Officials Day of Inaction

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so, if the sympathy strike were official, could the NUM.

Under Prior's Employment AcL, picketing is restricted to six people at then own place of work - the contingents of miners and other trade unionists who have joined mass pickets of health workers are strictly outside Tory law.

Action

But police have in almost all cases pulled back from confrontation with pickets. and it is plain that in the face of mass action, gaining momentum throughout wider layers of the labour movement, the Tebbit legis + lation, like the government • which spawned it, can be . defeated.

These developments run - in stark contrast to the • defeatist words and gestures of the official trade union "campaign" against Tebbit.

And indeed they point once again to the kind of conditions in which - even after the TUC has permitted the Thatcher government to put draconian new laws on the statute book - mass action can turn the law into a dead letter.

Support

We must continue to warn and explain the dangers of Tebbit, and fight for action on this issue. But at the same time we must fight HESELTINE's legislative war against local government has taken a back seat as Thatcher slugged it out with Galtieri in the South Atlantic. But the war against Labour in the local boroughs has not been forgotten by the Tories.

The Tories still want to see tighter legal controls on local spending; an end to or substantial reduction in direct labour services; and increasing rent charges to be laid on tenants, not ratepayers or the government.

The results of the London local elections on May 6, as well as in the metropolitan areas must have given Heseltine some probiems to ponder.

Despite Labour losing and some of the big metropolitan areas like Birming"MOVE along there, Sunny, you ca't give oui that stuff here.

'But I'm Ron Irda, fiery leader of 2 million trade urionists!"

"Yes, lad, and I'm Ronnie Reagan. You're nicked!"

This is an imaginary reconstruction of one of the highlights of June 10 -dubbed "Union Day" by TUC officials.

TGWU National Organiser Todd - a class war prisoner! - was arrested handing out copies of the TUC's anti-Tebbit leaflet inside Kings Cross station. Few rank and file workers were in sight at the time.

Elsewhere TGWU General Secretary Moss Evans was "moved on" as he hovered nervously outside Waterloo Station, limply offering leaffits to commuters for the benefit of a TV crew.

TUC leader Len Murray and a gaggle of fellow bureaucrats had picked an easier pitch - Fleet Street, where anti-union hacks and passers-by were again given leaflets. Murray told TV crews that the TUC was "Asking ... even beggham, the control over many of the Inner London boroughs such as Islington, Camden, Haringey and Southwark was given over to the left of the Labour These left wingers have said in the past that they are prepared to fight the Tories rather than dance around them as did Knight in Lambeth with fiery speeches and silent cuts.

Meanwhile Heseltine's failure to develop adequate legal powers that will allow discrimination against Labour-held councils means that the Tories have to find new ways of hitting Labour directly:

On June 19 London Labour Briefing is organising a conference for labour movement delegates and counciliors to plan the new tools against Tebbit. Elsewhere there were workplace meetings in Rolls Royce plants in Bristol and London.

Some trades councils organised local activity -notably in Liverpool. In Oxford where an evening demonstration was called by the Trades Council, union officials conspicuously boycotted the campaign and the march -and have attempted to exclude Trades Council officers from a bureaucratic local "educational campaign" against Tebbit run by the TGWU.

Strike

So where next after the June 10 fiasco? The Tebbit legislation is nearly on the statute books. If enforced it threatens the most basic trade union functions. It must be combatted by the full strength of the labour movement.

Plainly this means combatting also those union leaders who would sooner throw in the towel to the Tories than mount a fight.

The dockers have shown that given a lead workers will strike on this issue. The fight should be taken up -particularly in those unions already vaguely pledged to one-day stoppages against the Bill - for a one day general strike on the day it becomes law, as a dress rehearsal for the class action needed to defeat it once and for all.

To do that would demand union leaders really take a stand in defiance of the law: at least it would be better than getting nicked for leafletting at Kings Cross!

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'red' Lambeth, Brent and Waltham Forest in London,

and the Labour democracy fight for a

WORKERS Socialist GOVERNMENT Pamphlet