T&g Ballot Ote Thorne

Scan page 10

Their sole recommendations are a refusal to undertake extra work caused by management's refusal to fill vacancies, and the imposition of overtime bans where redundancies are proposed.

This is smothered over by a 10,000-word report which recommends "selective import controls" and the "repatriation of profits" made by British subsidiary capitalist firms overseas - hinting that this might save jobs in the axed social services!

These nationalist and thoroughly reactionary policies are those of the Communist Party and of the Tribune Group of MPs - who have advocate them in the trade union and labour movement.

NALGO'S 600,000 members must be united with the mass membership of NUPE and other unions in the public sector in all-out strike action to stop the cuts, and force the restoration of public spending to the 1973 level plus a lump sum to offset inflation.

Jobs and services must then be defended by the demand that public expenditure be automatically increased to keep up with increased costs as worked out by elected trade union committees with full access to the accounts and plans of the public authorities. cuts - whilst dodging, amending or opposing any motion calling for action.

At a West Midlands District meeting Jack Bradburn, Midlands NEC member, gave a classic example of this technique. He spoke glowingly in support of a motion from the Birmingham Branch which "deplored" the cuts - but felt we should not accept the part that called for NALGO to withdraw from the TUC-Labour Party agreement.

And it is along these lines that the NEC will move on January 14th to oppose all motions calling for strike action.

At its meeting in December the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement decided to support and to campaign for Alan Thornett in the forthcoming ballot for the position of General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union.

Thornett, who has been nominated by the 5/293 Branch at the Cowley BLMC Assembly Plant has a long record of struggle in the T&GWU. Joining the union in 1961 he was rapidly elected shop steward for the Transport Department in the factory, a position he holds today, and to which he has been constantly reelected for the past 14 years.

Having led many struggles for wages and conditions not only on the Transport section but in the plant as a whole (serving for seven years as Deputy Convenor), Thornett was central to the struggle against Measured Day Work, which culminated in a six week strike against its introduction into the tactory.

He also played a key role in the actions against anti-union legislation - both the Labour government's 'In Place of Strife' and the Tory Industrial Relations Act.

• In 1974 Thornett led the struggle against work study and for mutually agreed work effort. During this fight he was victimised by management who withdrew recognition from him when his section struck : in defence of an agreement.

Having been removed from office as deputy convenor by Thornett T&GWU officials, Thornett was subjected to a massive witch-hunt in the national press, and forced to run for reelection under impossible conditions.

This had the effect of removing him not only from the deputy convenor position and from chairmanship of the 5/55 Branch (which was bureaucratically split by T&GWU officials) but also from the Midlands Regional Committee on which he had sat for four years.

With the bankruptcy of British Leyland, Thornett led the light in Cowley to establish a trade union "open the books committee" to investigate the financial state of the company on behalf of the workforce.

He also led a principled struggle against the introduction of SO-called 'participation' and has since been elected chairman of the Joint Shop Stewards Committee and of the 5/293 T&GWU Branch at Cowley.

On the basis of Thornett's principled record and his consistent fight for a programme to defend the working class not only on the shop floor but at the Biennial Delegate Conference of the T&GWU, Socialist Press endorses the decision of the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement to support him in the election, and will campaign in his support against the group of top bureaucrats vying to be the continuator of the right-wing collaborationist and completely bureaucratic policies of the current General Secretary, Jack Jones.