Swp-blowing in the Wind

Scan page 7

coverage-and therefore the Communist Party's approach-it is clear that the only aspect of the strike they supported was the move towards corporate bargaining.

The CP supports the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions' plans for corporate bargaining. In addition the Confed's own position was not just against the toolroom workers but against all strikes.

DIVISIVE

The Communist Party, in describing the Confed meeting as an important step forward, then supports this position of opposing all strikes in Leyland or against Phase II as being divisive and a diversion from persuading the TUC to persuade the government to end wage control.

In short the role of the Communist Party today is to defend the trade union bureaucracy.

On March 5 the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) argued in their paper, Socialist Worker, that the toolroom strike was about three things.

1. Against the renewal of the Social Contract in August.

2. For parity.

3. For the right to negotiate now deal for when Phase II ends.

To say the toolroom dispute only concerned Phase III is to ignore the feeling on wages which lay behind the strike-a feeling so strong and sharp that it resulted in the greatest humiliation any trade union official has ever suffered.

All this merely for something in August?

On the contrary, the support the toolroom workers received could have led to a widespread strike against the Social Contract now.

In the same issue as the SWP give support to the toolroom workers they carry a truly amazing uncritical account of the conference of the Stalinist-dominated Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions-a body which on the last occasion it met physically bounced the SWP (then still called the International Socialists) out of the meeting!

Now the LCDTU is "the most important unofficial rank and file conference for years"

Their comment on the Stalinist Derek Robinson, AUEW convener at Longbridge, was that he was "facing several ways at once. He was against criticising Jones and Scanlon. But he was also leading the campaign to destroy the policies that they had forced on the movement"

This is an incredible statement when you consider that Robinson and the Communist Party argued in the Morning Star that the toolroom strike was divisive.

The SWP's comment on the so-called divisiveness of the strike is correct. They point out that it is a spearhead for other struggles. However their memories are very short.

The tuners' dispute in Leyland which similarly challenged the government's pay policy in 1975 was described in Socialist Worker at the time as being-divisive!

The IS/SWP are blown as ever by the winds of the moment.