[of this strike cutting across throughout DHSS is…]

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of this strike cutting across throughout DHSS is only a preparations for the 1983 beginning. The civil service pay campaign. The fight unions should also prepare against cuts and for jobs is to call out their most strategThe national executives airports and docks for of CPSA and SCPS should example - and to tie the go to the rest of the trade DHSS staff issue to the genunion and labour movement eral demand for no job loss. CP - thousands of activists giving significant indepenresigned. dence from head office;

Some moved to the lett, today all these officers are others to the right. One of appointed by the EC. resigned in 1957 after first comprised of ordinary lay securing a sat on l'e ETU members was elected every Executive. Later Chapple two years, again allowing for joined up with Leslie a strong 'grass roots' influChapple supports workers' democracy it's THE SUCCESS of the strike on Friday 3rd gave the lie to arguments that iank and file DHSS workers do not want to fight.

Now the call for all-out strike action etrilo antinn which realict. ically must be from January 1983 - needs to be coupled with a drive to convince the rest of the civil service trade unions that this fight is not a mere sectional battle for extra staff to make the welfare state benefit system work, but a confrontation with the government and the cuts.

There should be no talk not an optional extra.

and ask for support. Cash is THE EETPU proudly boasts of being the most "independent and progressive force in the British labour movement"

After all it does run its own technology training programme, at its own electronics workshop, at its own trade union college... while the employer laughs all the way to the bank!

The EETPU Executive was one of the first to recognise Polish Solidarity. Back home, however, it has consistently championed wage controls imposed inrough collaboration with the TUC, CBI and Labour right wing, and has pioneered Americanstyle wage-cutting deals in key sections of the electrical industry.

Until 1956 the (then) ETU was held under bureaucratic sway of the Communist Party. Thèn the brutal Stalinist suppression of the Hungarian workers' uprising also shattered the British LAUN VALLIINANG the latter, Frank Chapple, hundreds of miles away in Poland needed to sustain this dispute - even though the present very high rates of strike pay cannot reasonably be continued. (SCPS members in Oxford are already redistributing their strike pay to help worse-off CPSA members).

The TUC and Labour Party should also declare and organise support for any call for all out action that may be made by the CPSA leadership.

Extension Extension or tne strike ically placed members - at The dispute so far has Wh Cannon (also ex-CP) and a right wing activist John Byrne, and this unholy trinity began its exposure of the undemocratic internal regime run by the CP.

Four years later they successfully accused CP bureaucrats of ballot-rigging offences during the 1959 General Secretary election. Byrne, Cannon and Chapple were installed (under High Court patronage) as the ETU's top three.

Chapple instantly turned on his former comrades -the CP became a proscribed organisation.

Far from "giving members control of their union" the Chapple era has imposed a bureaucratic stranglehold.

As recently as 1969 all 141 national and local fulltime officers faced election her tharin wiel meinders, inus Until 1965 an Executive shown that the official leaderships, left though they call themselves, cannot be relied on. The potentially powerful CPSA Broad Left ducked out of any criticism of the CPSA national executive at its recent conference. Elected strike committees, established locally and linked up nationally, can call the official leaderships to account, pressurise them, and provide an alternative if necessary.

'Ihey can also do the much-needed work of local liaison with unemployed and claimants' organisations, and of linking up with unions in local government social service departments and in post offices to make sure that the interests of claimants are protected. JOHN HARRIS CIVIL-AND-PUBLIC NOTHI

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Tony Allen looks at the EETPU