The Workers Socialist League

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The Workers Socialist League is a Trotskyist organisation fighting to build a revolutionary leadership in the working class in opposition to the betrayals of both "left" and right wing Labour and trade union leaders and the Communist (rans the naily trage to ta the rade unions, the si has been at ye 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 redundancies by the bureaucracy. Inlanday then againste a pts 4e o 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 WSL comrades have led the struggle for a sliding scale of NIS spending, for the start of workers' control of the service (beginning with opening the books of the Health Authorities), along with the fight to end all private practice. Perhaps more important we have led the growing call for strike action to defend the NHS against the cuts and to implement these policies, fighting those like the ASTMS and NUPE 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 Elizabetn Garrett Anderson Hospital - When 2,000 hospital workers in the area struck and 400 marched to In local disputes also, WSI comrades have tested and developed the demands oi 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 unempioyment, calling for unity of empioyed and unemployed through 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 of Trotsky's Transitionai Programme, there has been a consistent drive to deepen and enrich the movement's understanding of the history 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 agree on the need for revolutionary leadership and the demands we put forward to find out more about the WL and large firms and the generous encouragement of Libyan capitalists. "socialist" People's National Party (PNP) won 48 out of the 60 seats in Jamaica's mid-December general election.

This landslide victory followed months of political violence initiated by Edward Seaga's rightwing Jamaica Labour Party -probably helped by veteran "destabilizer" Norman Descotéaux who (Philip Agee has revealed) arrived to head the CIA mission last December.

The Financial Times, like other capitalist papers, presented the election as "a straight choice between a capitalist or a socialist adminstration"

There is certainly no doubt that, despite its links with the Bustamente Industrial Trade Union, the Labour Party is the party of the banks, capitalists and landowners.

FOUNDATION

In this respect it has chan iged little since its foundation by Sir Alexander Bustamente in after his political split with his cousin Norman Manley.

Manley at that time was the leading figure of both the PNP and the trade union federation later to become the TUC.

In 1952 Manley expelled the "left" and established the National Workers' Union which is now the PNP's trade union base.

It was in this split that Prime Minister, Michael Manley. cut his sharp political teeth.

As a budding trade union bureaucrat he became the leading hatchet man in the merciless campaign of political destruction Gadaffi launched by his father's right leadership clique against the left-wing of the movement.

Manley's PNP today describes itself as "anti-imperialist" and "democratic socialist" . But the international links most assiduously cultivated by the PNP are not the much publicised diplomatic and technical aşsistance contacts with Castro's Cuba but those with the so-called "Socialist International" led by Callaghan, Schmidt, Soares and their coterie of traitors to the working class.

COMMON Jamaica's "socialist" programme over the last four years has a lot in common with the policies of these other so-called "socialists".

Manley has revoked the infamous strike-breaking Essential Services Law and Masters. and Servants Act; but he has replaced it with the Labour Relations and Arbitration Act and the Termination of Employment Act which impose controls on unions reminiscent of Barbara Castle's proposed "reforms" of 1969.

Though this legislation gives some new rights to strike in the public services, it still defines some strikes as illegal and authorises fines or prison sentences on workers involved in them.

Manley has "nationalised" sections of the sugar and bauxite (aluminium ore), industries, the mainstays of Jamaica's economy.

COMPENSATION

But "nationalisation" (similar IO that in Zambia and other countres) takes the form of 51% government ownership with ful London and an industrial capitalist in Turin has not yet been explained. and generous compensation the international capitalists who continue to manage the firms on well-paid contracts.

All this is very • far from socialism. Miçhael Manley himself remains as much an obstacle to socialism in Jamaica as he did in 1952.

It is not fears of what he wants Manley to do which have prompted CIA's "destabilisation" plans.

What the US is afraid of are the masses of Jamaican workers and peasants who voted for the PNP.

In massive demonstrations they applauded Manley's increasingly anti-imperialist words and will now be expecting them to be translated into some sort of action to put an end to pitifully low wages, ghetto ho'sing conditions, 25% unemployment and the oppression of Jamaica by imperialism. lobby MPs against the cuts.

the üight to mobilise the trade union movement.

The WSL is the only movement that fights consistently for transitional demands, going beyond mere trade union militancy to pose the political issues to workers.

Stalinists and right-wing.

rebuild the Trotskyist Fourth International.

join our fight in the labour movement.

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Page 4 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday Sth January, 197?

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