Wrp Joins Attacks on Victims

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office militants and Trotskyists who have opposed their reactionary policies marks a dramatic new turn in the workers' movement.

If the TGWU leaders succeed in their attempts to victimise nine left wingers and 'left' alike, struggle to hold back their members from struggles on jobs, wages and conditions.

Any perspective for a fight for a revolutionary programme in the car industry must come to grips with this new situation, which is the clear reflection within the unions of the way the capithowever.

In a major statement "A policy to fight the slump" by the All Trades Union Alliance carworkers section, in the Newsline Newsline of Thursday March 18, the WRP refers only in passing to the Cowley witchhunt.

And uses the simply as a basis to attack and slander those by the bureaucracy!

The two-page ATUA statement is a call to a conference on April 2. It concludes with al confused selection of sixteen numbered demands including:

"7. Reject adventurism and non-political syndicalism!

"8. Fight the right-wing witch-hunt in Cowley! Defend the rights of stewards!"

No examples of "adventurism" are mentioned in the two-page article.

Nor do the WRP in any way attempt to substantiate the even more astonishing allegation in the body of the statement:

Refute "The policy of the Stalinists in the car industry is aided by the diversionary actions of the WSL, IMG and SWP.

"The grotesque adventures and middle class publicityseeking politics of these groups provide a convenient pretext for the union bureaucracy to gag critics and isolate their political opponents with bureaucratic procedures, and even threaten them with expulsion from the union."

We have no intention of defending the political record of the IMG or the SWP in the fight against Stalinism in the car industry.

But we absolutely refute the lie that "grotesque adventures" of any description by any left group have played a role in the current witchhunt within the TGWU.

The point that has emerged most tellingly from the whole kangaroo court procedure set up by the Region 5 bureaucracy is the complete absence of even the pretence of a case against any of the nine accused Falsification The charges centre on such "adventures" EMERGO SE TGWL''S = = C000 - .luwu bureaucruis -will war welter of 'left' phrases.

This is not the only falsification in the statement. The WRP go on to imply-again with no evidence-that the WSL and the revisionists of the IMG and SWP favour using the courts against this witch-hunt.

"The ATUA rejects completely the revisionist argument that the unions can be democratised by changes in the rule book or by seeking equity in the capitalist The only "revisionist" group to have argued that the courts provide an answer is, of course, ... the WRP!

Against courts

WRP members in Cowley in particular made themselves notorious by tenaciously arguing that legal action was the only way to repel this bureaucratic attack!

The WSL is clearly on record from the outset as opposing the use of the courts against the unions, as a reading of our press will show.

If the WRP has now recognised the error of its original position and chosen this devious way to print a public Lied action 'gne unem or jou lem! declare support for the Cowley 9.

We ourselves have fundamental political differences with many of these forces. But we recognise the necessity for united action if democratic rights within the TGWU are to be defended, and these political differences argued out openly in the labour movement.

With a massive witch-hunt taking place within the unions, the WRP leadership is declaring that the defence of the Cowley 9 comes in the form of a couple of lines in their daily paper and a conference of which a major part will be condemning "'adventurism"

Not even the Stalinist Communist Party has sunk to this level in public. Their members at the LCDTU conference did not charge the nine with adventurism though they did argue that the witchhunt is a TGWU affair.

Fingermen?

We call for unity against the class enemy. Not so, the WRP leadership. Their first objective is to attack and lyingly blame us.

We ask the WRP the use are you going to fingermen of the the i: co. hen now is the time i? !oin the campaign 3212a1 Ine statis We urge e URP :