Price Explosion Will Thul Lai Luvivi Open up Fight

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"The capitalist system will create such a massive price explosion that the working class will have to fight in defence of living standards. This Conference is about leadership for such a fight.

This was the view expressed in the discussion by Tim O'Sullivan, bringing fraternal greetings of the I&GWU 5/55 Branch to the Conterence.

He referred to the way in which the T&GWU bureaucracy had directly intervened to split up the 5/55 Branch in 1974, when it had over 5,000 members, and a leadership and record "second to none"

*They mobilised a witch-hunt against us - but the militants are still there, fighting the bureauHammersmith North CLP have rejected their MPs, Prentice and Tomney, both of whom openly defied even the constitution of the Labour Party, as well as its policies.

Some prospective parliamentary candidates have already agreed to follow Labour conference policy and the decisions of their general management committees.

We support the fight for the mandatory reselection of all candidates before every election. Labour MPs must be made accountable to their GMCs.

We must build an alternative leadership in the Labour Party, a leadership which fights to resist the attacks on jobs and living standards through such policies as work-sharing on full pay, a sliding scale of wages, programmes of useful public works.

We must fight to expose and replace every Labour representative who does not carry out conference decisions in the interests of the labour movement or the social reform pledges of the manifesto.

ANNUAL ELECTION

The Labour Party leader, the National Executive Committee and other national and regional committees must be elected once a year at conference, and these leaders must remain accountable between Tim O'Sullivan cracy" continuted ' Comrade O'Sullivan.

«You can sit here and listen to what is going on, but it is only a talking shop unless you go back to your branches, throw out those shop stewards who sit on participation committees, get rid of them, There must be no secret decision making and the Labour leaders must be forced to end all secret diplomacy and open all books of the civil service and national In order to force Labour councillors to fight for the policies of their ward branches and CLPs, they too must be made accountable. Hackney North and Stoke Newington CLP, for example, have mandated all their councillors to vote against rent increases.

COUNCILS

Some councils have been forced into opposing cuts, eg Haringey and Battersea. But Labour councillors are not generally accustomed to listening to the members of the CLP that installed them.

They regard themselves, contrary, as bound instead by the decisions of the Labour Groups Which are the puppets of the Labour government.

councillors, ministers, all representatives of the Labour Party must be elected at least annually and subject to immediate recall, paid the wage of a skilled worker with all expenses vetted by committees of rank and file members, and constantly be made accountable to the mass of Labour Party members who are increasingly moving into opposition to the betrayals of the Lahour anvernment and fight for socialist he said.

Terry Barrett, (T&GWU, personal capacity) stressed the need to fight for the sliding scale of wages. "The sliding scale is vital for us to defend our living standards" he insisted, pointing out that, whereas many union officials were appointed, "even Popes are elected when one dies - though you have to be a Catholic to stand!"

0245 15m .. Me: 3RD +942 Terry Barrett Not one of the 23 resolutions opposing wage control submitted to the NUR Conference was on the final agenda. Instead they selected one which supported the TUC pay policy, reported Philip Lewis, (Barnsbury NUR, in a personal capacity).

And although his branch had voted support for this Conference, it had been manoeuvred out by the oftion policy will be aton agaisine.

he said.

Several speakers in the discusion questioned whether the main resolution was correct in pinning the responsibility for wage control firmly on the trade union leaders.

"How is it that time and time again, the working class allows itself to be sold down the river by these arguments?" asked one such speaker, Margaret McNab, who expressed the point most clearly.

She and a number of other delegates went on to point out that the document lacked any demands for women workers.

This was taken up by Di Parkin (NATHE, in a personal capacity), who pointed out that the low level of arasnication I8302420~+m Di Parkin was precisely because the bureaucracy refuses to take seriously the fight to unionise women.

And when it comes to the question of equal pay, it is again the bureaucracy that has to be fought, since they police the pay laws, stressed Comrade Parkin.

'The fight against women's oppression must be linked to the fight against the bureaucracy, she concluded.

In replying on behalf of the Organising Committee the discussion, Alan Thornett said it had become clear that the main resolution needed additional sections putting a clear position on women's rights, on racism and on import controls. The Committee put the resolution forward for endorsement on the understanding that these questions would be written into it.

Some people had referred to the problem in the wages fight being the backwardness of the working class not the leadership, Comrade Thornett went on.

"But the working class starts not from its backward ideas but from the material conditions confronts. It is this fact which makes struggle on wages inevitable."

RECALL CONFERENCE Stressing the emergency resolution from the Committee for a recalled conference to be held in rebruary, Comrade Thornett ended by calling on all organisations in the labour movement to send delegates to what should be an enlarged Organisng Committee.

The emergency • resolution, passed unanimously, states that:

"This Conference calls for strike action on November 17th and supports the demonstrations and lobbies called on that day.

'This Conference will be recalled in February 1977 and that the Organising Committee continues to function and be enlarged and that it should coordinate the creation of regional arnanicing rommittoon "

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sila Congress of the Thomett in A Menshevik Unmasked:

"We Trotskyists say plainly that none or ine transitiona demanus. can be met within the boundaries of the capitalist system and that the realisation of these demands - as Lenin showed in 1917 - leads necessarily to the conquest of power."

And we say to this lamentable sectarian: not only the transitional demands but even the simplest economic demands today go far beyond the limitations of the capitalist system.

NO IMPROVEMENTS Is it not a fact that, despite remporary successes, workers can no longer improve their conditions of life under capitalism?

But only a scholastic sectarian who observes the class through binoculars. can put the question in this way.

Banda's position is nothing but a method to transform the critique of imperialism into apologetics for British imperialism, a left' cover while bending in front of the bourgeoisie, in practice lining up with the reformists - who likewise take up no struggle for any demand, because they consider nothing «realisable"

The sectarian, with contempt for spontaneity turns out to be as subservient to it as the reformist. The sectarian's method is just the other side of the reformist coin.

STAND ASIDE

To stand aside from the masses with a list of slogans and wait until the evils of the capitalist crisis oblige them by themselves to perform the famous "leap" to revolutionary consciousness means complete submission to spontaneity another form. Lenin fought such submission in What Is To Be Done?