Tebbit and the fight foi trade union 14941 democracy

Scan page 13

WHEN AND WHERE: Saturday April 3, 10.30 to 4.30, Digbeth Hall, Birmingham. For details of transport to Birmingham, phone John Bloxam on 01-609 3071.

SPEAKERS: Val Dunn (victimised Bakers' Union militant), Bernard Connolly (steel strike leader, Rotherham), Ray Davies (ISTC), Steve Longshaw (Laurence Scotts), Peter Tatchell (Bermondsey CLP), lan Williams (NUR), Bobby Owens (TGWU unemployed branch, 6/612), plus reports from women in struggle and from Women's Fightback trade union conference.

WORKSHOPS on: Women and the unions; black workers; Labour Party democracy and the trade unions; organising the unemployed; organising the rank and file - Broad Lefts etc; debate on officials - 'accountability' and direct election. Video 'Question of Leadership'. And in the lunchbreak - trade union caucus meetings and video on Laurence Scotts.

DELEGATES: and observers invited from all labour tials £2. Cheques payable to Socialist Organiser. Saturday APRIL cy Conference, c/o Socialist Organiser, 28 THE LABOUR movement is indivisible. You cannot do anything serious with the Labour Party unless the trade unions - which have the main weight in decision-making - agree to it. And at present that means - unless the trade union leaders agree to it.

In the battle for democracy in the Labour Party, we saw the paradox that unions like NUPE played a positive role in that struggle while being far from democratic themselves. We were dependent on men who were bureaucrats in their own organisations to help us win democracy in the Labour Failure It was impossible that such trade union leaders should go all the way for Labour Party democracy. All the setbacks for the Left at Brighton and since have come, in ine last analysis, :...d realersin from the failure of the Left to organise independently among the rank and file in SPONSORS INCLUDE: Socialist Organiser, London Labour Briefing, Oxford Trades Council, Trafford Trades Council, Basingstoke and Deane Trades Council, Oxford CATC, Laurence Scotts strike committee, Kings Cross ASLEF, CPSA British Library branch, TGWU 5/822, TGWU 5/287, TGWU 5/104, Oxford NUJ, ACTSSAPEX joint committee GEC Coventry, USDAW D96, NUPE ILEA District Committee, Bradford District Labour Party, Rochdale Constituency Labour Party, Upper Stoke branch Coventry Labour Party, Peckham LPYS, _ Basingstoke LPYS, Coventry Labour Left, Birmingham Labour Left and in a personal capacity, Reg Race MP, Les Huckfield MP and Mike Cooley.

Had the union rank and file been organised for Labour Party democracy, the Right would have been rendered powerless and the self-interested squealings of the MPs would not have mattered much.

In the Labour Party we have focused on reselection and PLP accountability. Its equivalent in the unions is the fight for elected, accountable, and easily recallable trade union leaders who will serve the interests of the rank and file, against the employers.

The trade union bureaucrats were as much a pillar of the last right wing Labour government, which prepared the way for Thatcher, as the PLP was - and probably the more decisive one.

Most of the unions are scandalously authoritariar and bureaucratic. Leader: and officials at all level are mosuy tunel apponeu u! annintad ni elected once and for life The rank and file cannot control their own organisa. tion, even during bitter batt.

CRECHE: Will be available. les with the bosses. Even in one of the least undemocratic unions, the AUEW, the jeaders can, once elected, act with impunity as saboteurs and scabs against their own members in dispute - as Duffy and Boyd did for Edwardes and BL last November and for Arthur Snipe at Laurence Scotts.

The bureaucrats form a distinct interest group. Their living standards are above those of the members, and in now way linked to their performance for their members. They feel and know themselves to have distinct interests, and act accordingly.

Now they are peacefully letting the Tories bring in laws to shackle the unions as fighting organisations, because they think they can comfortably live with them.

The unions too need to he damarraticert Fuen if w/e could make the rest of the labour movement democratic while the unions remain as they are (and we can't), the lack of democracy in the unions would set crippling limits to what the movement could do.

