Fight Proposed

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Istandards of union members, is not la new issue, Comrade Casey ¡pointed to three previous instances where stewards had been victimised by management with the collaborlation of union officials - at Fords Halewood in 1971, at the Filkington's glass works in St Helens, and in Leyland's Cowley ¡Asembly Plant in 1974, where management withdrew recognition from deputy senior steward Alan Thorgett.

LAUGHING

Now these attacks were again being launched in the factories. Management must be laughing up their sleeves now they are being allowed to pick and choose who should be shop stewards" ', said Comrade Casey.

And at the same time, these moves have been accompanied by the imposition of police control of Trades Councils through the TUC Model Rule 15.

It was for these reasons that Comrade Casey said he welcomed ibe Conference as a means to begin be Egtt back — and he was willing o risk possible victimisation in his one inion in order to give support bi sarahitina Alan Thornett on behalf of the ad-hoc conference organising committee, Alan Thornett, Chairman of the 5/293 Branch at Cowley, showed how the last eighteen months in particular had seen an onslaught on democratic rights linked completely with the bureaucracy's need to police the working class movement in order to impose wage control.

This was because they face the resistance of a powerful international movement of the working class, stressed Comrade Thornett:

"From Vietnam to Soweto; from the Ford and Rubber workers in the US to the recent general strikes in France and Italy, and in Britain the vote of the seamen and the 22-week Trico strike for equal pay show the strength of the workers' movement. Against such strength the bureaucracy is forced to act through manoeuvres."

ONLY INITIATIVE Pointing out that this Conference was the only initiative against the 449 pay policy. ramada Thenmaste amontaricad tha do it, they are actually policing the wage control. The Tribunites could not call such a conference because they have provided a left cover for the 42%, refusing to fight it at key moments.

The Communist Party can do nothing but mouth general phrases about "free collective bargaining" with no policy to defend living standards. It was Ken Gill of the Communist Party who withdrew the TASS opposition motion and allowed the Social Contract to become the April 1974 » Policy of the TUC in ARGUMENT Comrade Thornett showed how the argument used now by the TUC and the Labour government -that wage increases cause inflation and real wages must be cut to cut inflation is the argument of capitalism. It was the same argument that put Heath into confrontation with the miners, he said. A confrontation which destroyed the Tory Therefore the Labour govern-. ment was elected on the wages issue - put in office to oppose wage sontrol after Heath was defeated by the minare "

A supplementary amendment to the main resolution detailing • demands for the struggle for democracy in the Labour Party was moved at the Conference by Richard Shield, a delegate from the NUPE branch at University College Hospital, London.

Stressing the contrast between the 1974 Labour election manifesto and the record of the Labour government the amendment went on:

This year's Labour Party conference resolved, for example, to "support those Labour councils which have refused to implement the cuts, and calls on other Labour Groups to follow suit": it urged "the Labour Party to conduct an active camneion rosine outs in anhlir expenditure" , and it called on the National Executive Committee to support trade unions opposing the cuts", At the same conference, however, Callaghan and Healey promptly announced the impossibility of carrying out these decisions and through the block vote of the unions secured endorsement of the social contract.

Most of the Constituency Labour Parties' (CLP) delegates voted against the "contract, but the previous acceptance of the wage restraint 'deal' at the TUC, with spurious argument about waged causing inflation and "giving a year for Britain" meant that the Labour government had their incomes policy sewn up.

CRUCIAL

Thus the wiole question democracy in the Labour Party well as in the unions, is a cru