What Lies Behind Img Opportunism?

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BIONAL INDONNE U ARCH AGAINST THE, BENYON | Heron steward factory.

most uni ¡participa increased *A bad workman blames his ¡ools" , goes the old adage. But how should we describe a for his trade and instead picks up the first implement that comes to hand - like a mechanic tuning an engine with a mallet?

This is the kind of question we must confront when we look at the atest gyrations of the International Marxist Group as shown in the bevy if wrong and opportunist positions Which fill the February 3rd edition bi Red Weekly.

There are too many blunders pere, on too wide a range of issues, lor them to be ascribea si mply to a series of mistakes"

METHOD They are linked by an unde!lying wrong method of analysis which has disorientated the IMG at this point of rapid sharpening of the class struggle in Britain. The IMG has set aside the scalpel of Marxist analysis for the hatchet pf vulgar impressions.

For example, in a week in which the wages struggle has come to the forefront even in the bourgeois press, and a whole range of industries have been convulsed by a continuing series of strikes by workers in many cases defying their Junion officials, the IMG parliamenitary candidate for the Birmingham Stechford by election, Brian Heron, itells bemused Red Weekly readers in an exclusive interview that:

"The present retreat (!) exists because many workers, even mılitant workers, don't see any alternative to the Social Contract."

STEWARD

is referred to as a shop at Leyland's Longbridge The convener there is Derek Robinson - foreon advocate of the Ryder tion' scheme and productivity.

And in the very week that Heron was interviewed, workers all around him in that factory were voting by an 800 majority to defy a stewards' recommendation for acceptance and throw out a proposed 'fringe benefit' deal which included savage penalty clauses.

The deal had been cooked up by Leyland management with assistance from Robinson and the appointed 'Ad Hoc' committee of collaborating Leyland conveners.

Its rejection, throwing into question the credibility of Robinson and the whole 'Ad Hoc' committee, opens up the chance of a real struggle in Leyland for new leadership.

The feeling was building up on the shop floor which was to erupt in the massive spontaneous strike and demonstration by 5,000 Longbridge workers as Jones, Scanlon and Varley arrived on the plant for talks on productivity.

Yet Heron nowhere refers either to the question of working class leadership or even once to the Longbridge struggles. He puts no programme to direct these forces.

Instead, ostrich-like, ignoring the tumult and feeling around him, he doggedly insists that class is on the retreat.

But it is not just Heron. Whenever IMG members find themselves in industrial situations they seem to lose all sense of direction. Another example is the IMG members and supporters in Rovers, who have fallen into an even worse trap.

It is well known that the principle strategic objective of British Leyland management since they managed to force in Measured Day Work six years ago has been to consolidate that gain into a corporation-wide pay structure, aimed at ending the power of shop floor workers in individual plants.

Leyland would then follow such a victory by proposing a rationalised grading structure to remove contentious areas which can lead to plant-level conflict over wage rates.

So imagine the delight of those who plan Leyland's strategy against the Corporation's 160,000 strong workiorce when they discovered that both these two objectives are called for within a resolution adopted as policy by a full meeting of shop stewards from the 11 Rover factories within British Leyland!

CONTRADICTORY

The resolution laying down these two "demands" is a contradictory one which on the one hand rejects Leyland's notorious 'fringe benefit' proposals, but on the other hand supports one of its main planks - corporation-level bargainingBut what really makes this move amazing is that it now emerges that the motive force behind these two "demands" was not the right-wing or the Stalinists - but the IMG group in Rovers! And the February 3rd : Red Weekly not only carries the resolution in full, but also carries the endorsement of their correspondent Charlie Gallagher.

This is obviously not a considered position of the IMG - indeed it is extremely hard to tell where their leadership stand on this issue -since on the same page of Red Week? appears an article written by an Oxford IMG member which flatly contradicts the line of the Rover IMG group and attacks corporate bargaining.

This second article makes the correct point that the end result of such a wages system is to place all negotiations in the hands of the national officials. Such a fact does not seem to have percolated through to his Rover comrades.

But the logic of corporate bargaining has much wider implications than that. When the IMG comrades argue that corporate bargaining "unites" workers in common struggle they open up a dangerous analogy with the social contract - through which the entire working class is "united" under TUC negotiations with the At the present time corporate bargaining has been thrown out by Leyland workers along with the 'fringe benefits' deal, but management will clearly not settle for that.

Indeed, it looks as if the next battles in Leyland will take place against policies proposed by the TO UNN LUN.

The NAC Tribunal - uncritically backed by IMG This of course is not because the IMG comrades in Rovers are class collaborators. They are simply not aware of the implications of their actions. From the best of motives they wind up blundering into the orientations within the working class is not restricted to individual factories. It extends to the whole of the class struggle. This is why they brush off many of the wage battles that have already broken out as simply disputes over 'differentials FORM OR CONTENT? To see matters in this way is to completely mistake the form of strikers) for the content (the determination of the mass of the working class to find some way of breaking the 4½% pay limit).

This is not new. It is consistent with Red Weekly's assessment of the wages struggle in December, In a paper headlining on the miners early retirement claim, and ridiculously claiming this represents a threat to the social contract; we find this:

"The IMG needs to step up massively the intervention on all questions facing the working class: *Cuts *Women's oppression *Racism *Unemployment" (The Choice is Yours' , Dec. 9th).

So while Gormley's fringe benefit fraud is given some free front page credibility, the real struggle on wages did not even rate a mention in this major fund appeal! Why not?

Let us look at the topics listed.

'ACTION'

The IMG leadership has obviously just taken a superficial glance around to see where the 'action' is (i.e. where the biggest demonstrations are to be found).

They managed to spot the November 17th march on the cuts; the confused ranks of the National Abortion Campaign and the Working Women's Charter; the massive anti-racist marches of 1976; and the certainty of increasing unemployment.

• But, faction' on wages. So they see no left it out.

Lacking any serious industrial cadre or assessment of the real movements within the working class, the IMG are forced to resort to this kind of impressionist method.

And having drawn up their fixed schema for the way the struggle will develop, they are completely thrown when it goes in another direction.

WORSE

But there are worse repercussions from this wrong assessment. In their desperate anxiety to get in on whatever action is taking place on their chosen four topics, the IMG start to water down and drop their programme in the name of "unity"

This has led to a craven capitulation to the Communist Party and the labour bureaucracy by the IMG in their work for the Rally One Year After the Sex Discrimination Act and Equal Pay Act' IMG members. on the Rally Planning Committee backed a motion to exclude putting a position on the social contract and the role of the present leadership of the working class - leaving the field free for 'left' talking Stalinists, Labour MPs and union officials to participate.

And at the same time the IMG has given enthusiastic praise to the National Tribunal for Abortion Mandel

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SOCIALIST PRESS. Wednesdar 16th Febrat. 19.7

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workman who throws aside the specialised tools designed

worst possib i polis incompetence at guaging movements and tactical