Thatcher Jugcernaut Crushes the 'wets'

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armament is 'selfish'; the delivered laboriously from Lies offer workers the chance amounts of capital by to immobilise such huge industrial action. AFTER the TUC Congress and Labour Party conference, the annual gathering of the Tory Party presents itself as the world turned upside down.

There are no delegates - mandated or not by their organisations; instead there are 'representatives' free to let it all hang out in unbridled demonstrations of their own bloodthirsty politics.

There are no resolutions which mean anything on major problems of policy: instead the motions selected are vacuous affairs, almost always carried unanimously, which in any event are in no way binding upon the Tory leaders.

And the 'rank and file' on the floor of the conference stand in general to the right of their leaders, ready to cheer the slightest hint of brutalgia for the lost values chauvinism, and of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Tory speakers complain of the 'left wing' bias of journalists in the mass media, and in general talk in a topsy-turvy language accordine to which the struggle for nuclear dis"SO, off your bottoms lads. Get on with it. Re member that the Leader': eye is on every single one of you — and on all of us"? • • - Michael Heseltine dostmantion of induatro ic of industry is the means to create real jobs'; and the promotion of private medicine is seen as the way to support the NHS' On occasion the logic descends to sheer lunacy -such as the speech by Transport Secretary David Howell, in which he strugg: led to persuade tweeded Shire Tories that an in. crease in the size of juggernaut lorries would be good for the environment. Apparently the manage. ment of Sainsburys had informed him that bigger lorries would mean less journeys — while admitting that most of the existing size lorries already travel half empty.

With speech after speech written texts approved by the conference stage managers, the mixed metaphor industry had another field day while journalists nodded over their notebooks or amused themselves by watching Sir Keith Joseph.

But for those prepared to cut through the mists of tedium and deception, the conference brought a chill message.

Amid the heaving seas "and howling winds of the current economic storm, Captaín Thatcher (with a parrot Geoffrey Howe on her shoulder) has lashed the wheel of the Tory icebreaker to remain locked on a collision course which means the wholesale destruction of the welfare state, the nationalised industries, and the power of the trade union movement.

Deck

Exposed on the deck, a number of more fainthearted "wets' are still clinging (or frozen) onto handrails and doorknobs, while some - like Thatcher's predecessor Edward Heath — seem likely to be swept overboard altogether, possibly to be rescued in the SDP/Liberal dinghy.

Heath - whose own brutal attacks on the working class have paled almost into insignificance in comparison with the Thatcher offensive - gave interviews during the conference which castigated the Thatcher leadership for abandoning 'traditional' Tory philosophy. His statements were an almost exact echo of : Liberal leader Steel's lament that the 'heavy mob' had now 'hi. jacked' the Tory Party, turning its back on the old 'one nation' ideals which the Liberals loved.

As if to respond to these criticisms or to lend a 'human' face to their actual policies, a handful of surviving 'wets' made guarded references to 'compassion' and to the 'concern' for the plight of the: unemployed in their speeches at fringe meetings.

The unlikely figure of millionaire Michael Heseltine - perhaps mildly enlightened by his occasional flying visits to Me: ISeyside in the past year even suggested from t the platform of conference tr lat hope needed to be given to In return, Sir Keith ( want to do things wi ith young people") Jose ph offered the unemployed t he 'hope' that their kids mig sht find their state schor Dis closed down under 1 his 'voucher' scheme; Sir Geoffrey Howe gave the em the 'hope' of more cuts in public services to of fer more tax cuts to the we althy; and Francis Pym offi ered them 'hope' that wi You thought some Labour Party conference decisions were bad? Here are three motions from this year's Tory Party conference agenda:

Motion no.583, Norwood: This Conference calls upon the Government to recreate the conditions in which a virgin leading a child and carrying a bag of gold can pass on foot from one end of the kingdom to another without fear.

Motion no.812, Manchester Blackley. This Confer-. BP announced 1300 redundancies last week from its tanker fleet - and seafarers' unions were up in arms about the effect on Britannia's military ability to rule the waves!

'General Galtieri must be kicking himself" , declared Merchant Navy Officers assistant general secretary John Newman. •Without a strong BP fleet Britain would not have been able to recover the F'aiklands"

This stuff about having to berruw ships is a bit of a knock to all the talk ot imperial grandeur. But, nothing daunted, the National Union of Seamen Britain as a front-line European launch-pad for US Cruise missiles, the unemployed could - along with most of the rest of the population — be wiped out in a nuclear war.

There were even more 'hopes' on offer: William Whitelaw promised to punish the unemployed and youth more severely if they are driven to crime; Nigel Lawson and others offered the unemployed the 'hope' that they can invest their pathetic state benefits in shares in 'hived-off' nationalised industries; and Norman Tebbit, in ence is proud to tell the world that Britain has the best, most hardworking prime minister and political leader on earth.

Mrs Thatcher is full of backbone and guts, a real Tory, and the best thing since sliced bread.

Motion no.822, also Manchester Blackley: The Party is still failing to get its message across to the people of our great land. We call on Central Office to pull its socks up. also based their objections to BP's plan on the contribution made by 11 commandeered tankers to the revival of gunboat diplomacy.

16 of BP's 45 tankers are now due to be laid up. Most other tanker operators are in a similar situation: world-wide, 385 tankers, one third of the total fleet, are laid up. The general recession, and the increased use of pipelines, are the reason.

If the unions could only focus their sights on workers' interests rather than imperial nostalgia, then the job cuts "could certainly be fought. Few other industrusual style, promised the unemployed and the labour movement a punch up the bracket - with still more anti-union laws and still less jobs in the next year.

It was just what the assembled throng of managers, majors, landladies and loafers wanted to hear.

In the giddy atmosphere of the conference hall, many may even have convinced themselves that the public at large wants to pay privately for its health care and education. As the week went by, there were less and less attempts to deny the logic of the now notorious "Think Tank' proposals for the axing of public spending.

By the time of Thatcher's finale performance, any glimmer of defensiveness over the plans was concealed behind a vast billow of red, white, and blue smoke.

Roll back

While boasting of the extent to which she had already 'rolled back socialism' in the public services, and promising to do even more if re-elected, Thatcher made the ludicrous claim that ''The NHS is safe with us"' Her speech also at one point waxed poetic. In the 60s and 70s, she argued, "the fashion was to say that the long-term doesn't matter very much because, as Maynard Keynes put it, 'in the long run we are all dead' Anyone who thought like that would never plant a tree. And we are in the business of planting trees, for our children and grandchildren, or we have no business to be in politics at all"

The reality is that Tory policies are planting trees on the disused sites whose factories once employed workers. • Outside in the real world, however, the NHS dispute continues to demonstrate the attachment of the whole working class to the health service; and other sections of workers too are being driven into confrontation with the government.

In order to complete Thatcher's programme it is necessary to maintain a rigid stance in the face of such struggles and to inflict further setbacks on the working class before and after the next election.

It would be in the event of a serious failure in this policy of confrontation that the feeble and subdued voices of the 'wets' might hope to gain the hearing in the Tory party they currently lack.

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Sucialist Organiser no. 104 October 14 1982 Page sucialist Organiser no.104 October 14 1982

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ry Slo JOHN HARRIS