Spectators from Afar

trade unions in San Francisco".

Spectators from afar For some time now representatives of the international Spartacist tendency have been touring meetings of left wings groups in Britain, making pronouncements on the British class struggle that are clearly formulated largely on the basis of reports in the capitalist press, and with no regard whatever for the development of concrete slogans for action within the working class. A clear example of the way this stand- point distorts the reportage in their paper Workers Vanguard was to be seen in their article on the Social Contract published on September 16, 1977 under the minimum demand 'Break the 12-month rule' The two-page article was decorated with a photograph of last year's TGWU Biennial Delegate Conference 'lifted' from the pages of Socialist Press-indicating that the authors had received our extensive reports on the proceedings there.

Yet they conspicuously failed to mention the fact that the fight for the Trotskyist demand of a sliding scale of wages, led by WS supporters, resulted in one third of the conference delegates backing the demand. Nor did they themselves advance this demand-which offers the only conscious alternative to the Social Contract strategy of slashing workers living standards.

And while restricting themselves to the syndicalist call simply to smash the 10% limit and the 12-month rule, combined with the vague call "Down with the Lib.

Lab coalition" , the Spartacists, as our first extract shows, stuck their neck out further than almost any British left' group in suggesting that TUC leaders "finally felt it necessary to oppose a Phase III..."!

repeated in the e hostility • Despite the government's promises of a future upturn onomy, the deepening class to declining real wages and Page soaring unemployment has touched off a series of militant, although isol- ated and largely unsuccessful, strikes against the pay policy during the past six months. As a result of pressure from the ranks, national conferences of two of the most important unions, the Transport and General Workers Union (T&GWU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), came out adainst another vear of the Social Contract, demanding return to free collect The Amalgamated Engineering Workers) position of opposition form of wage controls the top bureaucrats finally felt it necessar an immediate ive bargaining. Union of also took a to any further . By July even of the TUC Y to oppose a the Social The article goes on to give an amusing explanation of the spinelessness of left' social democracy which is quite new in the so-called 'Trotskyist' movement. The "lefts', ome order to cring on to their oalition in order parliamentary seats" . Do the iSt mean to say that, had they all been in seats as safe as Michael Foot's the 'lefts' would all have waged a principled fight against the deal?

wn bou fusil Steel's threats to bring the government provide the r Party leadership and the TUC with their main means of 1g working class militancy on

the one hand, and of keeping the Labour "lefts" in line on the other.

Although the former may prove to be rather difficult, the latter have presented little problem, as the "lefts" have virtually ceased criticising the Lib-Lab pact, with which they hope to cling to their parliamentary seats for another year or more. (emphasis added)..."

Despite their own obvious confusion on 'left' social democracy, the iSt attempt falsely to suggest that the Workers Socialist League, in urging workers to expose the "lefts' by putting practical demands on them, has a "strategy" which "hinges on 'make the lefts fight'."

Such a line of argument can of course only be sustained in the absence of evi- dence, since it bears no relation to the positions held or argued by the WL. Such a technicality however is no problem for the Spartacists, who have become renow- ned for their capacity to invent, and subs- equently hysterically 'defend hitherto unheard-of "principles" and positions of the Trotskyist movement. Among the miners and transport workers, opposition to any further wage restraint is so intense that both Joe Gormley (head of the NUM) and Jack Jones (of the TGWU) suffered humiliating personal defeats at their own national conferences preceding the TUC conference as they attempted to pass motions in favour of Callaghan's "orderly return to free collective bargaining". "It is of critical importance to the British working class for all the remnants of the Social Contract to be smashed-the twelve-month rule, the "orderly return", as well as Callaghan's insulting 10 percent "norm". Yet the iSt themselves for breaking workers fror uing illusions in the left- "lefts', as this final extract shows of fer thi no means ir contin- this final "As the TUC conference amply demonstrates, the pro-capitalist mis- leaders of the trade unions stand as obstacles to the ability of the workers to ensure that they do not bear the brunt of the crisis of the British bourgeoisie. Only through the of class-struggle construction groupings in the unions based on the Transitional Programme can an alter- native leadership to the present bureaucrats be built which will be able to ensure the full weight of Britain's powerful trade-union move- ment is brought to bear in the defence of working-class living standards. "Smash the Social Contract! Lab coalition!" remnants own with of he the Lib- ... In an incomprehensible display of centrist double-think, a subsequent article in Socialist Press smugly comments that "Life has not been easy recently for those who cling on to hopes that left' Labourites such as Eric Heffer will some day turn and fight the reaction- ary Callaghan-Healey leadership" (Socialist Press, 17 August). One might pressume that this article signaled a change in line for the WSL, whose long-term strategy for establishing socialism in Britain hinges on "making the lefts fight".

But no-further down the page, in the same article, the WSL proclaims that: " ... Labour 'lefts' must cam- paign for the removal of the Callaghan-Healey leadership".

"Despite the formal victory for Labour's wages policy at the TUC conference there is every indication that the vast bulk of British trade unionists are determined to avert the continuing deterioration of their living standards. Already a whole series of unions have lodged pay claims ranging between 30 and 50 percent. The three most powerful, and traditionally most militant unions of industrial workers are officially on record as opposing any further wage restraints. "While Hugh Scanlon's coup at the Congress (which caused so much jubilation among London stock- brokers) ensured a comfortable paper majority for the twelve-month "rule", the AUEW brass will no doubt find it a good deal more difficult to enforce any more "austerity"