We cannot succeed

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Peter Tatchell: 'We need a mass ca paign extra-parliamentary action' Peter Tatchell from Bermondsey argued that a fight for tradi union democracy must go together with the campaign for Labour Party democracy As we meet here today in Birmingham, about 800 miles away in Poland, out comrades are fighting just like we are, to establish a democratic labour movement.

In Poland our comrades are fighting against General Jaruzelski, in Britain we are fighting against Norman Tebbit. And indeer we might say that Norman Tebbit is Britain's General Jaruzelski.

Norman Tebbit would like to see the trade unions coopted as part of the state apparatus. He would like to destroy them as instruments for the defence of working class interests.

We need a massive popular movement to defeat this government's legislation. Dare I say it, we need a mass campaign of extra-parliamentary action.

If necessary, we need to be thinking • about organising a one-day general strike lo give that effect I believe from the experience of the Industrial Relations Act struggle ten years ago, we can defeat the Tebbit Bill through a campaign of defiance, of non-compliance with the law, and by mobilising a popular movement in the work places.

This legislation should be scrapped because we demand the workers of Britain have the right to form free and independent trade unions, to withdraw their labour and take industrial action in defence of their interests.

A mass party The struggle for democracy and accountability within the Labour Party and the trade union movement is part and parcel of our effort to defeat the Tebbit Bill. It is part and parcel of our efforts to secure the election of a Labour government at the next poll in order that we can restore the trade union rights that have already been taken away by the 1980 Bill, and in order that we can push forward to bring about a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power in society.

To achieve this need look towards new campaigning, mass membership style Labour Party. It is necessary to think about, talk about and take steps now. towards recreating that Party by reunifying the political and industrial wings of the labour movement.

I'm not talking about the kind of unity conducted by a handful of Labour MPs and trade union leaders at Bishop Stortford, I'm talking about forging a unity between the trade union movement and the Labour Party at the grass roots level - a unity forged by the rank and file activists in the unions and in the Party at large.

I think that to defeat the Tebbit Bill we are going to have to work to increase massively the trade union affiliation to local Constituency Labour Parties, and we need to get, all. of us as Labour Party members, to take a much more active and assertive role in our local trade union branches. And the plans to set up workplace branches of the Labour Party are a vital means of reuniting the two wings of the movement.

Not only can socialist ideas be taken into the trade union movement, but we can get feeding back from the trade union movement the interests and aspirations of our trade union comrades.

We also need to be taking a critical but comradely look at trade unionism in Britain today. We have, and I think we must tace it, the problems of sectional interests, of preoccupation with wage bargaining, Which we must overcome it we are to build a strong and united labour movement which can use its collective power as a ünited movement to extend beyond Ine merely economic struggles within the framework of capitalism.

We also need to be exploring ways in which the stronger unions can be using their power to help the weaker ones such as the low paid nurses who we heard of this morning - and perhaps for the stronger unions to help those workers who are not yet unionised. - groups such as the home workers, who are amongst the most exploited and oppressed.

Workers' control

And to make the leap to socialist consciousness from trade union consciousness, we need to be thinking about putting the struggle for workers control on the agenda of every trade union.

We need to be developing the strategies and policies to bring about workers conalarm-organising the fight

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