The Workers Socialist League

Scan page 3

The Workers Socialist League is a Trotskyist organisation fighting to build a revolutionary leadership in the working In the daily struggle to take the demands and principles of Trotsky's Transitional Programme into the trade unions, the WL has been at the forefront of the fight for the sliding scaie of wages, and work sharing on full pay - demands which at the 1975 T&GWU Conference were the only alternative to Jones' £6 pay plan and the wholesale acceptance of redundancies by the bureaucracy. In today's fight against the TUC's 44% pay cutting deal with Healey this demand for a sliding scale of wages (rising according to the rising cost of living as assessed by trade union committees) is the essential basis of consistent opposition.

In the Health Service WL comrades have led the struggle for a sliding scale of NAS spending, for the start of workers' control of the service leadership who substitute the words for the action.

In London this policy has already won a big response with the one-day action against the closure of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital - when 2,000 hospital workers in the area struck and 400 marched to • In local disputes also, WL comrades have tested and developed the demands of the Transitional Programme, putting forward in every case the only real opposition to the Stalinists and the right-wing. Our struggle for the "open the books" demand in the motor industry and against all forms of "workers' participation" have won mass responses.

At the same 'time we have put forward a policy to fight unemployment, calling for unity of employed and unemployed through The WSL is the only movement that fights consistently for transitional demands, going beyond mere trade union militancy to pose In doing this our comrades have been forced also to lead struggles for trade union democracy against the bureaucratic manipulation of the But our struggle for the continuity of the principles of Trotskyism is in no way a task confined to Britain. It requires an attention and involvement in the international struggles of the working class and moves to So while many interventions in Britain have developed the League's grasp to troten and ench the poems unders ande of theistory and the present crisis of the Trotskyist Fourth International, as an essential part of any serious initiative towards its reconstruction.

We urge all readers who agrez on the nead for rerolutionary leadership and the demands we put forward to find out more about the SL and lobby MPs against the cuts. the fight to mobilise the trade union movement.

the political issues to workers.

Stalinists and right-wing.

rebuild the Trotskyist Fourth International. oin our fight in the labou: movemert.

A list ôf some Labour and Trade Union leaders has already been gathered in support of the campaign.

Yet the pamphlet does not seem able to go beyond the question which is posed in one footnote, which must have been added almost as an afterthought: (Pp29-30)

"We invite all who embrace the cause of the working class on an international scale to contribute to....1) understanding comprehensively the Shah's anti-working class policies; 2) exposing the policies; 3) formulating alternative methods to combat them; and 4) finding a method of putting such formulas into practice for the establishment of a socialist society in Iran."

What we would say in answer to this is that it is not possible to see the struggle for workers' rights in Iran any more than in Britain as a matter just of 'information' and then struggle.

It is also leaders in this country, including we understand, both Barbara Castle and Wedgewood Benn, who have been out to Iran. this year to express their respect at the butcher's banquet.

The struggle for workers' rights in Iran is a political question because it raises immediately the role of those forces in the international working class movement tied to the Chinese Stalinists or the British social democrats.

It is only the Trotskyist movement that is capable of carrying through the necessary task opposing these forces in the workers' movement.

There is one excellent suggestion in the pamphlet which is only hinted at, but could well be extended. Part of the 1975 TUC economic review is quoted with regard to multi-national companies which they state pose:

"a greater and greater threat to trade unions and governments. The transfer of manufacturing to Despite the reactionary and chauvinist way in which the TUC poses the questions, the fact is that international employers can nowadays move about work to where conditions are worse and workers' rights are not recognised.

Why should the employers be able to direct investment in this way? Why cannot workers, through their international union federations, prevent employers going to places where unions are not recognised and wages held down below minimum union rates?

The TUC ot couse, looks to the United Nations for 'the prevention of investment in countries where workers" rights are not respected. Surely, however, this is the task of the workers themselves.

By fighting for the opening of the books of the multinationals and for control of investment by the employers they can initiate the steps necessary for the overthrow of such barbaric regimes as that in Iran and bring the struggle for workers' control onto an international plane.

----- pull-quotes -----

class in opposition to the betrayals of both "left" and right wing Labour and trade union leaders and the Communist

he finit to eth all private practice. traps tore important we have led the implient these price tonting those like the ASTMS and NUPB