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Last Friday officials of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions in Sheffield agreed to reopen talks with Edgar Allen Balfour Sheffield where over 400 have been given redundancy notices.

With the unions in a strong position following the half-day strike two weeks ago which stopped most of Shettield engineering, and with the whole workforce of the Edgar Allen Balfour group still out on strike to defend these jobs, the Confed's decision to negotiate with management is a clear retreat.

SELL OUT

Previously the Confed had rightly insisted there could be no negotiations until the redundancy notices were withdrawn.

To negotiate now when not one concession has been made by management çlearly is a preparation for a seli-out.

'Right from the start the Communist Party have resisted extending the strike. They have issued no call for the occupation of the Capital Tool Works. Nor have they even mentioned nationalisation of the employer to defend the jobs.

The one IS member, Clive Hartley, Secretary of the Strike Committee, has not openly fought the Stalinists; playing down the question of nationalisation and arguing solely for a one-day rather than the 4-hour stoppage and for an overtime ban.

With short time being worked in many Sheffield factories, the demand for an overtime ban is no more than a protest action.

In line with the moyes towards a sell-ouT, the local press, wren nas scarcely reported the strike, is now starting a "back to work' campaign These developments clearly show that the policies of the CP present a grave threat to the strike.

The workers have rejected all attempts by the Confed to deal with management behind their backs and maintained the fight to defend all jobs.

Negotiations with management must be called off and an occupation of Capital Tool Works (due to close this week) organised at once.

The demand must be for the defence of all jobs through work sharing on full pay and the nationalisation of the entire firm under workers' management.

The Confed nationally must be forced to call strike action and the District brought out in full supporting action.

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Is in the election for TGWU General Secretary have he address by Alan Thornett for whom we urge all PAPER OF THE WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE SPAIN given a free detainees indef charge following apparently let that he had that.

If that is actions could directed to e some form of over.

And. physical regime I€ over the weeks.

Given ITAIN Bues.

issues 24 issues.

The election addresses of the candid issued by the union. We reprint belo At the last Biennial Delegate Conference (our union's highest body) I moved two motions on wages. One rejected wage control, the other called tor substantial wage increases plus cost of living clauses tied to a union compiled price index to protect against inflation. I argued that inflation is rooted not in wages but in the contradictions and dislocations of capitalism internationally, over which workers have no. control.

Jack Jones and his supporters presented the opposite view that wage control would beat inflation. Yet employers are demanding not only lower wages but price increases, resulting in a higher rate of inflation in Britain today than before wage controls were introduced.

Unions were • built at great sacrifice to improve not destroy the wages and conditions of the working class. But now living standards are substantially reduced, not by employers or Tories, but by TUC leaders, working with the Labour government. Who do these leaders represent!

The Biennial Delegate Conference accepted the social contract subject to eight stringent conditions including lower unemployment, , massive public spending increases, and strict price controls. None of these conditions was fulfilled, yet the General Executive Council used that vote as authority to cast the union's hand to hold nitely without the murder in Madrid of three policemen, once more it was claimed, by "GRÅPO".

This has given the green light to a wave of arrests of hunc Ireds of members of illegal trade ur lions and left wing political groups over the last few days.

The nature of "GRAPO" is a mystery. It is described as the multary arm or ine "keconstItuted Communist Party of Spain"

There is growing evidence, however, that the group may in fact be a bunch of ultra-right Drovacateurs. A Cabinet Minister slip to a journalist evidence to prove true, "GRAPO"s be part of a plan asing the way for direct military takeit is the army • - the power on which the ists - which has loomed events of the last two the political weakness LEAGUE Public Meeting AYLESBURY THE FIGHT AGAINST THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Wednesday 9th February at 7.30 The Plough and Harrow Stoke Rd, Aylesbury.

PRESS .24 I would like Press. I wou NAME....

ADDRESS. SOCIALIST : to take out a subscription to S Id like.....issues, I enclose I 1.8 million votes in favour of the five per cent pay limit. The majority of members, who in my judgement are against wage controls, were not consulted.

