TUC leaders: running scarel

Scan page 8

And ancther was done for British Rail last week. Having conducted "sample" of 613 railworkers at 87 stations and depots, ORC reported that 53% of ASLEF members and 66% of NUR members would vote against a strike if a ballot were held.

This management-commissioned poll was headlined by the Sun - without attributing the figure to ORC. In other words ORC not only offers a gauge of individual feelings of some workers for the benefit of management - but its figures - where judged appropriate - can be then passed on for propaganda purposes to the gutter press. But ORC does more than passhiel! assess opinion: it afters guidance to manageTRII ON how to shape year's pay review too saw Edwardes issue • a threatening letter to all 58,000 carworkers on the eve of mass meetings to decide on action over the company's 3.8% pay offer.

If the strike, called by the Joint Negotiating Committee two weeks earlier went ahead, Edwardes warned, he would shut down the whole of BL. And he would liquidate any individual plant which took action for an increased offer.

His threat to sack the BL workforce - and thus put at risk the jobs of up to one million workers in engineering and ancillary industries all over the country - was plainly backed at top level hy the Tory government.

It did not intimidate the workforce. They voted 8-1 in prized with theastrike. citize ". inEers up it * thesis.

- IN WE shall have fights with governments of all varieties, but we must never give the impression that we or any other union will go on strike in order to change the government.' These words. from Joe Gormley in the aftermath of the Tory election victory in 1979 have spelled out the attitude of TUC leaders to every struggle that has taken place against the Thatcher offensive.

From time to time when they have found it impossible to stem a tide of rank and file militancy, some union officials have reluctantly sanctioned action by particular sections of workers: bat on each accacion the action that has occurred bes bees bag. tied by a refusal of the TUC leadership to generalise and spread struggles into an all-out mobilisation against the government.

The pace for this was set by the TUC's actions during the steel strike of 1980. After 13 weeks of tenacious and solid strike action by over 100,000 workers a sell-out formula was hurriedly cobbled together at the beginning of April.

Why was the deal stampeded through? Because the right wing steel union bureaucrats knew that BL workers, having • repeatedly voted for action, were due to strike all-out from April 8.

And dockers, who had dragged their feet on solidarity blacking of steel, had finally begun it in earnest; a call for strike action on the docks was issued as the final touches were put to the sell-out.

The steel strike was indeed from day one recognised as a political strike against the Thatcher government: and as such it was a strike which terrified the union leaders, whose reformist politics reflect their contented position of power and privilege within the existing system.

To mobilise the independent strength of their mass membership would disrupt the cosy relationships established over decades between union bureaucrats and the employers: it would lift the lid with which the bureaucrats hold down the militancy and demands for democracy and accountability among new layers of rank and file workers.

Mass struggle and class confrontation are therefore anathema to the bureaucracy. Many of them would actuaily prefer to preside over sell-outs, betrayals and defeats than wage a mass strike.

Thus the whole of the TUC leadership joined ranks in the early days of the steel strike to stamp on a call by the Welsh TUC for an all-Wales General Strike from the end of January — which had enlisted NUM support and could rapidly have spread.

And the leaders of the BL unions held back action against their 5% pay offer for eight weeks to avoid any link-up between their members and the steel workers!

The same pattern has prevailed in every major struggle. Huge closures have been either meekly accepted by terrified bureaucrats, or struggles that have arisen from the rank and file have been deliberately isolated and destroyed as at Lawrence Scotts, Plesseys, St. Benedict's Hospital and numerous plants and public sector facilities.

Indeed the huge job loss in the public sector _ with more jobs axed in school meals than the whole of the