Shoot to kill

Scan page 2

headine in the Daily Express. It frankly admitted that the British Army and the RUC have been told to shoot first and ask questions afterwards in Ireland.

People shot dead by the army on the streets these days are accused of "appearing to carry firearms"

The Express concedes that this policy will cause a few protests from predictable sources, but assures us that it will be welcomed by all right thinking people.

As it points out, the policy was not in force before because of government fears that the Catholic population might be driven into the arms of extremists. But if they are going to vote Sinn Fein anyway, then you might just as well shoot them dead. I's nice to have the ruth old 03e in a while.

Scan page 3

"Socialist Organiser no.114 January 6 1983 Page 3 pressure from the rank and action. workers took some form of before. cessful strike day since the the strike.

recommending regional days NHS that the trade move. class. We must organise gesture of goodwill when But links have been made chance of winning. BACK in January, general secretary Albert Spanswick appeared at a COHSE regio to support a resolution against the Tories' 4% publi sector pay norm, so that he could use it at a press conference the same day. Later the COHSE NEC rejected "IT'S BEEN worth it", said CoHSE general secretary Albert Spanswick on the eve of the NHS sell-out, "we have gained a lot"

What gains? Approximately 30 pence, and a Tory government firm in its conviction that it can smash the workers and be returned for another term of office?

Our gain, from 8½ months of industrial action, is our organisation and the lesson learned that we can't trust the trade union officials. They will sell out struggles every time. Their interests lie not in changing the system which keeps us on low pay with intolerable conditions, but in perpetuating that system.

The NHS dispute - the longest big dispute in the history of the British labour movement since the 1926 miners' strike - could have been the catalyst for a general strike. It wasn't. And the reason is that the TUC refused to organise.

Their priority is cleansing the Labour Party of activists determined to fight for the working vass - not kicking out the Tories. • 15 months ago Thatcher announced that public sector pay rises should not exceed 4%. We had not had a pay offensive since 1979 - the 'winter of discontent'. That strike was marred by widespread scabbing by different sections of workers, i and pitted union against union. The legacy of mistrust and anger had not yet faded when militants began the campaign this year for strike action against the 4% offer.

For two consecutive years we had settled for pay rises well below the rate of inflation. At the beginning of this year's action, over a quarter of health service workers were living on wages below the official poverty line. Nurses were making an average of £108 (female nurses, {99), compared to the overall national average of £140, and ancillary workers were averaging f87 (female ancillaries, £84).

hours In order to cain eve . inese low amounts, worke •s are forced to work long hol rs and sometimes double shifts. Even the full claim (12%). would still have left health service workers well below the national average.

Two important things separated 1982 from the 'winter of discontent' . One was a common settlement date (April 1), which had been campaigned for over a long period by the rank and file; and the other was the common core claim (12%).

Traditionally the NHS has been split into two different 'sectors' - on the one hand the 'carers' ', nursing and professional staff, and on the nand The ancillary workers. Almost all previous the same resolution.

APRIL 26: COHSE 'authorised' a work-to-rule, in advance of the other unions. MAY 24: NUPE conference votes for all-out action. Opposition by COHSE leadership enables NUPE leadership to claim policy cannot VHS trade unionists lobbying so keen to tnrow the lores c industrial action in the NHS has been characterised by nurses scabbing on ancillary workers. This artificial split has been perpetuated by the Royal College of Nursing, and sometimes, disgracefully, by the major unions.

But last year real attempts were made at local level to resolve differences and to establish joint stewards' committees. At national level, too, there was the TUC Health Services Committee.

The national unity was a step forward. But it was also flouted at times, used as an excuse at others. When CoHSE declared unilateral action in the form of a workto-rule on April 26 (already three weeks after the settlement date), the other unions delayed for three weeks. Then in the summer, at a lobby of the TUC organised by Health Workers for the Full Claim, Rodney Bickerstaffe, general secretary of NUPE, refused even to discuss indefinite strike action with me because I am a CoHSE member. 'Take it up with your own union" , he said.

The TUC Health Service committee ended up being ruied and led by the weakest unions and not by the strong. est. In May NUPE conferen. ce passed a resolution for indefinite strike action with emergency •cover only, in conjunction with other health service unions. Instead ol be implemented.

MAY 25: COHSE members at Royal Edinburgh Hospit al forced to abandon indefinite strike by leadership refusal to make it official. JUNE 14. Spanswick beats down all-out strike call at COHSE conference - and th he TUC Health Service committer t of Downing Street. pushing the other unions to take up this call, the supposedly left NUPE leadership used them as an excuse for not calling the members out. They actively and consciously avoided a vote on all-out strike action at the TUC Health Service committee. They were delighted when CoHSE conference voted, on the recommendation of thé National Executive Committee, to oppose indefinite action and go for sectional Secondary Areas like Edinburgh which defied the delaying tacties and came out on strike were forced back to work by the union leadership.