This is symptomatic of a general trend in our union - the increasing influence of appointed officials who often support the employers, while the hard-won power of elected shop stewards and members is eroded. Plant bargaining is replaced by corporation-wide agreements. Participation in management and the check-off are also eroding the independence of our union from the employers.

This trend must be reversed and power restored to the membership, with all full-time officials made subject to regular election and paid the average wage of their members. Fee-paying "QUANGO" committees in Union time must be ended and ballot procedures reorganised to prevent corruption.

The direction of the TGWU must change from the class compromise epitomised by Bro. Jones' "Year of the Beaver" speech, to defence of the interests of the working class.

I therefore oppose the social contract and all cuts in public spending. I call for the opening of the books of employers who declare redundancies or closure and support occupations demanding work sharing on full pay to maintain jobs. am for the the post-Franco regime, sections of the ruling class see the only avenue for the re-stabilisation of fascist rule in a takeover of power by the military.

Such a move would inevitably land the regime in a new Civil War, It would only be taken as a last resort.

But a measure of the desperation of the ruling class is the growth of rumours last week of an impending seizure of direct rule by the army.

Behind the soothing official denials lies the evident fact that many sections of the military hierarchy would like to take this step now.

The extraordinary public slanging match between senior military officers over the graves of the dead policemen is a clear proof of this. The working class movement has shown through its actions over many months that its strength poses an immediate and lethal threat to Spanish fascism.

But at the same time the events of the last ten days have placed the working class in the gravest danger.

The policies of the main workers' parties stand in stark WORKERS SOCIAI LEAGUE Public Meeting WINSFORD AGAINST WAGE CONTROL Sunday 13th February at 7.30 Wheatsheaf Hotel EUROPE 6 issues. .15 12 issues .30 24 issues. .60 now been TGWU readers nationalisation of any employer who refuses these demands and for the removal of Callaghan and Healey by left MPs who must form a government which will support these demands.

All racial discrimination must be actively opposed and the wages and conditions of women workers improved. Politically I support the policies of the Workers' Socialist League and stand for ending capitalism and establishing socialism.

I have 17 years' TGWU membership, 14 years a shop steward, seven years deputy convenor of a large car plant, four years Midlands Regional Committee and Oxford District Committee. I am chairman of the No. 5/293 Branch.

More than two weeks after the TGWU agreed to national blacking of Trust House Forte Hotels in support of hotels on strike for • unionL LI LUE recognition in Sheffield and Oxford, the strike-bound members are still waiting for action.

The strike at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford is also crucial to an identical strike at the Linton Lodge Hotel there, aithough this is not owned by THF.

The action was delayed to opposition to those needed overcome this peril In conditions where the working class and its allies require a policy of complete independence, the CP and the Socialist Party tie it not only to class collaborationist "opposition" alliances such as the Platform of the Democratic Opposition • but also to the fascist government itself.

In last week's major crisis in the struggle of the working class for democracy and socialism, the policies of the fascist state and of the Communist Party were virtually identical.

When the working class needs to wage an integrated fight on economic and political issues, the CP and Socialist Party leaders insist on their separation.

They totally oppose the policies (such as the sliding scale of wages and hours or nationalisation) which are essential to resist the economic attacks of Spanish capitalism.

They know that, given the economic crisis, the capitalist class can afford to grant only token steps towards free trade unions and other democratic rights.

It cannot afford to allow trade union rights to be used to gain higher wages or prevent redundancies.

The CP, therefore, has been ready to compromise on even the meeting making it plant.

Faced being in LEYLAND ........ From Page - was the reflection of the feeling on the shop floor.

In the Cowley Body Plant a mass meeting of 5,000 production workers followed their almost unanimous vote to reject the deal with demands for the resignation of the leadership.

And in the Assembly Plant, extreme right wing convenor Reg Parsons moved acceptance of the proposals in opposition to the shop stewards recommendation of rejection on the basis of the penalty clauses.

The shop stewards motion was carried with a big abstention -but then workers moved beyond the position taken by the stewards.