It is a commonplace on the Left by now that the great tragedy of 1973-4, when trade union direct action forced Heath into kamikaze tactics and a lost election, was that the working class only had a rightwing-led Labour Party to turn to in politics - a party hink aladand itaalt to nan wilch pieugea nsen to seeure a "decisive shift in the balance of wealth and power for working people, and whose leaders and Parliamentarians in office inflicted wage cuts and social service cuts instead The mirror image of that situation would be, and is, a powerful Labour Left with no trade union clout, cut off from the most decisive energy and strength that the working class possesses and can at will use - industrial direct action. One of the lactors now pusing a sog- fantana natur machin a conment of the Labour Left into assuming the role of local government administrators is the lack of adequate WRITE TO: Democri Middle Lane, London links with the trade rank and file.

The great central task we face is to construct and organise a coherent Left that can fight the class struggle on both the industrial and political fronts, and integrate the different fronts into a coherent strategy to achieve working class power in society.

Unless we win the rank and file of the unions for socialist policies and for a renovated, democratic labour movement, willing and able to control the leaders and Parliamentarians - the possibility of achieving a Labour government different from those that have gone before simply will not exist, no matter how big the Left is in the constituencies.

The most powerful Labour Left that has existed in Britain was that of the mid-oos, will! (illuenctu by the young Communist Party) linked and combined work in both the Labour Party and the trade unions, N8.

to do the irreplaceable. work of transforming and renovating the entire existing labour movement.

It rejected the ultra-left notion - now typefied by the SWP - that an entirely new and parallel labour movement (their own) must be constructed.

In the mid '20s, the Natlonal Lent wing Movement i mean l 1 aft filicon of the Labour Party consisted of nearly 40 hard left CLPs and many thousands of individuals in others. The parallel but intermeshed

Minoritv Movement in the unions organised the rank and file, and at its peak had an affiliated membership of one million - a quarter of the then members of the TUC.

But that movement was deliberately destroyed after 1929, when the CP went rabidly ultra-left. Then, in the mid-'30s, when the CP swung back again to the mainstream labour movement, they had a different policy for the unions - to work with and integrate themselves into the bureaucracy. The entire Left has felt the effect of that political sea-change ever since.

Today the Communist Party' led left in the unions is scandalously docile in face of vicious Tory anti-union legislation, because to organise the rank and file for the vitally necessary fightback now, they would have to break with the bureaucracy - and they won't.

They prefer to peacefully lat the Taries hraak the Lill LUND vivan LILY strength of the unions.

Today the fight against the Tory government, to defend the unions, is inseparTE 10** wasnimm. able from the struggle to break the power of the bureaucratic bosses in the And the lesson of the fight for Labour Party demo cracy is that the Labour Left - especially when it is a middle class Left, as it often is - must turn to the unions or be content to remain forever (or until they expel us) at the political mercy of those who have the decisive weight in the Labour Party - the trade union bosses.

Response

The conference for trade union democracy called by London Labour Briefing, Socialist Organiser, and others, will be a major opportunity for the Labour Left to discuss these questions, to propose a response to Tebbit's onslaught on the unions, and to begin to prepare the organisational sinews for a fightback. Labour Party activists will be able to discussing building Labour Party factory branches with shop floor militants and leaders from BL. Laurence Scotts, etc. There will be special discussion. with comrades from Women's Fightback participating. on how to go about wiping out the shame and scandal for the labour movement of the way the trade unions treat their women members. And there will be a chance to air views on how to organise the Left in the unions and on the possibility of setting up an ongoing campaign for trade union democracy.

Credentials: Democracy Conference, c/o Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane. London N8.

JOHN O'MAHONY and JOHN BLOXAM blocked THE AUEW Executive has manoeuvred to deflect the challenge from the Laurence Scott strikers. Motions calling for a ballot to remove the executive have been ruled out of order for next month's AUEW national committee meeting.

These motions should -so the AUEW leaders claim - go to a rules revision conference. No such conference is due this year.

The resolution circulated by the strikers states: "This branch believes that the Executive Council has mishandled the Laurence Scotts Electromotors dispute. As this is an issue of concern to all AUEW members, this branch demands a ballot for the removal of the Executive Council in line with rul: 14. paragraph 5'.

Branches are asked to send it to AUEW, 110 Peck. ham Rd, London SE15. with copy to LSE Strike Cassmittee, c/O 20 Rounderoft. Romiley, Cheshire.

Scan page 14

Socialist Organiser, Thursday 18 March, 1982

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

•CONFERENCE / abour movement! // Fight for action

JOBS U NIONS

STOP STOP STOP

TEBBIT EFE TEBBIT