British HATTON CROSS

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The five man negotiating committee. Jack Gatsky (right) became the spokesman for the strikers, but the left' Frank Gates (second from left opportunistically went along with the view that the claim was an anomaly. The SWP were unable to challenge him. opening up a new level of struggle against the betrayals of union officials, it is instructive to look at the record of the SWP in the fight against Phase 2 of the Social Contract.

One of the key struggles which Froke out against Phase 2 was the strike of maintenance engineers at Heathrow Airport.

Following almost immediately on from the British Leyland toolmakers strike for pay parity-in defiance of the Social Contractthe shift pay dispute at Heathrow represented the developing hostility the working class to wage controls reflected in traditionally nore conservative skilled layers of workers.

Already the toolmakers, rejecting repeated calls from their union executive to return to work, nad challenged Scanlon to state who he was representing-the union nembers, the management or the government-and had humiliated sim at a mass meeting of strikers.

INCAPABLE

Having rejected their national eadership in favour of a more 'rank and file' leadership of shop sewards, the toolmen now found these leaders were also =litically incapable of winning their demands.

Refusing :malications inadenge to ..= strike co ==::20 to face up to the of the tookmakers' the Social Contract, mmittee backed down the point where Caution was being ALEW members But this was, of course, nonsense.

The sums of money involved in erasing this 'anomaly' on an airport employing 60,000 workers was so large that it represented a direct challenge to the Social Contract. And all those forces who lined up against the strike were absolutely clear on this.

The AUEW executive committee refused throughout to make the strike official and sent Reg Birch, Executive member with special responsibility for civil aviation, to virtually daily meetings with strikers to insist that they return to work.

In the event Birch received the same treatment as Scanlon had done at the hands of the toolmakers.

Birch, a Maoist, was himself quite clear what was at stake.

BLAME

In an interview with the press he blamed the working class for being foolish enough to accept the Social Contract and stated that there could be no money paid as long as the Social Contract forbade it.

The Stalinists of the British Communist Party were also quite clear about the implications of the strike.

However, as had been the case with the toolmakers, their influence among the strikers was so minimal that they were unable directly to influence the strike committee.

In Britisk. Leyland they had made up for this by condemning the toolmakers' action and calling on workers to scab or the strike.

This was because in reality the Stalinists entered wage controls.

But me: coveree this position arguing that *= 11€ prepared to recognise that they were fighting the Social Contract.

This would mean calling on other sections of workers for support. In particular, the toolmakers had threatened to resume their strike in support of the Heathrow men.

The opportunism of Gates and other lefts' on the shop stewards committee had to be opposed and the treacherous role of the Stalinists on the wages subcommittee had to be exposed and explained politically.

The record of the SWP on all of these was to say the least inadequate.

At every point they put the narrow aims of the dispute as understood by its reformist leadership before the broader struggle that was necessary in order defeat the AUEW Executive, the Stalinists, British Airways management and the government's Social Contract.

RELUCTANCE

So, for example, the SWP stewards shared the reluctance of the stewards committee to call out the day shift workers, who were not involved in the day shift Claim.

Although it was clearly problem to hold out on strike workers not directly involved, this was nevertheless a precondition lor issuing a call to other workers to take supporting action. hoth on the airport and oft Merener. the day shitt sorters .. L there ...: .: 23: :::

It was political clarity on these questions, all ignored by the SWP, that the Workers Socialist League tried to contribute to the dispute, together with a policy for broadening out support for the strikers.

Tony Cliff, however, in an SWP meeting after the strike was over explained that "as a matter of principle" it was not their policy to criticise other groups of the left in their paper for they were not interested in "useless polemics" with other groups but preferred instead to explain their policies to workers.

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class.

The the question of a fight against the Social Contract meant that the union officials were able to secure the acceptance of the BA proposal and take it to a mass meeting for The engineers have still not received a penny. The Department of Trade is expected to apply the 12 month rule which means that no extra shift money can be paid unti January, when the government pay Clearly if the engineers are to receive their shift money and a substantial annual increase they still have to take on the government, along with the rest of the working failure or the SWP to drive *i lesson throughout the ALEN

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SCALS FEN 41800 :1g5 = Th second of occasion il seri rading y 10/ nen revolutic naries these theories into practice.