A mass demand was voiced for a motion of "total rejection" as against the stewards' motion which left a loop hole for a possible revised document in the future.

Parsons ignored these calls, announced that the decision was final, switched off the amplifiers and attempted to end the meeting.

The result was uproar. The refused to disperse, impossible to restart the with this situation (and favour of "continuous allow talks to take place, but after an initial approach from ACAS there has been dead silence from the union officials.

Workers at the hotels, some of them nnw in their third month of LIVLA IVY JI LIVL LILLIl JIVILLI VI struggle are demanding a quick end to this delay.

Union officials and the matter has now reached the supreme bureaucrat Jack Jones -must either show some quick results from talks or put the national blacking on immediately.

Only their prevarication now blocks a complete victory in all three hotels.

Spanish workers demonstrate most elementary democratic demands such as "amnesty', freedom for non-fascist political parties and trade unions, and the setting up of a constituent assembly.

The rulers have no intention of granting these rights in any real sense and the CP has based its whole policy not on what the working class needs but on what the ruling class is willing to concede.

In the hands of the Stalinist and reformist leaders these democratic demands have thus become, cratic nookse fastened to the neck of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie's agents"

It is plain from the present crisis that there is no peaceful way to achieve any of these demands in Spain today.

The fight for democracy must, therefore, be taken up in the context of a struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of the rascist government, m which Carrillo and co. have such complete confidence, along with all its repressive apparatus.

At the top of the list of policies for the workers' movement must be placed the building of armed self-defence - against the fascist gangs and against the police and army, which themselves supply the bulk of personanesaay zna production") the right-wing were forced to concede to the mass demand for a second vote - a increasingly supplemented being demand which was demands for the resignation of the leadership and for votes of no confidence.

The meeting was reopened and the motion for total rejection was voted almost unanimously and with great enthusiasm.

The force of the vote throughout Leyland Cars - only one factory, Lianelli has voted in favour - has discredited and exposed the Ad Hoc Committee.

But already dangerous moves are being made which could give them a second throw.

Shop stewards from the Rover plants - while rejecting the document - have advanced alternative proposals which embrace the main element of management policy.

They call for corporate bargaining ("democratra lit controlled"!) arguing that provides the basis of "unity" of the working class; for a new grading structure to abolish unjust differentials; and for a substantial wage increase after July when the present pay policy comes to an end.

Apart from being completely in line with management policy this resolution accepts completely Stage Two of the Social Contract.

It is in line also with the recent statement of Peter Nicholas, Stalinist convenor of the Rover stewards who has called for "free collective bargaining after July, but no breakaway claims now"

the This resolution sketches likely terrain for battle in the forthcoming 1 meeting of the combine committee. Like the fringe benefit document it lust be fought and defeated.

*FOOTNOTE 800 BLMC workers on the Marina in the Cowley Body Plant voted unanimously on Monday to strike and not to meet again until Friday.

The strike is a manning strike in defence of "mutuality" on manning. The company declared last week that they would run the Marina lines without union agree. ment at new speeds with the company's manning.

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Socialist Press Monthly Fund 31, Dartmouth Park Hill London NWS 1HR of the terror gangs.

Self-defence is essential; but it must be combined with an offensive political strategy in which the overwhelming strength and courage of the working class are mobilised in an indefinite general strike to bring down the fascist government and establish a workers' government.

The British labour movement can give material aid to this struggle - through a boycott of all trade, especially that in arms for the fascist state, between Spain and Britain.

To implement this policy requires a struggle against the reformist leadership in Britain parallel to that against Stalinism and reformism in Spain.

The Labour government's diplomacy every day helps to give credibility to the supposedly "reformist" intentions of the Spanish police state.

Jack Jones and Len Murray on a recent visit to Spain echoed the line of the Spanish "opposition" leaders that "The Civil War is over"

Last week's events demonstrated that the Civil War threatens to begin again. Now, as in the 1930's, it is only the policies Stalinists and reformists, like Carrillo and Jones, which prevent the working class from being victorious.

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management over the closure of their Capital Tool Works in