Rays of the rising sun

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Now in the struggles duced a new upsurge of symcurrently under way we have pathy strike action on a scale AFTER a long, dark night of seemingly uninterrupted setbacks and sell-outs, it seems that the sun of militant resistance has begun once again to rise in the sky.

There have been those who had drawn pessimistic conclusions about the will or ability of the working class to challenge Thatcher's remorseless offensive. Demoralised by the abject refusal of union leaders to mobilise resistance to a tide of cuts that have slashed jobs by the thousand in local government, the NHS, and right across manufacturing industry; bitter at the barrage of brazen betrayals that have made workers at BL into a punch bag for the Tories and the CBI; perplexed at the TUC's failure to mount any struggle against anti-union. laws; many people have wrongly begun to regard all these positions of the union leaders as being the result of a retreat in the membership.

So overwhelming has been the flow of uncontested closures and redundancies, the onslaught on shop floor working conditions and manning levels, and on hard-won and much needed social services, that it has been easy to lose sight of the fact that some small, albeit partial and temporary victories have been won.

Successful

A threatened national dock strike last year forced back an attack on jobs. The NUM was similarly successful in forcing a reprieve for threatened South Wales collieries. This year we have seen the ASLEF dispute drive management into an ungainly retreat, from which they are still regrouping their forces.

And most recently the threat of NUR action against rail workshop closures has forced management to hold back until at least next year.

The lesson in each case was the same. The Tory steamroller can be halted -but only by a full-scale mobilisation of the working class.

And in addition the ASLEF dispute underlined another important point: where a firm and coherent call for action is given from the leadership, the rank and file is ready and willing to respond. It has not been the members, but their leaders who have thrown in the towel to the Tories. more and more evidence of this - clear symptoms of a welling-up of frustrated militancy across wide sections of the working class.

The anger of hundreds of thousands of health service workers at their poverty line wages has overflowed even the bounds of the trade union movement and affected that sedate "professional" body the RCN. Given for the first time the prospect of united action embracing every section on a common claim, health workers have piled pressure on grudging and conservative union bureaucrats, demanding they lead the fight.

Infectious

Their fighting spirit has been infectious - and prorarely seen in the last decade. Dockers too have played their part in this revival, with the first national stoppage against Tebbit.

On the rail, the lett majority on the NUR Executive has made new moves to push umpire Sid Weighell to one side and get to grips with the Tory enemy, calling an all-out strike from June 28. And from the coalfields comes a new wave of militancy against new plans for pit closures.

The mass movement is moving again for all to see: but this does not mean there will not be further setbacks brought about by the union leaders.

The union bureaucracy though bolstered by the mass media is not simply an artificial entity foisted upon the working class. It is rather a parasitic outgrowth of the workers' movement itself. The labour bureaucracy feeds off real political weak. nesses in the working class. It also reinforces those weaknesses and its actions. and institutions help generate those weaknesses. They do their best to ensure that workers fail to see beyond the limitations of shop-floor trade union issues, they oppose any fight to overthrow capitalism - but substitute vain hopes of improving conditions under it.

Bulwark

The trade union bureaucracy and the institutions it rests upon are a major bulwark of the nationalism, racialism and sexism which divide and disorientate the workers' movement.

Such obstacles will not be surmounted overnight -particularly when the whole labour and trade union bureaucracy is committed to policies which preserve them and oppose the growth of genuine independent action by the working class.

Opposition

It is this independent action which prompts the frenzied opposition of health union leaders to an all-out strike; and also provokes the simultaneous moves towards witch-hunts and expulsions of the Labour left.

As the sun rises, it becomes easier to see the way forward. A vital component in this must be the stonary leadership, in our Lola l labour movement, to spearhead the struggle for united mass action against the Tory enemy.