Rail Sell-out Near
Socialist Press1978 1978-02-22Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →
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The Workers Socialist League is a Trotskyist organisation fighting to construct a principled revolutionary leadership in the working class in Britain and internationally, and for the reconstruction of the Trotskyist Fourth International on the basis of the Transitional Programme.
The WSL fights at every step against the existing leaders of the trade unions and the Labour Party - now firmly harnessed to the bourgeois politicians of the Liberal Party in an Against their policies of class collaboration we put forward instead a programme which points to the independent class interests of the working class, its need to organise independently to overthrow capitalism, destroy its repressive state machinery and establish a Only in this way can workers resolve today's problems of tumbling living standards, mass unemployment, slashed social services, racial, After decision demand increase, fanfare o union Weighell, Union of Name. .
Address conference last year to a 63% pay and after a ¡ 'left' talk by boss Sidney the National Railwaymen is unspoken coalition arrangement.
socialist planned economy.
national and sexual oppression.
For more details on the WSL fill in the form below.
Trade Union/Occupation.
Send to WSL, 31, Dartmouth poised on the brink of a 10% settlement supplemented by a productivity Weighell carefully avoided stirring up militancy on wages in his pre-negotiation bluster late last month.
Instead he talked grandly about demanding British Rail fill 9,000 posts that Weighell and other union bureaucrats have allowed to remain vacant.
Now even this talk is discarded, and the annual pay review will not only throw aside the 63% claim but also, by leaning on productivity dealing, will help slash further jobs on the railways.
* Railway workers are seen as the only major sector of workers in the public sector other than the power workers with the industrial strength to cause widespread disruption in pursuit of a claim in excess of 10%. Weighell's sabotage of the NUR claim is therefore an essential part of TUC moves to enforce the 10% limit now that they have ensured the defeat of the firemen.
But if little else would have been expected from staunch right winger Sid Weighell, train drivers' General Secretary Ray Buckton has cultivated an image as a 'left' opponent of the 10% pay limit.
But when it comes to mobilising his own members on their claim for 30-40%, Buckton is as reluctant as any right winger.
ASLEF train drivers have been called on to strike on March 1 for one day in a bid to achieve the same bonus as offered to NUR train drivers.
Such phoney protest action-though the strike must be supported-offers no more than the prospect of an eventual ignominious sell-out.
All-out action is needed to break the 10% limit and regain and defend living stanstruggle to defend the health service in London.
Discussion Following a demonstration and various protest actions a discussion has been taking place in the committee composed of hospital workers, representatives of the local labour movement and the Bethnal Green community.
Several necessary steps have been taken to defend the hospital. In particular a resolution has been circulated to trade union branches asking for physical assistance to prevent any efforts by the authorities to move equipment or patients out of the hospital.
However, it is widely recognised that this is no guarantee of success.
Smashed up
The brutal suddeness with which Hounslow was smashed up by hired scabs demonstrated this in a vivid way.
At the hospital itself the problem still remains of developing a leadership capable of directing the bitter struggle that will be necessary.
The step, for example, of occupying the hospital and enforcing workers control over the comings and goings of Area Health Authority officials and the like, still remains to be taken.
At the last meeting of the committee a speaker from the Socialist Workers Party proposed another petition as the next step.
Diversion
Such protest methods, side of a politic I perspecou tiv = for struggle, can only Har no a diversin from the