[The 'socialist' approach to import controls. When the…]

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The 'socialist' approach to import controls.

When the "Nation" (ie the ruling class) is threatened, the TUC and Labour leaders join hands with the employers to attack the "enemy"

This is why "unity" and "the nation" are as much today's TUC banners as they were in war time. Britain is now seen by the union leaders as besieged by 'foreigners"

But they claim, all is not yet lost:

"There is already much going for Britain, so long as we are prepared to make the effort" cried Len Murray at the TUC Conference at Brighton.

Against the villains of the piece - the dreaded Japanese and of course the "Trotskyist bootboys" - only the most fervent and dedicated class collaboration, implied Murray and his colleagues, can offer any protection.

"NATIONAL SOLUTIONS"

Accordingly the "national" solutions offered by the TUC merely, echo the arguments of the employers:

"The only way to restore full employment and rising living standards is by expansion of manufacturing industry" , Murray informed us. And for this "we" need investment and exports to keep the 'foreigners" at bay.

This nationalist fervour was the keynote of the TUC's central debate on economic policy. And it was the erstwhile "left' voice of AUEW President Scanlon which put •the anti-internationalist message most concretely. Speaking after Murray had launched the attack on the Japanese, Scanlon stressed:

"We are not asking for a reversal of the present policy that Britain can only get out of its current ills on a basis of efficient manufacturing industries. We are asking for a more sustained and vigorous implementation of that strategy. No more shilly-shallying, no more delays: the government should introduce selective import SCANDALOUS Through arguments like these, linked to his scandalous call in the Leyland Mirror for workers to allow management to get away with anything rather than impede production, Scanlon peddles the illusion that the British working class can be somehow magically saved by preserving their main enemy - British capitalists!

As to the workers of the rest of the world, Scanion spared them one thought:

"Some of these countries have labour standards we'd never descend to.

Scanlon's nationalist and class are ate reverse of licas regener to improve the "labour standards" anywhere else in the world.

There is as Lenin said only one way to combat national hatred and rivalry:

"organising the class of the oppressed for a struggle against the class of the oppressors in every single country, and by • the amalgamation of such national working class organisations into a single international working class army for combating international capital"

COLLABORATION

The policy the TUC leaders put forward™ at Brighton however advocated collaboration with the oppressors in the interests of increasing national rivalries.

In this atmosphere the platitudes uttered by the bureaucrats on other days had a hollow ring.

The union leaders made it clear that their complicity in the Labour government's Tory policies was in practice unconditional:

"What if the government does not heed what we are saying? We will still fulfil our bargain" announced Scanlon, while Jones stressed that: "we have no intention of weakening the government's position.

There were to "buts' , and no reservations about government policy. Many noises were made about "unacceptable" levels of unemployment - which somehow all TUC leaders have managed to accept. But action against government policy was labelled "unnecessary" by Murray:

"There are stoppages of work which should not need to take place and that profit no one including the people involved in them" he preached.

ORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE.

"socialist' approach No doubt he meant such "unnecessary" objectives as the defence of jobs (Export Packing Services, Bot bural aad (n the , tad serices shop loor trade unionısm against victimisation (BL Cowley) and, most unnecessary of all, if we believe Murray, for higher wages (the Seamen).

On wages, Congress voted down the amended resolution calling for a antren te frao anllantivo hartainina from August Ist 1977. Yet Murray, carefully avoiding the use of the word "free". › felt obliged to make gestures towards a return to wage "Voluntary collective bargaining provides a continuous system of adjustment...

In other words some flexibility helps defuse tension and make the collaborationist role of the bureaucrat easier. But Murray was firm on wanting to give the major say on wages to the state.

Other delegates similarly saw collective bargaining only as a tool for tinkering with the system -raising differentials and the like. None mentioned the crucial importance of free collective bargaining as a weapon of the working class in fighting the employers.

The capitulation by the TUC was equally great on the public spending cuts. Geoffrey Drain of NALGO dolefully spoke of the situation; yet it was a position he was at heart ready to accept.

"Public expenditure" , announ ced Drain, 'has come to play a key part in the controlling of the economy. We acknowledge this last role; it's going to stay with us.

LINE But of course much public spending is not going to "stay with , but is to be slashed. Drain, however, simply accepts the line that cuts in welfare spending are necessary in order to boost the manufacturing sector. (How out of work teachers could possibly aid the manufacture of books, unemployed nurses the production of aerospace engines, or 1½ million unemployed workers the producAGAINST THE JAPANESE, AMERICANS, FRENCH, GERMANS, INDIANS, PORTUGUESE, ITALIANS, EAST EUROPEANS, ASIANS ,AFRICANS, POLES, WRECKERS, ANARCHISTS.. import tion of anything is not explained!)

Drain would like more tinkering with the works and a determined stab at the "foreigners" through import controls - but not at any cost, a fight against the Labour government's Tory policies.

National chauvinism, class collaboration, and a dread of working class independence and strength: these then were the real themes of this year's TUC.