Ocr Councils O Action

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"How are the different demands and forms of struggle to be harmonised, even if only within the limits of one city? History has already answered this question: through soviets. These will unite the representatives of all the fighting groups. For this purpose, no one has yet proposed a different form of organisation; indeed it would hardly be possible to think up a better one. Soviets are not limited to an a priori party programme. They throw open their door to all the exploited. Through these doors pass representatives of all strata, drawn into the general current of the struggle. The organisation, broadening out together with the movement is renewed again and again in its womb. All political currents of the proletariat can struggle for leadership of the soviets on the basis of the widest democracy. The slogan of soviets, therefore, crowns the programme of transitional demands"

Three previous articles in Socialist Press have examined the way in which the British working class, in the upheavals leading up to the 1926 General Strike, at several points moved to the creation of councils of action as all-inclusive working class bodies drawing delegates from trade union organisations and working class political parties.

They spelled out the essential point that the formation of such organisations does not in itself resolve the problem of correct revolutionary Confusion The Stalinist-led British Communist Party took its incorrect line on the General Strike into the councils of -action and created as much confusion there as elsewhere in the workers' movement.

Since that time there have been few occasions where an upsurge of working class militancy seemed to offer the possibility of going beyond the limits of trade union struggle to the point of directly confronting And the degeneration of the British CP in the 1920s to the point of acting as no more than a counter-revolutionary arm of Moscow's foreign policy of "peaceful co-existence" has meant that the revolutionary strategy implicit in the call for Transitional Programme P.28 (Folrose Ed.)

councils of action has now become the property not of a mass party but of the limited forces adhering to the Trotskyist programme.

Correct conditions

The demand for councils of action however, advanced even by small forces under the correct conditions, can win substantial support from militant trade unionists, Labour Party members and other working class organisations.

Such was the case in the mass struggles against the Heath government in the summer of 1972.

The working class had shown from the very outset its willingness to fight the Tories-who had been elected to office in the wake of the treacherous Wilson governments of 1964-70.

Huge demonstrations and protest actions had taken place against the hated Îndustrial Relations Bill, though at each point the TUC leaders, backed up by the Communist Party, fought to confine these actions to peaceful protests aimed at "changing the line" of the Tories rather than bringing them down.

Huge At the same time a national level struggle in defence of jobs at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, had generated huge support is Strength within the working classwhich was again defused with the aid of the Stalinists.

1972 itself saw a national miners strike force back the Tories hard line on pay.

The use of flying pickets on power stations and the mass head-on confrontation at Saltley coke depot forced the Wilberforce enquiry to concedé the miners were a "special case".

The implementation of the Industrial Relations. Act against dock pickets attempting to prevent container firms using nonregistered labour was the basis for the biggest single confrontation between the working class and the Tory Levying fines After the leaders had succeeded in holding back workers' anger at the levying of fines on the TGWU by the National Industrial Relations Court, five dockers were jailed in July for "contempt court" when they continued to picket a nonregistered container firm.

The response was immediate and enormous. Hundreds of thousands of workers in almost every section of industry stopped work.

Dockers, print workers, engineers and thousands more joined huge demonstrations to Pentonville jail where the five were being held-without the slightest official lead from the union bureaucracy.

The TUC leaders were so alarmed at the dimensions of the mass movement that they were pressed into tentatively ACISE PHOTO: Serena Wadham, IFL am, IFL - IPAT O ACTON calling for a one-day general strike.

Despite the fact that it was the height of the holiday shut down period in industry, resolutions from union bodies were flooding in to show that with or without this call a general strike movement was on the way.

Arena

It was under these conditions that the Trotskyists of the Socialist Labour League took up the call for the formation of councils of action to offer an arena within the growing mass struggle within which revolutionaries could fight VISION for the acceptance of Yet it was not until the confrontation was past its peak that such demands began to bear fruit, and councils of action were set up in several areas where the SLL had trade union strength-in• particular in Oxford, in Lambeth, and in North London.

In Oxford the initial resolution for a council of action was passed by the local Confed, and subsequently endorsed by the Trades Council, as well as a number of car workers shop stewards committees and union branches.

The inaugural meeting at Transport House, Oxford drew over 60 delegates from 40 labour movement organisations including the Confed, the Morris Motors Joint Shop Stewards Committee, British Leyland Service Joint Shop Stewards, the two biggest TGWU branches in the town, several AUEW branches, the Communist Party, Labour Party Young Socialists, the SLL and other political groups.

After a battle with the Stalinists it adopted a policy of fighting for the removal of the Tory government.

But the conditions for such a body to establish itself at the head of a growing mass movement were no longer present.

The Tories had been forced to use the pretext of the "Official Solicitor" in order to free the "Pentonville 5"-and were subsequently to shy away from such open confrontations.

The TUC leaders, thoroughly frightened by the scope of the mass movement that had erupted, did everything possible to defuse workers' militancy.

And with the easing of pressure, the Stalinists and 'left' talking elements that had been forced forward into the Oxford Council of Action breathed a sigh of relief, and began to do all they could to ensure its collapse.

So although the Oxford Council of Action lasted well into 1973, leading campaigns against the Tory pay laws and an important intervention attempting to mobilise housewives on the issue of pay and prices, it eventually faded from the scene.

JT

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