The right to equal pay and equal opportunity can only be won through mobilising working women as part of the working class movement - in the trade unions, in confrontation with the employer.

For this reason it is vitally important that this strike which has taken the correct road to winning equal pay is made successful.

The successes of the strikers have so far been limited by the inadequate blacking of Trico's products which are fitted to BLMC and Chrysler cars.

The strike has nominal official support from both T&GWU and AUEW, and GMWU members are also involved. Yet none of these unions is leading a coordinated national fight to bring Trico management to its knees by completely blacking the use of their products. Officials in many areas are clearly suppressing circulars and appeals from the strikers.

MOBILISED

In answer to this the support of BLMC and Chrysier workers must be- mobilised behind the Trico strikers who are in the front line of the fight both for equal pay and (Trico Strike Bulletin)

XPRESSE SERVICES against the latest Wherever possible, speakers from the Trico strike committee should be invited to branch and shop stewards meetings to put the case and rally full support behind the strike, sending delegations from the major factories to support the continuing picket.

At the same time the fight for donations and factory collections must be taken up to assist the hardship fund.

Donations should be sent to the Trico Strike Fund, c/o AEU House, 1 Woodlands Road, Southall, Middlesex.