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benefit to young workers.

But now, as the crisis deepens, all these gains are being viciously attacked.

Cuts in public spending are resulting in falling standards of health and education; tens of thousands of youth each year face long periods on the dole and those lucky enough to get jobs face low wages held down by the collaboration of union leaders and the Lib-Lab coalition government on wage controls.

Past defeats In other words, capitalism cannot offer youth a future. But youth have both the enthusiasm and ability to fight back.

They are free from responsibility for the past defeats of the workers movement in the 1930s.

Moreover they grow up under very different conditions from the boom period of the 1950s and 1960s which led to the formation of an opportunist leadership in the labour movement.

This same leadership, confronted with the collapse of the boom, are now determined to head off any struggles by workers to defend their jobs, wages and living standards.

Revitalised

Now the way is open for youth to play a central role in the fight for principled leadership. As Trotsky wrote in the Transitional «The movement is revitalised by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past. The Fourth International pays particular attention to the young generation of the proletariat. All of its policies strive to inspire the youth with belief in its own strength and in the future.

Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution"

The task of the Workers Socialist League in developing the strength and enthusiasm of youth is to arm them with the programme and perspectives of Marxism-to enable them to go beyond purely spontaneous or individual forms of struggle against capitalism and take up the fight for a new leadership in the working class able to lead a successful struggle for power Aspirations This means in practice forging a revolutionary youth movement in opposition to the bureaucratic leaders of the trade unions who quite deliberately ignore the needs and aspirations of young workers and instead concentrate on the top layers of the working class.

In this struggle young workers can be a powerful lever against the bureaucracy.

That is why we demand the right of all young workers to join a trade union.

All barriers which prevent young workers from playing a leading role in the unions must be removed. Youth commissions at all levels of the trade unions must be imposed on a bureaucracy who must be forced to fight for the specific demands of youth.

Only with this turn of youth to the organisations serious fight be taken up for the programme capable of defending the wages, jobs ind conditions of youth and f new leadership prepared to fight for that programme.

Defenceless With tens of thousands of youth still left on the dole each autumn we demand the right of these unemployed youth to join a union.

As long as youth remain unorganised their energy will be sapped and they will be left defenceless against harassment by the state.

Within the unions it is necessary for young workers defence of wages, Jobs and oi wages, jous conditions.

In practice this means rejection of wage controls represented at this point by the collaboration of the TUC with the 10% "guidelines" of the Lib-Lab coalition government.

In place of this, youth must fight for a sliding scale of wages rising point for point with inflation as determined by elected trade union committees on which young workers should fight for representation.

On jobs, young workers should fight to force the union bureaucracy to open the doors of the unions to unemployed youth.

This would lay the basis of a fight for a policy on youth employment which would include control over the use of young labour to be under the direction of trade union committees to protect young employers; compulsory training tacilities, with the cost borne by the employers; supervision of training under trade union control; workers control over youth wage rates; sliding scale of wages; work sharing on full pay where redundancies are threatened and the opening of the books and occupation of plant threatened with closure.

Given the high proportion of youth who are out of work it is not merely the defence of existing jobs but the creation of new ones which is posed: part of the programme must include demands for the maintenance of recruitment and the extension of training by forcing the reopening of shut down factories to be used as training facilities.

Public In opposition to the fraudulent "job creation" schemes, youth must demand a trade union campaign for the commencement of large scale public works under trade union control.

The growth of racialism and fascism must be countered by the fight for workers defence squads and the recruitment of black youth into the unions to take up this fight alongside their fellow trade unionists.

This campaign must go hand in hand with the fight against the anti-working class policies of the Lib-Lab coalition, for the breaking of the coalition and the removal of the right wing Callaghanharassment by the police and the law courts, trade union inquiries must be established to draw out the class nature of these attacks.

In the schools the National Union of School Students provides a basis for taking up the fight for political leadership among layers of youth in the same way that the trade unions do amongst older workers.

In particular, the NUSS has recently campaigned against the YNF and young school students should fight within NUSS for the antiracist policies outlined above.

SUNDAY 7 MAY at 2.00 Lecture Room 2 Digbeth Civic Hall BIRMINGHAM Resolution on Youth Work Annual Conference of the Price 10p post free Park Hill, for Youth NW5 1HR STILL AVAILABLE League , from WSL, 31, Dartmouth London NW5 1HR gripped by a crisis it cannot solve, except at tremendous cost to the working class, there will be major class battles ahead. Young workers must be won to the Trotskyist movement and trained to give leadership to the thousands of youth who will be mobilised in those battles.

That is the task which the Workers Socialist League now sets itself with the calling of a national youth meeting next month.

adopted by the 1st

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Pege RESS, Wednesday Is Arri Baker