[Socialist Organiser supporters joined the 200-strong lobby of…]

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Socialist Organiser supporters joined the 200-strong lobby of the TUC on April 5, demanding Strike to Stop Tebbit, and vithout union democrac Top steward Anna Lunts told the conference: 'The response has surprised even me. The file are ready for action on NHS pay! On her right: conference chairperson Jeremy against strike action being sued for damages and compensation, it is impossible for the trade union movement to exist.

Fines

Take the example of a car plant producing a hundred cars an hour where there's a strike for a week. If the employer could sue for the entire damages arising from that strike, the TGWU with £45 million in the bank would be bankrupted by one week's strike in one factory.

Tebbit is saying that he wants to bring the trade unions under the law like everybody else, as if the trade unions have been bandits for years.

The fact is that is rhetoric from Tebbit. There could be no trade unions under those conditions, so he is putting on a limit of £250,000 for a union with over 100,000 members.

And he redefines the immunities. Under the 1906 Act, union action had to be 'connected' with a I'trade dispute' Under Tebbit, action must relate wholly or mainly' to a dispute between workers and their own employer.

So, if a strike is seen as mainly political, and it is so easy to see a strike as mainly political it is unlawful and immediately open to a series of court actions probably resulting in €250,000 fines.

Political strikes

The bureaucrats would redouble their efforts to stop you going on strike in the first place and the courts are ¡there to bankrupt the union of the strike takes place.

Some strikes are completely between the workers and management on a wages Issue. But how long does a wages issue remain industrial? When do the political overtones come into a wages It is an absolutely fundamental change that takes the tol in public and private ndustry. To achieve that ve need to start to demand hat trade unions have a Matutory access to company looks and accounts and to lave statutory access and ight to an equal say over the rhole range of company lecisions whether it be from ew technology to investBent.

•We also need to look at reater awareness amongst ne trade unions about ifferent layers of oppresion within the working lass.

Women's We need to now look rith greater vigour and more nterest and more support to he rights and interests of romen, of black workers if gay workers, of disabled porkers. We need to take p their rights and special aterests with greater vigour, erhaps, through the conlusion of negotiations with imployers for creche facililes, for equal pay for work I equal value, for equal portunities, and for anticrimination clauses tion contracts.

I believe that by lookat the trade union ovement in a comradeand critical way, in NOW wwwww labour movement back to before 1906.

Take the closed shop provisions. I'll give you a quote from Tebbit referring to the closed shop provisions in the debate on the second reading.

He said "The Bill provide the most effective protection for non-trade unionists that we have ever had."

They are proposing that in order to have a closed shop, which is quite fundamental to the structure of the trade union movement in Britain, you've got to have a ballot periodically either every three or five years.

Then you've got to win either 85% of the vote or 80% of those eligible to vote in that election.

Now that, of course, is absolutely • impossible when you've got a press campaign.

If you don't get that, then immediately anybody refuses to join a union, and they lose their job as a result they can then go for compensation - a minimum of £17,000 for anyone refusing to ioin a union under those conditions.

It's a bounty for anyone prepared to do a bit of union-busting.

It doesn't finish there.

Anybody who has got coming up with new ideas, we can make the trade union movement in the 1980s. more relevant to people's needs and aspirations, we can. encourage a revival of participation and popular support in the trade unions, and we can push forward on a new wave of increased membership of the trade union movement in this country.

But comrades, none of this is going to succeed without an extension of union democracy. Workers are only going to loin and involve themselves in trade union affairs with a degree of enthusiasm if they feel that by so doing, they can have an effective and meaningful say over those decisions and if the leaders implement the policies they democratically agree.

Now, of course, in arguing this case we may well be characterised as anti-trade union, and quite possibly we'll come up against the union establishment.

Witches But for the last few years, those of us who have been fighting for democracy in the Labour Party came up against the Party establishment as well. We've got lump, it's a tion.

strongly held personal conviction can leave the union and take advantage of exactly the same provisions.

What does it mean for sub-contracting? It becomes illegal for workers in a factory to insist that subcontractors in the factory are members of a union.

This is what Tebbit said, again on the second reading:

"You may not like the but properly managed very etfective instituresponse Tebbit's Bill also gives employers the right to dismiss all or part of a striking workforce with five working days' notice.

