The Left Press and the Wages Conference

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The report in Socialist Press 46 of the Conference organised by the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement, left out an assessment of the interventions made by the International Marxist Group (IMG) and the International Communist League (ICL).

Since these two organisations have both printed assessments of the conference in their respective papers, Red Weekly and Workers Action, it would be useful to take up their main points.

One of the most striking features of the IMG's action at the conference was their sheer arrogance.

Despite a clear request from the Organising Committee for amendments to the main resolution to be from trade union bodies the IMG turned up with a tiny handful of representatives on the morning of the conference who issued a string of amendments, at lunchtime, in the name of their political organisation.

number of those who attended the conference felt the Organising Committee was more than generous in allowing these amendments to be put.

While the IMG speaker referred to the programme advanced in the resolution as "a set of excelient demands we fully agree with" (though not to the extent of bringing any forces to the Conference!) the thrust of their amendment was away from these demands, which he agreed "require consistent propaganda and explanation.

CATCH-ALL

Instead attention was focussed on the IMG's catch-all concept of a "class struggle tendency' consisting of all those willing to fight wage controls, mass unemployment and public sector spending cuts.

The follow-up report in Red Weekly spells out in detail what lies behind the IMG's "class struggle tendency". If only the conference organisers had not put forward policies "such as the sliding scale of wages" it might have been possible to commit the Stalinist and reformist leaders to a fight, says Red Weekly.

Precisely what sort. of fight could these people have been committed to?

The importance of tying the struggle for democratic procedures in the unions and the Labour Party to the need for an alternative leadership seems lost on the IMG.

Indeed the purpose of the conference - far from being "to launch a broadly based united front campaign against attacks on union democracy" (Red Weekly, 4.11.76) - was to focus attention on a sharp rightward shift in the trade union The resolution presented by the Organising Committee linked that shift to the all round attacks on the working class and centrally to the question of wage control.

FOCUS

The conference was thus. first and foremost an attempt to focus on the whole range of attacks on the working class and provide a clear political programme around which these attacks could be fought.

The Red Weekly report concludes with the observation that the recall conference "could be of considerable. use in allowing militants to discuss their experiences of fighting for the action programme adopted by the conference"

It is to be hoped that the experience of some struggles by the IMG for that programme will be brought in a serious fashion, along with, perhaps, some people, to the recall conference.

The first thing which needs to be said about the ICL's intervention is that, unlike the IMG, their amendment was submitted seriously through a trade union branch.

Both in their contribution to the conterence and in their report in their paper Workers Action, the ICL attacked the assessment in the Conference resolution that the central development in the working class over the next period will be the cracking of the pay code:

...to declare that this, and by implication only this, is going to happen, leaves you unprepared for equally possibie happenings." (Workers Action, No 34).

Two points need to be made here. It is not the job of revolutionaries to wait for "possible happenings"

The Organising Committee resolution was based on actual real life events which have taken place -the UCATT conference vote, the miners ballot and the seamen's pay settlement.

The assessment of the rightward shift by the bureaucracy was likewise based on unprecedented moves against those who have sought to defend the interests of workers -the attack on trades councils, the removal of Hull docks stewards' credentials, the victimisation of four Leyland stewards at Cowley.

The conference was organised to begin a fight back. What has the ICL done to organise a fight back!

Secondly, it is simply not true that the conference was blinkered on wages. The resolution provided the beginnings of a programme to fight all attacks including the cuts in the social services.

Indeed, emergency resolutions were passed in support of the November 17th anti-cuts demonstration and the struggle in defence of jobs at Export Packing Services, Banbury.

In short, the Organising_ Committee of the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement has shown itself ready and willing to throw its weight behind sections of workers involved in a wide range of struggles.

X.M., Coventry.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Vodacady 17h Noveraber 1976