[mited L ft IN LATE July an important…]

Scan page 3

mited L ft IN LATE July an important meeting took place in a committee room of the House of Commons. Convened by Reg Race, it met to discuss labour movement action to fight the Tory anti-union legislation, the iatest round of which is the Tebbit It was a small meeting of invited individuals, 'key labour movement activists'. Militants from all over the country attended - South Wales miners, the left of the NUR Executive, Oxford Trades Council, the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions and the Mobilising Committee for the Defence of Trade Union Rights were among the labour movement bodies represented.

Umbrella

The meeting decided that in September a new umbrella organisation, uniting the broadest possible forces, would be launched. Reg Race was commissioned to convene a meeting in September to initiate it.

The Geraghty case - the victimisation of the Fleet Street electricians' leader because they struck in solidarity with the health workers - has brought home to many workers what the Tories have done over the last three years. They have created an entirely new legal framework for trade union activity. Solidarity action, the most basic of working class activities, the root of all trade unionism, is now effectively illegal.

Smart

This time the judge was smart enough to have learned from the experience of the Heath government ten years ago and he did not jail Sean Geraghty. He fined him instead. (Geraghty could still go to jail if he refuses to pay the fine: he says the decision is with his branch members). The threat of jail hangs over every militant who takes solidarity action in the future.

That's how far things have gone without even a respectable attempt by the official trade union movement to organise a fight back. The new organisation will begin the uphill work of changing this situation.

The meeting agreed on a proposal from Socialist Organiser that the model would be the Rank and File Mobilising Committee for Labour Democracy. This was the body that united a large number of campaigns, individuals, and political groups, to coordinate and organise the fight for democracy in the LabPatric urts on a new initiative our Party. A similar body fur the fight against Tebbit would unite bodies like the Communist Party led Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, trade union Broad Lefts; the Socialist Organiser Alliance, etc. etc., in a campaign to agitate the labour movement about the murderous Tory drive to shackle the unions.

The new organisation would issue broadsheets, organise meetings in major centres with 'big name' speakers, put out factory leaflets in collaboration with shop stewards' committees, concern itself with the defence of workers who come up against the Tory laws. Its aim will be to prepare the labour movement for action to rip up the Tory anti-union legislation.

Criterion

It will adopt as its foundation stone commitment to struggle and non-sectarianism. No individual or grouping willing to help in the fightback will be excluded or discriminated against. Efforts will be made to involve the official trade union movement, from the highest level of orniclaldom co une lowest. -f:.:a1lamtathalaannt The test and criterion will be if they are really willing to help rouse the labour movement fight the Tories.

In this way the broadest unity in action can be created, while making commitment to struggle central will rule out letting the official trade union leaders immobilise the campaign.

Chickens The new initiative will get under way around the time that the second instalreaches the statute books. We will have a hard fight ahead of us. The official leaders long ago bowed their knees and their necks to the Tory yoke. Like trussed chickens they have squawked but done nothing - and these chickens are tied up primarily by their own timidity, conservatism, and unwillingness to fight the entrenched Tory government.

They reckon that they can live comfortably enough with the new Tory harness. The rank and file activists who were the shock troops of the fight against Tory anti-union legislation in 1972 and Labour attempts in 1969 have been badly affected by the slump, by mace unamninument. and liaos by the official leaders' performance. The Left has been paralysed. The CP rupt organisations were already in membership. "We have some friendly differences. of course we do, but in terms of wage cuts redundtags along behind the trade union bureaucrats.

Depression To launch a fight against the legislation they would have to risk a break with the bureaucracy which has, essentially; accepted the Tory legislation, and relies on a future Labour government to repeal it. The CP won't do that. The Liaison Committee for the Defence* of Trade Unions has done very little, despite its anices and the need for industry to make profits we think as one."

Mrs Thatcher counter attacked by announcing the privatisation of Parliament to prevent what she called feather-bedding.

In future, seats wiil go to the highest bidders and the number of Opposition MPs - known to the Tory party as rotten boroughs -will be reduced by natural wastage.

Taylor Woodrow, the organisation which pulled out of the CBI last weck in disgust, welcomed this return 1o pure market forces, and announced that it would buy all the first 200 seats to come on the market.

The rest will be held by pension lunds so that public interests ran he maintained.

Voting will be in secret, by representatives of the organisations owning the scats.

and the government is said to bo delighted it can sell off large and valuable proparties in Central London as a leaders must must substantial influence.

The numerically most important organisation of te revolukonary well, bie Socialist Workers' Party, is now politically prostrated. Like a person in a state of clinical depression, the SWP exaggerates and magnifies the real probl ems and difficulties that exist, and the setbacks that the movement has experienced. Its self-induced paralysis has reached the stage of scrapping its rank and file groups in the THE It is thought that the 41. + this Houses of Parliament could be dismantled stone by stone and taken to America to become a tourist attraction. But even though Britain will benefit to the tune of millions of hard-earned dollars Mrs Thatcher assured the British people last night that they will not lose their democratic traditions.

She announced the formation of an annual democracy prize, to be awarded each year and to be followed by a speech and a re-enactment of a Parliamentary vote in the House of Commons wherever it may be.

It is thought likely that the first winner will be Bachir Gemayel, the Maronite Christian Falangist leader who restored the Lebanese people's faith in democracy by not only winning the presidential election but achieving the distinction of being the only candidate.

But analysts are watching Henry Kaufman closely to see if he will tip himself to win the prize.

The campaigning body set up by Socialist Organiser, London Labour Briefing, and others six months ago - the Mobilising Committee for the Defence of Trade Union Rights - has done something; but has been hampered by its lack of size, resources, and established support.

That's why the new body is such an important initiative: It can transform the situation. The slump has hit the labour movement pretty hard. The official leaders have done their best and their worst to turn the problems into demoralisation. It would be stupid to pretend that they have not had some successes.

Their betrayals and open scabbing (BL last November; ASLEF; the wretched Spanswick's attempt to dissuade the electricians from supporting his members) have become even more shameless as the relative decline in the rank and file has emboldened them.

Burst

But that's only of the picture.

The solidarity action of electricians, miners, steelworkers, and others for the health workers are on a level of class consciousness that matches and surpasses anything that took place in the years of the Great Militancy in the early '70s. A whole number of struggles in the last three years have shown that there is a willingness to fight that bursts through when workers feel driven to struggle and see the chance to do so.

A great bitterness has been built up in the working class, and it will burst out. It may well be trigger. ed by some such incident as the Geraghty affair, by the victimisation or jailing of a militant.

This underlying situation is the grounds for believing that, belated though it is. the new organisation can turn the tide and play a role in rousing the labour movement to rip up the Tory legislation - and maybe the Thatcher government too.

Watch Socialist Organiser for details of the committee and its activities.

----- pull-quotes -----

in John O'Mahony repi

ment of Tory anti-union legislation - Tebbit's -

Union leaders