But through the local Joint Shop Stewards' Committees, solidarity action was built. It was not the wheeling and dealing over beer and sandwiches at TUC level which got miners, dockers, and steelworkers out in support of the health workers - it was the health workers themselves, through stewards' committees making approaches to other workers and sending speakers to mass meetings.

The sympathetic strike action was unprecedented. Workers everywhere were prepared to support us and defy the anti-union legislation of the Tories. Secondary picketing was an everyday retrospectively declares out of order conference decision to affiliate to the National Abortion Campaign.

JULY 1: Spanswick sends out telex to COHSE branches insisting that the TUC Health Service Committee three-day strike on occurrence.

The magnificent stand of Sean Geraghty and the Fleet Street EETPU branch brought a much-needed boost in August, when health workers were becoming increasingly demoralised by our leaders' procrastination. But the TUC Health Service committee, with Albert Spanswick as its mouthpiece, even tried to stop that action. Spanswick asked the print unions not to take strike action. Fortunately the electricians ignored him. But when Geraghty was hauled up in court, at the demonstration in his support only one national union leader (Bill Deal of the FBU) put in an appearance.

All the TUC's talk about defying the Tebbit proposals vanished into hot air. Chapple washed his hands of Geraghty - and CoHSE members washed their hands of Spanswick, and began to demand a change in the no-strike policy which the CoHSE leadership had rammed through conference only a month earlier.

Lobbies

Increasing pressure was also put on the NUPE leadership to implement its mandate for indefinite action. Health Workers for the Full Claim, the only rank and file group uniting workers around the 12% claim, called July 19-21 is not a strike aftet all.

JULY 28: Spanswick blusters about withdrawing emergency cover. (At the COHSE conference he had opposed all-out strike with emergency cover on the grounds that it would be ase. The union leaders weren't two lobbies of the TUC to press our leaders for indefinite strike action. They called the police to throw us out of Congress House.

But eventually, under file, the TUC called a national day of action (if they had been serious about winning, it would have been a one-day general strike) of all affiliated unions on September 22.

Stewards built for the 22nd. The morale of the health workers rose as promises of support rAmA in. During the summer months the leadership had been saying that we were losing our will to fight - but the 22nd proved that health workers were not beaten!

Over 200.000 demonstrated in London, over 3 million industrial action. September 22 showed the way to win -keep the health workers out, and build the solidarity action.

If only the TUC had done that, we could have won. But following the most sucgeneral strike in 1926, the TUC difiused the action by of action. Even hardened militants were astonished at this The regional days collapsed in most areas, and then a planned transport day of action was called off as a illegal!) nd gives no support AUGUST 10: Fleet Street SEPTEMBER 22: Spanswic electricians defy court chairs mass rally in Hyde injunction to strike in solid Park on TUC one-day strike arity during NHS week of for NHS. No clear call to action. Spanswick as chair- Bol Instead Instead Sm person of the TUC Health Service Committee has calls regional days of action advised them not to strike, OCTOBER 19: Spanswick Gels a press conference tha 'UC HSC will be calling fo a petition campaign and another one-day action on November 24. He has to be called to order by other union leaders.

When TUC HSC eventu ally calls for all-out action Spanswick claims that COHSE constitutionally cannot start such action until March!

DECEMBER 14. COHSE special conference. Spanswick puts NEC recommenda tion for all-out strike without emergency cover - and says that members should consider the dire consequences of such action, or else accept the Tories' offer for norence rear is at, in alls lit pay settlement DECEMBER 15: TUC HS iccepts two-year split dea ANUARY 14: Ballot paper have to be in for Spanswick's successor. The main right wing candidate is David Williams, who offers perhaps Spanswick a different style from Spanswick but essentially the same recipe of occasional 'militant' demagogy and consistent sabotage of struggle.

Broad Left challenger Andrea Campbell explains in her election address. "Ol leadership has failed to represent the needs and wishes of the membership ACAS stepped in for emerg- ... That is one of the main ency talks (much to the relief reasons why I am standing of Sid Weighell and Moss for General Secretary"

The TUC had finally decidin the labour movement. A ed to consult the unions on million workers will whether they were prepared understand why so many to step up the action to all- strikes fail, and something out strike. A national meet- about how to stop them failing of shop stewards was ing. The same tactics used to called from committees in wreck the steel strike in 1980 Leicester and Sheffield. The were used in 1982 on the bureaucrats, more frightened NHS dispute. of their own members than We have seen first hand of the Tories, did their best how the TUC leaders conto sabotage the meeting, sciously StOD sections of which resolved to campaign workers from striking simulfor a rejection of the offer and taneously the ASLEF for indefinite strike action in workers called back to work January. It insisted especial- on Sunday night when there ly on two principles: no difMwai strike action beginning ferential offer between anhospitals Mondav cillaries and others, and no morning, the consecutive two year deal. 'davs of action' of the POEU Tory health minister Fowl- water workers, and NHS er offered a 'new deal' workers, all out on different an extra 30 pence, and tying davs in the same week.. all this year's pay deal to a fighting the Tories. settlement for 1983-4. This The empty rhetoric of 'left was honourable enough for leaders such as Bickerstaffe the union barons, and the has been exposed. NUPE consultation on strike action members now know that be became linked to the disgustwill look for any excuse not to ing offer. The Tories, having have to turn his words into rammed a two year deal through British Leyland, Hundreds of thousands of were looking for another women have been at the fore. scalp. front of the pay campaign. -CoHSE, under strong pres- and of the solidarity action. sure from the membership, Those women will not be concalled a special conference. tent to go back to positions of The NEC and the national insignificance in their branofficers who had ruthlessly ches or to abandon the fight opposed indefinite action against low pay. with emergency cover in Shop stewards' commitJune took the hypocritical tees have taken shape localand outrageous position of recommending all-out strike ly. and an attempt to build a national stewards' organisawith no emergency cover! tion has begun.