And already the back bench Tories are pressing to make ballots compulsory when strike action takes place.

All this when the working class is already under the most virulent attack both from the government through the cuts, through unemployment, and from the employers on the shop floor.

The trade union structures are being broken down in industry after industry. to recognise that is part of the game when we are struggling to democratise the trade union movement.

No doubt there will be demands from certain right wing trade unionists for bans, for proscriptions, for expulsions, and for witch-hunts. Last year the London Central Branch of the EETPU refused to toe the line for Frank Chapple, and he suspended the branch.

But we must keep up the struggle. We must take to heart the words of Anne Connell, in Briefing Against In the Middle Ages, women were subjugated and forced to conform to socially accepted roles and conventions out-of fear of denunciation as witches. Women in their hundreds and thousands were witch-hunted and tortured, burned, drowned or hung.

And who were these witches? They were heretics, they were non-conformists, they were women who challenged prevailing authority, who challenged prevailing ideas.

To defeat the Tebbit Bill and to win a socialist transformation of our society, What the Labour Party and trade union movement needs today is not witch-hunters but witches. NUPE si rank anc Corbyn, There the shop stewards' movement is under attack, where speed-up is taking place; and where people are being continuously thrown out of their jobs.

What has been the response? In essence the TUC is saying, 'Yes, we can live with it for 18 months or two years, and hopefully there will then be a Labour government and maybe we can persuade them to repeal it' From that stance they've got their 8-point policy which they are going to put to the conference on Monday with no amendments or additions allowed. It simply sets out to deal with the effects of the Bill after it becomes law.

They haven't put forward a single proposal aimed at stopping it.

People say that as soon as somebody is arrested in the autumn there'll be great explosions within the working class, and it will be like the dockers all over again.

But it won't be like the dockers all over again. The reason the working class exploded in 1972 was because the labour movement was keyed into the situation. The Industrial Relations Act was a massive and Alan Thornett, issue in the labour move-. ment and we had been fighting it for 18 months before it came in.

So as soon as the dockers were arrested there was an explosion. The TUC was forced to threaten a one day general strike and the dockers were released through the official solicitor.

That won't happen this time, because if there's no fight beforehand, noone will be ready and the labour movement will be in a very difficult position.

It is essential that there is a fight now. But who is going to organise it? Last weekend I went to the conference of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions which of course is basically controlled by the Communist Party.

Communist It decided to do nothing before the Bill becomes law. It decided on a policy of locally-based 2-hour strikes and a lobby of Parliament, with no date set.

It means that they've decided to do absolutely nothing, and it says what the position of the Communist Party is.

Tebhit The Communist Party is best placed to put pressure on the TUC if they decided to do so. But if they are going to go along with the TUC then it puts us in a very serious situation.

The resolution from my branch to the LCDTU conference was not allowed and the conference was very strictly controlled. They booked a very small hall and turned away delegates -every AUEW delegate was turned away - because they said that seating arrangements did not allow for a greater attendance.

So where do we go from here? Will the working class fight?

initiative There are 3 million unemployed. That makes it more difficult than in 1972.

But if we look at ASLEF and Leyland Vehicles - two recent examples - then we find that if workers are called upon and get backing. then they are prepared to fight this government even under conditions of 3 million unemployed.

The question is who is going to mobilise that fight? If there's going to be a fight it is only going to be mobilised from those to the left of the CP and those who are prepared to mount a massive campaign now throughout the labour movement.

To that end we nave done quite a bit of work. You will see that Socialist Organiser has raised the campaign against Tebbit very sharply now for a number of weeks. We had a meeting with the leadership of the IMG last week to urge them to join us in a campaign and looking at this week's Socialist Challenge there has been a response which we hope we can build on.

Crisis on The SWP miles behind the situation on this. They had a speaker at the LCDTU conference, Roger Cox, a long time member of theirs, who made no criticwhatsoever the declaration at that conference. He talked entirely pessimistically about the working class. It's very difficult, we can't talk about strike action, and so on.

He went on to attack the TUC levy of 10p and said we should have a 5p rank and file levy instead.

I'm not saying that to make a sectarian point. But it does illustrate the position we are in.

Unless somebody starts to seriously organise then nothing is going to happen.

We have produced statement to form the basis of such a campaign.

