Gandhi's Ship Flounders
Socialist Press1977 1977-02-16Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 1 →
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Against all predictions, especially her own, Indira -Ghandi is losing the Indian election campaign.
Her reason for calling it was to try to clothe her dictatorship in some kind of 'democratic' respectability. Everything was planned so that the election should be little more than a formality; a few opposition leaders were released from jail but thousands more remain inside. -By springing a quick election, Gandhi hoped to leave the opposition parties unable effectively.
EXPERIENCE But in fact the best organiser the opposition has is the masses' experience of Indira Gandhi's oppressive and arbitrary rule.
The success of the opposition in the campaign is certainly not due to its own merits. The main opposition party, the Janata Party, is, as Gandhi herself says, a 'hotch potch of opposing creeds and ideologies' from social democrats to ultra right-wing Hindu nationalist fanatics.
Janta hasn't a single policy except opposition to Gandhi's rule. Yet this has been enough to secure huge attendance at Janata rallies. Indira Gandhi's own rallies have been smaller and disrupted by opposition. On one occasion last week she was forced to aban don her speech.
The detection of Agriculture Minister Ram to the side of the Cont'd two increase of 5% sold to them by Derek Robinson.
TO FIGHT When these workers call for an end to the social contract now they are therefore calling for a fight to improve on the 5% deal and break down the TUC pay limit, with a view to restoring free collective bargaining.
It is with a view to stemming this movement, the real threat to the social contract, that leading TUC figures have now weighed in with statements defending continued wage control.
These leaders include 'left' talking NUPE General Secretary Alan Fisher - his membership ravaged by public spending cuts embodied in the social contract, UPW leader Tom Jackson (fresh from signing away his members" right to strike, and publicly opposed to Leyland workers on low pay, whic *increased their resistance to pror uctivity"
And in British Leyland, which planning (through the participatio machinery to impose speed up t double the average output per worke any resistance to increased produ tivity is a danger.
Cont'd Back Pagi