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Since our last issue we have received £202.61 towards the £3,000 Special Fund making a total to date of £1323.21. We have only ten weeks to raise the outstanding £1700 so no time must be lost in taking up the fight for this finance which is essential to our plans to launch the weekly We want to be well past the half way mark by the time we next go to press. Meanwhile, our thanks to the following for donations received: Winsford £10; Oxford bookshop workers £2; R.B. £13; Cowley car workers £30.60; R.E. £5; East London £13; South London £20; P.C. £15; K.V. £5; Hackney £26.13; Sheffield £20; Oxford £28.

Our regular Monthly Fund has got off to a better start this month with a total so far of £321.06. But there is no room for complacency. Every effort must be made to ensure that the full amount is collected.

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PAPER OF THE WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE ITAIN Biles . issues issues LIVING STANDARDS. ..Cr with the CBI, Healey will back employers in their fight to hold Jown wages.

And from the union bureaucracy will come continual stalling the watering down of legitimate ¿laims, the sabotage of official unofficial action and unceasing efforts to shackle the working class to the requirements of a crisis-ridden capitalist system.

The idea floated by some Labour ministers of using an amended price code to forbid any price increases attributed to wage rises outside the government target shows the perspective of the government.

They intend to use the threat of economic chaos, roaring inflation and mass sackings to intimidate those fighting for wages.

But the Healey-Callaghan policy has one fatal flaw-it satisfies nobody:

*The TUC are unlikely to see in Healey's proposals any chance of cobbling together even the vaguest agreement on wage targets -though they will attempt to uphold the 12 month rule.

*To the mass of union members faced with the constant erosion of living standards, the tax cuts offer no thing.

*And the Tories, together with the ruling class as a whole, clearly have no real confidence in Callaghan's ability to control this latest move by the working class.

But nor are the Tories confident of their own ability to contain the present situation.

MILITANCY

Suddenly aware of the scale of militancy they would confront Socialist Press in October.

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Socialist Press , Park Hill, Lor from the working class on wages and union rights should they topple the Callaghan government, the Tories have encountered obvious divisions within their own ranks.

WILTED

From an all out onslaught on the rights of trade unionists ren days ago, in which nearly every Tory front-bencher was sounding off demands for legislation to restrict picketing, and legal action against the postmen, the Tories have wilted away to the level of Whitelaw's pathetic appeal for Rees to seek a voluntary "code of conduct" on picketing.

Indeed Labour minister Booth, in promising new laws on picketing, now stands to the right of many Tory statements.

Even the extreme right wing within NAFF have descended from threats of civil actions against the Cricklewood postmen to sneaking around the country late at night posting illicit mail.

The Tories had clearly planned to use Grunwicks as a set-piece in their preparations for an all-out bid for power.

FALTERING Yet now they are visibly faltering in these moves and pulling back from any call on the government to resign-even after the disastrous Labour showing in the Saffron Walden by-election.

Thatcher herself issued no call for a general election even at a mass rally of 15,000 Tories in Blenheim last Saturday, showing that the Tories are all too aware issues.

In the wages debate at the TGWU Conference a crucial struggle was carried through both to direct the main attack on the platform and to put forward the demand for a sliding scale of wages as a conscious alternative to wage controls.

RESPONSE

A third of the conference mass response.

Our role in developing the pay struggle is therefore crucial.

As the government wields the threat of raging inflation and chaos, our reply is that wages can only be defended by linking them to the rises in the cost of living, as assessed by elected trade union committees.

Wherever this policy is adopted we advocate the development of prices committees, to establish a cost of living index independent of the biased figures quoted by As struggles for these demands develop, we must aim to draw together the strength of all sections of workers in struggle through the fight for councils of action rooted in this mass movement.

CONFERENCE

In line with this perspective we call for a recall conference of the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement to be convened as soon as possible.

As a block across the path of the struggle to regain and defend living standards comes the Callaghan-Steel government.

We must bring right into the wages struggle the need to remove Healey and Callaghan, the open spokesmen of the ruling class within the labour moment, and PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report to establish a government based on the interests of the working class.

For three months the 'left' Labour MPs have diplomatically refused to acknowledge that the coalition government exists.

Now they have all greeted with approval Healey's proposals for continued wage cuts-fooling themselves that this represents a leftward turn.

In fact the Labour leaders are only moving closer into alliance with the Liberals to throw their weight against the wages struggle.

POSTURE

The Labour "lefts' be prepared to posture on the Grunwick picket line.

But they are not prepared to call for extended postal blacking or in any way develop the independent struggles of the working class, let alone align themselves with the struggle to break the Social Contract and break the coalition government.

There must be a fight both in the trade unions and in the Labour Party for the demand that the Labour "lefts' break from Healey and Callaghan and the coalition government and take Journalists on sti ke at Darlington are still si rviving on the crumbs of verbal support from print union leaders.

Two weeks after NGA officials promised full support to the 108 journalists on strike for a closed shop, the chairman or the TUC's Printing Industries committee, Bill Keyes, has come out with a statement of his own.

"It is my personal view that we have no alternative but to give specific support to the journalists which would escalate the whole thing."

VUJ members' reaction to this statement must be tempered by the knowledge that the only result of NGA 'full backing' guarantee has been less support than before.

It was Bill Keyes too who inflicted a major blow against NUJ morale last week by sabotaging the mass picket that had been called on Friday night to stop the paper.

Up to 1,000 NUJ members, printers and other trade unionists had agreed to attend. Two days before the picket, General Secretary Ken Morgan rang the strikers to say that if they did not call it off he would declare it unofficial, opening it up to mass arrests.

He said that Keyes had told him he did not want another Grunwick.

The result was that all but 150200 of the pickets stayed at home on the night. Leeds alone had IT' needs of the working class.

is maintained. promised 160 trade union members.

The factor that looks like becoming most like Grunwick is the time it is taking the officials to move. Already the strikers have been out for seven weeks.

At 'talks' with Westminster Press last week, the NUJ top officials even agreed that the venue should be kept secret. With Keyes they begged the employers to show them some way out.

But Westminster Press are SO deeply committed to preventing a strong union operațing among their journalists that Keyes will have to stretch ingenuity to breaking point if he is to avoid calling printers at Darlington out on strike when the PIC meets on Friday.

That meeting will no doubt ignore the NUJ members other demand for blacking thro ghout the group of copy written to get round the NUJ action.

LEAKED

In this respect the officials are doing precisely what the employer hopes. A secret document leaked from Westminster Press head office reveals that their main objective is to prevent the action spreading to print workers at other offices.

The employers have also instructed editors to run opinion columns declaring that a closed shop for journalists would open up the Press to political pressure!

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