Writeback Zionists repress left Why call for a one-day strike?

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A letter from a comrade in Israel

JOHN O'MAHONY's otherwise excellent article on the movement's failure to fight Tebbit's anti-union law (SO76) makes the mistaken call for a one-day general strike. In the past Socialist Organiser has always opposed such a call.

The importance of a general strike is that it is one of the most powerful weapons the working class possesses, as well as being politically useful in general. ising particular struggles to the whole working class.

A one-day general strike (currently the main 'action' slogan of the reformist Militant tendency) could only serve to demoralise and confuse workers given its inevitable failure and self-limiting (by definition) character.

The most likely outcome of a one-day general strike (which could not "smash the Tories" or defeat Tebbit's law) would be a propaganda victory for the labour movement bureaucracy, who would argue duty of revolutionaries is grounds of the failure of the one-day strike.

Socialists and trade union militants should argue for all-out action against the Tories. A general strike, - properly prepared for, and with adequate organisation, would be a threat not only to the Tories, but to bourgeois control of society.

ANDY DIXON Stockport general years ago he saw fit to say: option for the working class when the circumstances are right.

In 1969 the May 1 national action was probably decisive in mustering the forces which eventually forced a compromise and the withdrawal of Barbara Castle's notorious Bill -In Place of Strife.

In 1972 however a rising tide of spontaneous strike action against the jailing of the Pentonville dockers made an all-out General this we have only offered a hurried general criticism and have left out a lot, notably comrade O'Mahony's points on the South particularly.

However, we will let comrade O'Mahony himself make our central point (again from his 1972 pam;

phlet):

"Active solidarity with the fight for self-determination for Ireland is a hundred times more useful to the Irish working class than any number of lectures on immediate class unity and non-sectarianism." (or anything else for that matter, we would say). Precisely!

We hope this will open up a much-needed wider discussion of the question within Socialist Organiser and in the wider Trotskyist movement.

Fraternally, PETE REGAN ALAN O'SHEA ey uously didn't.

The reasons for this lie partly in the complacency and parochialism of the LV leadership. But more importantly it is the logical outcome of their overall strategy: to use the strike to put pressure on Edwardes and the BL Board to negotiate concessions for Vehicles alone.

Deal Exactly what sort of a deal would have been acceptable to the LV leadership is of course not known but it is a good bet that it would still have involved heavy redundancies even if the bosses could have been persuaded to accept certain aspects of the LV unions' "alternative plans" • Throughout the strike the leadership made it clear that their aim was to "return the company to profitability" - in other words, they agreed with Edwardes' overall objective, but wanted him lo show a little more flexibility in achieving it.

Obviously such an approach requires LV to be taken "special case ? Heath's Industrial Relations Act a real possibility.

Under these conditions the one day general strike call by the TUC was designed to turn a powerful movement capable of removing the tory government [something which it eventually achieved] into a mere protest.

Similarly during the 1980 steel strike, when a strong mood developed in the working class for general strike action, the TUC moved to turn a general strike decision by the Wales TUC into a one-day action which actually defused the movement.

But today we are in a very different position. There is no national steel strike. The Thatcher government have successfully imposed most of their policies on the working class and put three million on the dole.

The powerful potential of the working class to fight and defeat the tories has been repeatedly frustrated by the betrayals of the trade union leaders.

Now, with only three months or so to go before Tebbit's Bill becomes law, not a finger is being lifted by the TUC to stop it.

Under these conditions, a call for a one day general strike from the April 5 SLIIKE Conference of Executives on the third reading • of the Bill would be a major step forward.

It would mean the beginning of a fight to stop Tebbit and have the possibility of generating a movement which make realistic a call for an all-out strike on the day the Bill becomes separate from the rest of the company. That is why the leadership reacted with such hostility to the LAC's call for the fight to be taken into the rest of the Corporation and turned into a head-on confrontation with Edwardes and his plan.

Far from turning the link between Cars and Vehicles "into an obsession" as the comrades accuse us, the LAC simply pointed out that this was the only way to win against an employer with Edwardes' record, backed to the hilt by the Tory government. When pointing out this self-evident truth brought us into conflict with the strike committee then we accepted that as a regrettable necessity, but we certainly didn't seek such a conflict.

And it isn't true to say that "the LAC ... did more to alienate militants towards the revolutionary left than the whole of the media put together."

Our leaflets and badges were snapped up by the pickets and the vast majority of the L.V activists I spoke to wholeheartedly soreed with our perspectives second time in twelve months).

All the left organisations and also the CP are members.

The second committee is in solidarity with the Arab population of Golan who demand that the Israeli law on the annexation of the Golan should not be put into effect.

They have been on complete general strike for three weeks now (not going to work, not buying anything, schools and shops are closed). The army is surrounding all the villages and not allowing anyone to get out or in until the strike ends.

This fight is breaking all the illusions that Zionism tried to build about the Druze population as a different part of the all Arab population which is more sympathetic to Israel. All the Golan's citizens define themselves Syrian Arabs who are living under Israeli occupation.

Israeli premier Begin for the strike.

In fact several militants criticised us for not being sharp enough towards the leadership!

The comrades raise a number of other more minor points, all of which could be answered in some detail if space allowed. They make great play, for instance, of the claim that "the actions of the LAC lost their two supporters in the plant during the course of the dispute.

True This is not true. Of the two workers referred to, one was pressurised by the strike committee into disavowing the LAC right at the start of the dispute, before the LAC had made any intervention at all; the other worker is still in contact with us and as far as I know still agrees with our positions. the LAC is now in contact In addition with a significant number of LV militants who strongly support what we said and did around the strike.

Finally, the comrades accuse us of "arriving out of