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 In the daily struggle to take the demands and principles of Trotsky's Transitional Programme into the trade unions, the WL has been at the 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 only alternative to Jones' 16 pay plan and the wholesale acceptance of redundancies by the bureaucracy. In today's fight against the TUC's 44% pay cutting deal with Healey this demand for a siding 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 NHS spending, for the start of workers' control of the service the night to end a pinate proof more an are l the growing call for strike action to defend the NHS against the cuts and to dership eno substpole the words fothe action. fighting those like the ASTMS and NUPE • In London this policy has already won a big response with the one-day action against the closure of the Blizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital - when 2,000 hospital workers in the area struck and 400 marched to •In local disputes also, SL comrades have tested and developed the demands of the Transitional Programme, putting forward in every case tor on open ho book to mand in the motor industry anD agstnet ale forms of "workers' participation" have won mass responses.

At the same time we have put forward a policy to fight unemployment, calling for unity of employed and unemployed through transitional demands, going beyond mere trade union montanen to pose • 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 Transitional 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 At a London press conference last week the American Socialist Workers Party gave details of the large numbers of documents which their lawyers have recently prised from the files of the CIA.

Their lawsuits are directed against the illegal harrassment and surveillance of the SWP, their youth movement, the Young Socialist Alliance, and the organisations of the so-called "United Secretariat of the Fourth International' (with which the SWP is in political sympathy) in other countries by agencies of the US government.

The documents from the CIA files - in most cases heavily expurgated - like those earlier released from the files of the FBI, reveal years of illegal activity against the SWP as an organisation and its individual members and leaders.

lobby MPs against the cuts.

BURGLARIES The CIA carried out burglaries of SWP members while they were abroad (the FBI evidently being in charge of those on Us soil, infiltrated it with informers, collab- the fight to mobilise the trade union movement. orated widely with the intelligence services of other 'democratic' capit- The WSL is the only movement that alist states in receiving and supply- the political issues to workers. ing information about the SWP and other left wing political organisations, opened the mail of SWP Stalinists and right-wing. members, bugged their telephones and premises.

Moreover it is clear that these illegal activities continued after - rebuild the Trotskyist Fourth International. in early 1974 - the CIA gave a public undertaking these activities would not continue.

There can be no shadow of a doubt that they continue to this day - but under conditions made more difficult by every political and legal blow struck by those in join our fight in the labour movement. the labour movement against the CIA and their ilk.