Newsline attacks Cowley convenor

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which are growing as a proportion of total employment.

American organised labour has still been unable to break the anti-union policies of many major US monopolies. IBM, for instance, is a non-union company; SO are Polaroid, Hewlett Packard, Grumman, Eastman-Kodak, Gilette and Texas Instruments. At this very moment a battle is raging between Dupont and the United Steelworkers of America about whether the union will be able to represent Dupont workers.

In other words many of the most advanced and successful corporations in American capitalism, those in the vanguard of new technologies, have been successful in keeping out the The National Labour Relations Board, which is the Federal agency responsible for the supervision of union representation, reports that in 1979 (the latest year for which figures are available) unions won only 45% of representation elections plants (in which ballots decide if the union will get representation rights). In the early 1960s they were winning over 60% of these ballots; and in the 1930s when the ballots began they were winning virtually all of them.

In addition in 1979, there were 777 decertification ballots (a big increase compared with the 1950s and 60s); and the great majority of these were lost by the unions (a fact which is not surprising since in order for a decertification ballot to be called where a union already has negotiating rights a petition must be made by 30% of the workers).

All these obvious sources of weakness of the American labour movement at the present time, however, don't mean that Reagan and the local governments will be able to tread down the interests of labour easily. For one thing the public sector is more organised than the private.

AFSCME estimates that 51% of county and municipal workers belong to unions and 39% of State government workers. For teachers and other education workers (in whose sector the cuts will bite deep) the figure is 35%.

mean successful labour resistance, as can be seen in the case of New York where municipal workers are among the most organised in the country. There, during the last five years of New York's financial recovery programme, the unions have accepted a decline of 20% in the city's labour force without a single major strike.

The strength of response to Reaganomics, therefore, will depend on how much the rank and file of American unions can successfully combat not only the policies of compromise and sell-out of the bureaucrats, but also the widespread corruption at the top of US unions and the politics of alliance with the Democrats. It is to that that the AFL-CIO leadership is turning again according to tradition when faced with Republican attacks.

Rank and file movements even though they remain relatively small. And growing also is the sentiment, still an extremely minority one, for the building of workers' party independent of the big capitalist parties. That was evident from many of the banners on Solidarity Day in Washington last September 19. That biggest ever labour movement demonstration showed that for a serious fight against Reagan there would be a huge folkavie Keynesian But if that fight doesn't develop on a sufficent scale, and if Reaganomics remains as contradictory as its predecessors and fails to solve any of the major symptoms of the economic crisis of capitalism in the USA, what comes next?

Sections of the Democratic Party and of the organised labour movement leadership have been preparing for some time a campaign which would bring the Democratic candidate of 1984 (Teddy Kennedy? Walter Mondale?) 1o power on a programme of massive Keynesian increases in Federal government spending to restore all the Reagan cutbacks.

But the fact that this simple solution has run into so much trouble before is giving other, more thoughtful and (capitalist) class-conscious Democrats pause for thought. They are coming up with some more complex plans.

One of the architects of such a plan is Felix Rohatyn, a partner, in the big financial corporation Lazard Freres (which also provided the head of the British Steel Corporation), who was head of the Municipal Assistance Corporation of New York during the last six years.

His ruthless financial pruning, done with semicorporatist methods involving the trade union bureaucracies in decisions, is generally credited with having shifted New York City from a deficit of $1.7 billion in 1975 to a surplus of $500,000 in 1981.

Rohatyn is worried that "no democracy . . . can survive half suburb, half slum" and he sees this dichotomy growing. His answer is to revive the private sector of the economy, especially in the de-industrialising northern cities through government direction and assistance.

The key institution in this plan would be a revival of the 1930s Reconstruction Finance Corporation which • would be financed through recycled oil money from OPEC countries and thus be no direct drain on the US budget.