In the next few weeks, we want to build up a massive campaign behind that statement.

It proposes - a one-day strike on the day of the third reading of the Bill. Now in the past I've been hostile to one day strikes.

Today, a call for a one-day strike would be a massive step forward.

If you call for a one-day strike you've got to go and argue it in the workplaces what Tebbit means, why we've got to go on strike etc.

The other demand is to break off links with the Tories now. The TUC may say we can't get strike action but they could break off taiks with the Tories.

If they did so, that itself would raise the Tebbit issue to new heights in the working class.

If the TUC said that from Monday morning we aren't going to speak to the Tories because they are legislating against us, it would create a completely new situation.

So why don't they do it? Because they att not prepared to lead a fight and they don't want to lead a fight against Tebbit.

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Prior ponders - as the war of the Catholic minority against the ruling state ing to partial or full devolu- the Catholics cannot be Ireland.

.79 April THE TORY Government's White Paper on Northern Ireland is the first major attempt to set up a new political framework for the Six Counties in over seven years. To believe in 1982 that it can achieve its stated objective is to believe in miracles.

Stable •The government adheres to the view that in any administration in Northern Ireland there must be reasonable and appropriate arrangements to take account of the interests of the minority which are acceptable to both sides of the community. This is no more than a recognition of the reality that in the special circumstances of Northern Ireland nothing else can provide stable government on a lasting basis" (emphasis added).

'The object of the government's proposals is to point to a way whereby, in spite of their acknowledged and continuing differences, the two sides of the community may achieve sufficient mutual respect, and make sufficient mutual accommodations, to participate more creatively in the public life of the province. Total repudiation of violence, with all that implies for economic advance and the prevention of further suffering for families in Northern Ireland, is only likely to come about when both sides of the community recognise each other's different aspirations and when they are able to live together as good neighbours"

(emphasis added).

This will only be when neither community feels constrained or threatened by the other - and that means never, so long as the Six Counties is the framework. And the government is not here repudiating its own violence - the demand is that the Catholic community's essentially defensive violence should cease.

Assembly

The main proposals these:

There will be an election for an assembly of 78 members, perhaps in the autumn. It will set up committees to shadow the existing departments of Northern Ireland government administered by the British Government's Northern Ireland Office.

The powers that have been held by the Northern Ireland Office since the collapse of the last Northern Ireland government in May 1974 can be either handed over in toto to this Assembly, or doled out to it, bit by bit, department by department, at the will of the British government.

It will insist on certain conditions, of which it will be the judge, betore agreeing to partial or full devolution of powers. There must be a consensus across the Protestant and Catholic communities, represented by at least 70% of elected representatives. The British government will retain ringmaster powers, and the right to dispose of whatever the Assembly may propose.

Thus the politicians of Northern Ireland are being placed in a largely blank political framework of connections and institutions, and told to fill in the details, to improvise and reach agreement. - with the incentive of fully devolved Northern Ireland home rule if they comply and succeed in carrying through.

Magic

. What new magic element is going to induce the necessary cooperation between the politicians and reconciliation between the communities, the While Paper does nut say.

The new approach differs from the approach in 1973-4 and 1975. All previous proposals - political kiteflying and hard 'initiatives' = made definite proposals. These do not, except for laying down guidelines that the Catholics cannot be entirely overridden.

In 1973 a full Northern Ireland Catholic/Protestant coalition government was set up - and in 1974 it crumbled. In 1975 a constitutional assembly was el ected and told to work out an agreed constitution before proceeding to a new power-sharing executive. The Protestant majority demanded majority rule -i.e. Protestant rule - and Britain had to admit defeat.

Now the onus is thrown on the Northern Ireland politicians.

It is difficult to see what other approach they have left to take - but this one seems to see the British government's role and responsibilities in old-fashioned terms of the 'night watchman state' - the government should interfere as little as possible, merely set up a tramework and hold things together, trusting to institutions to grow, develop, knit together and evolve away from the present bitter realities of Northern Ireland.

A policy that might work - or seem to - in an organically expanding, healthy society, it is incredibly irresponsible for Northern Ireland.

This is a chronically divided society with a declining economy, a war by the Catholic minority against the ruling state power, and a muted civil war between the Catholic and Protestant communities.

