Sparks Demand Action

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The struggle of local authority electricians for parity with subcontractors entered a new phase last week. A national meeting of shop stewards and area officials of the Electrical Electronic Telecommunication and Plumbing Union took place on 12th April, at the Kenilworth Hotel in London. It showed the strong feeling of electricians from every part of the country for the expansion and intensification of their industrial action, together with the determination of the EETPU leadership to nead an all-out struggle.

Since the break-down of talks with the employers in the previous week, rank and file action in suppos of the claim has been stepped up. London electricians, for example, have begun a work to rule which ob liges them to use public transport in order to get to their jobs. Elsewhere, such as Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham, there have been complete stoppages, though the union leaders ordered the electricians at the Woolwich ferry back to work after they had been out for two weeks.

The clear purpose of the London meeting was to hold back demands from the membership for an all-out national stoppage. Peter Adams, EEPTU national officer, told the meeting that action should be increased only where possible'. He said that the support of other unions, such as NALGO, had been obtained. ut he failed to clarify what form such support would take. Union General Secretary Frank Chapple turned up to attempt to explain that it was impossible to organise any national action since some local authorilies were paying more than the contractors rate, and in any case, the Union "did not have the money" to pay strikers for more than about six weeks.

These statements showed that the .eaders of the EEPTU are embarking on the same road of betrayal as leaders of other local authority workers The T&GWU officials refused to mobilise the entire union against the breaking of the Glasgow dustcart strike by troops. At Ringway Auport in Manchester, there was also a refusal to extend the action when the conditions of all local authority workers were threatened.

Militant statements at the London meeting reflected a very different feeling in the rank and file. However the extended action that was agreed at the meeting will only be dissipated and the union leadership allowed to sell out if the action is not linked to a programme to strengthen the demands and develop the fight for workers control. As shop stewards from the Workers Socialist League pointed out to the meeting, only Suspicions are rising in Cowley that Reg Birch, the Maoist joint general secretary of the AUEW, has agreec to accept the latest British Leyland pay offer on behalf of members in the BLMC Body and Assembly Plants.

This same offer has already been rejected by AUEW memben in both plants, and includes a clause which says that the deal "settles all outstanding claims" on behalf of the union, thus abandoning the claims of mechanical maintenance men in the Assembly Plant and several sectional claims in the Body Plant. In exchange the company a policy which includes work sharing without loss of wages, anc a sliding scale tied to the cost of living as determined by trade unionists, will ensure that the living standards of the men in dispute are safeguarded and improve Furthermore, the expansion of public worke linked to abolition altogether of private contracting for local authority work is an essential step in the defence of jobs and conditions.

The workers at Leeds and Glasgow who have been out for well over ten weeks in this and a related dispute know that, however important their isolated action, it will not in itself be enough to win their aims, unless it is immediately expanded into a nation-wide stoppage, with the full support of other local authority unions, including NOPE and staff associations.

CONT'D FROM PAGE serted as a red herring by the Wilson leadership to pave the way for remaining in the capitalist EEC.We are also opposed to all nationalist opposition to the Market, such as the Get Britain Out Campaign*, whose meetings are uncritically reported in the Communist Party's paper Morning Star. But we will give critical support to Heffer and to any left MPs who take up the struggle to bring the PLP under the control of Labour Party Conference: and to replace Wilson as Party leader At the same time we give our suppor to all independent campaigns organised Labour movement against the Common Market.

Such struggles can only politically strengthen the working class by exposing both the class collaboratior of the right wing icadership and the theoretical confusion and spinelessness of many of those MPs who like to parade themselves as "lefts'. Heffer's reluctance to fight his dismissal reflects the formlessness and lack of political perspective of these lefts which renders them impotent in the face of the right wing. As Trotsky wrote in 1926:

"This can be explained by the fact that a party cannot confine itself to isolated left campaigns but is compelled to have an overall system of policy. The lefts have no such system nor by their very essence can they. But the rights do: with OR C1