Rohatyn is a fiscal conservative who believes in "balanced budget liberalism" -and a state that intervenes in a "pragmatic and flexible" way to strengthen the capitalist economy. Government financial planning would be combined with wage and price controls imposed on trade unions and corporations. Some freedom, he argues euphemistically, may have to be sacriticed in the interests of fairness and growth. This kind of "liberal corporatism" is catching on. A few months ago the weekly Business Week ran a lengthy analysis of what is wrong with US capitalism, reaching very similar policy conclusions to Rohatyn's.

And the Democratic Party think tank has also been coming up with compatible ideas. They advocate controlling inflation by punitive taxation of companies which raise prices excessively or agree. to excessive wage demands; the simultaneous use of wage-price contols and sharp fiscal and monetary controls; and changing tax laws to give a big incentive to profit sharing plans.

Return to Gold Standard?

And if British readers think that they have read this before somewhere they are not mistaken. It is almost word for word what is being said in Britain by the Social Democratic Party and the Liberals, and also right wing David Stockman magazines such as the Economist (Britain's Business Week).

On the Republican and far right side, too, new options are being prepared in the event of the failure of Reaganomics-and one of the most discussed is a return to the Gold Standard which would limit the size of the money supply to the value of gold in the Treasury. This, say the Gold Standard supporters, would end inflation for ever. They don't admit that in the way that many of them wish to apply it, it would probably end production for ever as well.

Nonetheless this idea is being seriously debated today in the Gold Committee of the US Congress and at present there seems a very Reagan with foreign policy hawk Haig serious chance that the Committee will end its hearings in a few months time by backing the idea.

Already there are signs of support for it in the top echelons of the Reagan administration (from Treasury Secretary Regan for instance, though he tends to agree with everything anyone else says as long as it is reactionary enough).

The near suicidal implications of that kind of proposal, however, confirm the degre to which the old days of "Keynesianism" consensus. in the boom period are past almost beyond Reaganomics is ugly enough. But, bearing in mind what sections of the American right may try next, perhaps we ain't seen nothin' yet.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 18 February, 1982 ewsline attacks Cowley convenor Please accept my resication fion the Branch Committee and from tr me that the docisions taken pü tne Iron today. out by the Regional Concittee. or pointed out tr me that the docicions taken p' carried that as I was a ner ber of the Srich Cerittee I could he hold is well known that this this letter in the next branch lews.

BILL THE Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), has a long history in the Cowley car plants. From 1966 until 1974 the WRP and its forerunner, the Socialist Labour League, had a very large group of members in Cowley. They included important sections of the trade union leadership in several plants with a principled record.

Early in 1974 an opposition developed inside the WRP which challenged the increasingly wild sectarianism and paranoid political line of the Gerry Healy leadership. Alan Thornett and Tony Richardson, as leading militants in the Cowley plants, were at the centre of the opposition. 4 It resulted in their ruthless suppression by the vicious and bureaucratic internal regime of the WRP (see Battle for Trotskyism, Folrose Books). They were expelled in December 1974 along with 200 others from the WRP's Western Region just before they were to present their views to the WRP annual conference.

One member Of the 200 expelled, 70 later formed the nucleus of the Workers Socialist League. Of the rest: few joined other tendencies while the majority went out of politics after the experience:

At the time of the expulsions the WRP had over 100 members in the Oxford area. Only one stayed in the WRP after the experience -Tom White, a tulitime deputy senior steward in the Assembly Plant.

Since the expulsions' Gerry Healy Healy has put considerable resources-including frequent visits to Oxfordinto keeping his lone Cowley member inside the WRP ranks. He has kept White on the WRP Central Committee to this day despite his obvious inability to rebuild a Cowley Branch. Healy hangs on hoping new conditions will arise where his foothold can be used against the Workers Socialist League.

Now Healy's paper, the Newsline, is running a campaign against TGWU Convenor Bob Fryer.

This has centred on a very bad decision of Fryers to allow management to redraft a leaflet he had written to the membership as a condition of them authorising its distribuF.Corti Secretary i od tion.