In 1982 we are in the 14th year since the original Northern Ireland state established in 1920 crumbled and fell apart into chaos and anarchy.

There is no solution within the Six County unit. That is the lesson of the 62 years since Ireland was partitioned.

The Six County unit is artificial, unviable, an outrage imposed by superior British force against the democratic rights of the Irish people. Justified as a necessary defence of the rights of the Protestants of Ulster, the Northern state has always had a bigger Catholic minority than the Protestants of all Ireland would have been inside a 32 County state.

Cockpit

Catholics are today about 35% of the population of the Six Counties.

The Six Counties have been a cockpit, and inside inat sman arena, vamun, that small arena, Catholic/ Protestant communal animosities, economic competition, and conflicting political aspirations have been murderously intensified and concentrated. The working class has remained chronically divided along communal lines.

From 1920 to 1972 there was one-party rule at Stormont on behalf of the Protestant community, whose political and social supremacy was openly proclaimed l'a Protestant state for a Protestant people'), and pursued with boneheaded narrowmindedness and with religious, political and even racial bigotry resembling that of the Boers in South Africa.

Catholics were discriminated against in jobs and housing, deprived of rights taken for granted in Britain, subjected to special powers of detention without charge or trial. They were treated as the conquered and subjugated people that they in fact were.

Their revolt after 1968, which grew into a powerful guerilla offensive, finally forced the British government nominally in charge all along - to shatter the Orange political establishment in Northern Ireland in March 1972. John O'Mah the only so withdrawal Ireland. iny stic anc 'gues that is British a united The intention was to then proceed to create a new political edifice into which would be incorporated Catholic middle-class politicians, thus bringing Northern Ireland politics to the general level of West European democratic regimes.

They have failed repeatedly. They have failed either to placate or to beat down the Catholics.

The Catholic revolt and the abolition of Stormont led to a tremendous Protestant backlash and the eruption into a sort of political life of the Protestant working class, who had been overwhelmingly docile and deferential to their Tory-Unionist 'betters' throughout the life of the State.

Guerilla One-party: Protestant dictatorship was brought down by the Catholic guerilla offensive. In 1974 it was the Protestant working class that brought down the Catholic/Protestant coalition government with a general strike of revolutionary proportions (though for a reactionary goal: they wanted the restoration of Protestant supremacy, straight majority rule over the Catholics).

Why does the British government think things are to be different this time? Plainly it doesn't. It cites the fact that 1981 passed without large-scale civil war as evidence of the likely cross-community support for its policies! It is close to an admission by the government that the problem has beaten them.

All the main parties in Northern Ireland have condemned the • White Paper (DUP, OUP) or said its proposals are unwork• able (SDLP). But it seems they will take part in the elections and in the Assembly.

Re-run

The Protestant/Catholir proportions within the Assembly are a foregone conclusion, so we may ser an indefinite re-run of the 1975 Assembly. The Prot estant politicians will de mand majority rule - logi cally insisting that if there is a democratic validity ir the Six County state, ther there should be majority rule.

Rejecting that logic, bu insisting that the Six Coun ty state is the only possible framework (the Anglo Irish Council set up in 1981 is rudimentary), the Britist government will just irrit ate and exacerbate the situation.

There was widesprear fear in the Catholic comm unity in 1975 that the Prot estant majority would ust the legitimacy conferre on them by the Assembly ti organise a political coup -claiming for themselves, a: the majority, the right t set up a government, or provisional government That would most likely have led to full-scale civil war.

Communal tension i: probably less now than ir 1975, but the communitie: are more politically polaris ed. The Prior proposals wil stoke up the fires.

Condemn

The British labour move ment should condemi these proposals. The Si Counties is not the frame work for a solution. Quit the opposite - it makes th Catholic/Protestant anta gonism worse anI unresolvable.

The Labour Party i committed to a long-tern goal of a united Ireland Now, when the Tories pro pose new, foredoomed ani very dangerous tinkerin with the artificial and un democratic Six Count state, is the time to rais the whole question of a independent and unite federal Ireland. That is th only fundamental solutio tu the tragic mess that suc essive British govert ments, Labour and Tor alke, have made and cor tinue to make in Norther Ireland.

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•NOTHING TO LOSE Organiser no.79 April

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Socialst Organis STRIKE To STOP TEBBIT