Depressing LCDTU

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In the week that saw Te- ence the TUC's biggest crime bbitt actually become law, was its refusal to back raised several times before the full emergency debate. The NOLS line of full support for the Executive did hold, and Alan Watson, the Executive member with responsibility for staff, managed to escape censure.

Rough But the NOLS caucus gave the Clause IV leadership a rough ride, with even a member of NOLS National Committee supporting the position of there was even a suggestion that NUS should host the next European meeting in London. SSIN organised for a referal back of the report. And even after a statement from Solidarnosc and NZS was read out to conference, supporting the reference back, the NOLS still supported acceptance. The vote was very • close indeed 312 for acceptance; 305 against. The number of people around the SSIN bookstall visibly increased after and during the penditure. And a leadership prepared to fight from not only behind a desk but also by organising support for college initiatives.

The only way NUS will triumph is by building links with the labour movement. building NOLS within the colleges and replacing the current leadership with one prepared to fight on socialist principles and policy and involve the full membership of NUS.

Jeff Evans President, North Hulme Community College THE more intense the Tories' attack, un the unions, the weaker the response of the Liaison Committe for the Defence of Trade Unions.

Proof of this CP-dominated campaign's failure to compensate for the TUC's passivity was last Saturday's conference. It was a depressing affair. only 200 or so attended, and though the meeting was short, many of these left well before the end.

There was not much to keep them there. What criticism there was of the TUC was not about its inaction over the anti-union laws, still less about the sell-out of ASLEF, and the NHS workers.

n the eves of the conterdraw trade union and Labour leaders into the war effort. Labour leader Arthur Henderson joined the Cabinet, engineers' leader G.' Burnes became a minister, and the TUC leaders called for an industrial truce. The consolidation by the mid 1920s of the big general unions as stable organisations and the defeat of the General Strike helped to hurry on the emergence of a leadership of full time officials whose politics and methods increasingly fell into line with those of the craft unions. another People's year.

Stark confirmation of this desire to avoid taking up the trade union leadership was the organisers' response to a request to speak from Alan, Thornett, victimised BL shop steward. Despite scraping around for speakers, they demanded as a condition an assurance that he would not criticise the TGWU officials. He would not give it and he didn't speak.

By the time of World War 2 the union leaders were a sufficiently dependable and useful component of capitalist stability for TGWU leader Ernest Bevin to be brought into Churchill's war government. Since the 1940s union leaders have become regular participants in government committees, nationalised industry boards, and even boards of private companies.

The pressures which came to bear upon the full time officialdom of the unions are many: and virtually all tend to push them towards an accommodation with the capitalist class and the system as a whole.

Separated from the rigours of daily shop floor exploitation, and frequently receiving guaranteed salaries higher than the less certain rewards of their membership, union officials discovered for themselves a role not so much as the representatives of the rank and file, but as influential 'middle men', mediating between the demands and the strength of the shop floor and those of the employers.

Subtly

Subtly or less subtly bought off and undermined by the financial power and connaences of the bosses, and seeking to protect their own power and privilege, the officials increasingly began to play the role of containing and limiting the demands and struggles of their members in order to secure what they saw