Socialist Organiser would also criticise Fryer for such an action which undoubtedly creates a very dangerous precedent; but the WRP and Tom White are in no position to take Fryer up on such a matter.

Fryer in his 20 years as convenor has established a far better record than Tom White. Fryer stuck to his guns during the 3½ years following his removal from office in 1974-a major move by Jack Jones and the leadership of the TGWU at that time.

Reg Parsons, an extreme right winger was installed as convenor of the plant in the midst of a huge witch-hunt against the left which received national -prominence. Comnittee Dinite White's record in that period was deplorable.. When Worker Participation' committees were brought into BL in the Autumn of 1975 the WRP verbally opposed them. But when Healy found that this disrupted his relationship with a leading right wing supporter of Parsons whom he was hoping to recruit, White stood for election for the participation committees and was elected a stand-in delegate -despite the hostility of the labour force to the scheme. Healy's paper at the time, Workers Press, carried a whole page article theorising the correctness of White's move.

A few weeks later the WRP supported a Joint Management-'Participa13.3.178 •onld ce t fraternally, T. Quita tion' Committee set up to investigate "quality and performance" On the Princess track.. Although workers on the track struck and marched to Parsons' office protesting about the joint investigation, the Workers Press (November 26) praised its findings. • Such positions didn't go unnoticed by Reg Parsons and the right wing. A few weeks later were the biennial elections for convenor and deputy convenor in the plant.

Parsons won the election for convenor and published a recommended list for the election of the deputy senior stewards. Tom White was on it, with a glowing write-up from rabid anti-Trotskyist Parsons.

White gave out a few copies of a token statement dissociating himself from the list-when it was too late to make any difference and after Socialist Press had challenged the issue.

The same month, the elections for the officers of the TGWU 5/293 branch were held.

This was the branch which had been set up at the time of the 1974 witchhunt and been used as a right wing base against the left. A left victory therefure would be a major blow against the right.

Alan Thornett was standing as the left candidate with a very good chance of winning.

There were 140 members at the highly charged meeting with the press and TV outside. There were three candidates for PresidentThornett, Albert Paintin - a Parsons supporter, and Tom White of the WRP.

Support White After hasty discussions on the odds, Parsons & the right wing decided to withdraw Paintin• and throw their tul support t behind White!

They figured that White would stand a better chance since his past left-wing record might split a few votes from the left; whilst Paintin would only get the right wing vote.

In the event the whole left vote quite clearly went to Thornett and the whole right wing, including Parsons personally solidly voted for White, giving Thornett victory by 77 votes to 64.

Because the elections were given national coverage by the media, millions of readers of the national the union and defeated Parsons control.

Nine stewards-including Tom White -were charged. One of the reasons White was included was because he had been elected as a member of the 5/293 committee and most of the charges were based on articles written in the 5/293 Branch Report which was published in the plant at the time by the branch committee.

By March 1980 it looked as if the victimisation would succeed: Jack Jones and the bureaucrats in Region 5 were absolutely determined, two kangaroocourts had been carried out, the defendents found predictably 'guilty' and the sentences announced.

The only problem was the support the nine had amongst the membership in the plant and the broad campaign which had developed throughout the TGWU including a successful conference in defence of the nine-which the WRP refused to support.

Then, at the most crucial point of the struggle, Tom White wrote a letter to the TGWU officials resigning from the branch committee and denouncing the other eight as guilty as charged!

He fully accepted that the Branch News articles were contrary to rule 11, under which the nine were charged and absolved himself by saying he had been faced with a built-in majority on the committee!

Such a treacherous and cowardly letter could only be intended to get Thornett and the others expelled from the union and therefore sacked from the plant.

Before the Newsline talks about "dangerous precedents" they should put the back in

----- pull-quotes -----

Union membership, how- ever, obviously does not

on these questions are grow- ing within the US unions

WRP RECORD OF SUPPORT FOR RIGHT G

Branch TCAU Brother Corti, meetings of June

on June 30th Will you please publish