Meetings Call to Phase Two

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PAPER OF THE WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE Break Stage Il of the Social Contract now! Support those sections currently taking action against wage control such as the Leyland toolmakers! Don't be diverted by the Stalinists who oppose the current strikes and call instead for a TUC vote for free collective bargaining after July!

Prepare to fight for the leadership of a mass movement which is emerging against the policies of the Labour government by firstly developing a programme appropriate to those struggles and then turning those sections of workers who are in struggle towards that Those were the points rammed home by Alan Thornett, a candidate in the election for General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union in a series of meetings in the past two weeks organised by the Campaign for Democracy In Move- memocracy in the Labaur MoreSheffield, Hull, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Newcastle.

CENTRALITY

Supporting the perspectives of the CDLM he pointed out at the well attended meetings that the Campaign Organising Committee had recognised the centrality of the wages issue to all the policies of the Labour government.

From that standpoint they were able to confront the issue in the Summer and Autumn of last year when no other tendency on the left was prepared to do so, starting from the conviction that the working class would not accept Stage Il and that by the end of the year struggles would emerge against it.

The Wages and Democracy Conference called by the Committee last October, he said, had orovided an essential forum in which an advanced layer of workers could discuss the necessary programme and the problems of leadership which would confront workers when the mass movement emerged.

The connection had been powerfully drawn between the bureaucratic imposition of wage control and the wholesale attachs on trade union democracy which were taking place.

Thornett emphasised that the Recall Conference to be held on March 27th would mark a new stage in the struggle for leadership.

Unlike the first Conference, it would not be confined to the level of discussion.

CONTRIBUTION

*The opportunity now existed to draw into the Conference workers now on strike against the employers, the government and the trade union bureaucracy.

The Conference was poised to make a contribution in real terms in providing programme and perspective to current strikes which threaten the Social Contract and the government.

The programme to be discussed by the Conference is contained within Alan Thornett's election address.

No other candidate had presented a perspective for the mobilisation of the working class.

In a meeting of the TGWU Central London branch, addressed by seven of the fifteen candidates the election, Thornett challenged John Cousins and John Miller-two of the five bureaucrats maind bon tendeapitalis state af they were for breaking Stage II now and if they supported the toolmakers.

Miller in a demagogic speech refused even to mention either point, simply talking in general about his "opposition" to the Social Contract.

Cousins, living in a complete dream world, said that he supported the toolmakers and was for breaking Stage Il now.

He then said he did not think it was a particularly relevant question because Stage I had been broken so many times that it no longer existed.

It was clear to the meeting that for the vast majority of the working class who not only oppose the Social Contract but suffer under it every day that Cousins offers no alternative and the vote must be for Alan Thornett.

Thornett essey's From Page One. vision of production out of the hands of the managementappointed foremen and • women supervisors. Instead a factory committee must be elected from the workforce to organise When Plessey then move to cut off payment or supplies, the factory committee must take the lead in organising the full-scale occupation of the factory.

The central demand of the occupations must be that Plessey's be forced to open their books to these elected trade union committees. This will show the case for the firm to be nationalised, under workers' management, if these, ation are to be saved, and a system of work-sharing with no loss of pay implemented.

Press. I would like..... issues, I enclose I NAME. .

ADDRESS

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