Organising the unemployed- CONFERENCE OFFERS NATIONAL FOCUS

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The national unemployed conference meets next weekend - October 31/ November 1 - at Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London. JOHN LISTER discusses the movement's perspectives.

have brought an uneven and patchy development of unemployed organisations.

In some areas union branches have taken on the task of retaining and even recruiting unemployed members; elsewhere new, autonomous 'unemployed workers' unions'' or claimants unions have sprung up - often appealing most directly to youth with little history of trade union organisation.

In other areas nothing has yet been done to give direction, organisation or hope to the army of unemployed - leaving workers and youth prey to the propaganda of the racists and fascists.

There is a great need to provide a national focus for the unemployed, and to provide real means to unite employed and unemployed in struggle against the common enemy - the government.

This weekend's Unemployed Workers' Conference in London offers precisely such a lead. Following on from a successful conference in Leicester this summer, it is intended as the launching platform for an unemployed workers' movement to which local groups - union branches, unemployed workers' unions and other labour movement bodies - can affiliate and which will step up the fight to organise the unemployed right across the country.

For the unemployed, young and old alike, it is important to offer a serious perspective for a fight to resolve their problems.

In other words it is necessary to spell out a commitment to fighting for the creation of three million new jobs to offer every man and woman the right to work.

Jobs

Experience under both Labour and Tory governments and the present economic plight of British industry have proved that it is impossible to create these jobs under capitalism. As long as the system remains intact, workers face an indefinite future of mass unemployment.

Works

Only action to take the ownership and control of industry and the banks out of the hands of the capitalists and speculators can create conditions for the necessary crash programme of useful public works to confront the crisis in housing, social services and education at the same time as providing jobs for The Tories plainly will do no such thing. To tackle 33.

society will need to carry on with space research and exploration. One is the scarcity of energy resources and raw materials on Earth Imamnly due in the enming!

squandering of our natural Reagan unemployment means to tackle the removal of the Thatcher government: and this can be accomplished not by the unemployed alone but only by the mobilisation of the whole labour movement.

The British Leyland strike offers a focus for such action. Unemployed workers can play an important role in strengthening this struggle, and in the struggle throughout the labour movement for a new leadership able and willing to fight for the interests of the working class.

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While we send forests of trees and oceans of oil up in smoke, the energy. of the Sun radiates uselessly noot no in anara Rut while we spend vast fortunes on vast us de sparo. dur nuclear power plants and research into nuclear fusion, virtually nothing is spent on research into solar power satellites (SPSs) which could beam down energy to special receivers floating on the seas.

One recent plan suggests automated factories on the

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