Apart from anything else, We didn't get the 12%. this meant that a union not but we have a more politicisknown for its defence of mili- ed and active section of NHS tants was recommending to workers than we have seen nurses that they should take action which would ensure We need to build on that that they were struck off the consciousness - we need to register. fight on privatisation, demoThe delegates treated the in the trade unions recommendation with the democracy and workers' concontempt it deserved, and trol of the health service, and instead forced through a vote we need to maintain and for a one-year deal only, with build the JSSCs set up during no split in the offer. On December 15 the TUC Health The main lesson of 1982 Service committee voted to in ASLEF, NUR, BL, and the accept the existing offer.

ASLEF had been knifed union leadership do not and quickly and mercilessly by will not fight for the working the TUC. Health workers were instead slowly bied by replace them with leaders the bureaucrats into a posi- representative and accounttion of demoralisation and able to the membership. And despair. then we will have a rea

Scan page 4

Socialist Organiser no.114 January 6 1983 Page 4 By to prepare for its The danger at present is bureaucracy. "IF after a year we get 10-15% of workers to join, then it will be a success" claimed one leader of the new state unions in Poland.

There was little sign on Jay one of the new unions - 2,500 of which have been registered at workplace level - that they would reach anything like such scope. Warsaw's Huta Warsawa steelworks saw 300 applicants out of 17,000 workers; the Ursus tractor plant claimed 200 out of 17,000 and Lech Walesa estimated applications at 172 out of 17,000 workers at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk.

This is in stark contrast to the scale and vitality of Solidarnosc whose ten million members embraced 75% of the country's workfoIce,. organised on a regional level with a participatory democracy which put most unions to shame on a world scale.

Polish workers know full well that the stooge bodies set up last October by Jaruzelski and the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy are not unions but - like the old, discredited state unions - simply instruments to control the working class.

The lifting of martial law last month did nothing to change the real conditions faced by Polish workers. The two main provisions of martial law (the illegalisation of Solidarnose and the imprisonment of thousands of its militants convicted under emergency provisions) remain in force. Over 5,000 activists are still in jail.

Indeed the lifting of martial law coincided with the arrest and charging of seven leading left wing Solidarnose members. And the release of Lech Walesa came on the same day as, the sentencing of Wladislaw Frasynink, key member of the TKK underground leadership of Solidarnosc, to six years in jall.

The Jaruzelski leadership is courting on the one hand new credits and restored relations with the West, and on the other seeking, through new accords with Archbishop Glemp and the Church hierarchy, to secure their assistance in neutralising Solidarnosc.

Thus while the firm hand of repression continues to mete out jail sentences and has forced Anna Walentynowicz into an asylum, the bureaucracy has agreed to the Pope's visit next year provided the Church leaders use their considerable influence in working for stability.

This is not without problems for Glemp - who has come under fire from lower echelons in the Church, and even been implicitly criticised by Walesa.

Yet at the same time Walesa has toed the required line - abandoning previous calls for the recognition of Solidarnosc and dropping his insistence that he would oniy talk to the regime with the old leadership of Solidarnose by his side.

Though he still talks of the spirit of 1980, Walesa has plainly been to a large extent neutralised.

But in the ranks of Polish workers bitter lessons have been drawn from the Solidarnose experience. The best sections are recognising that it is impossible to revolutionary overthrow.

And a recent Warsaw bulletin expresses the need to link up with 'left wing movements' outside Poland in this struggle.

The material conditions which prompted the rise of Solidarnose have not been abolished: in the struggles which will break out again, Polish workers will need political and material assisthat, taken in by. the apparent relaxation of repression and the cutback in strikes and resistance inside Poland, the trade unions in the West wil allow their already inadequate support to fall back still further.

The campaign must be pursued for the release of the political prisoners, the recognition of Solidarnosc and a boycott of . the ROBERT Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe has been force: to si" a three year deal tor petrol and diesel fuel from South Africa.

The background to the deal, a prolonged fuel shortage, indicates the scope of moves by the multinational oil firms and by the apartheid regime in Pretoria to harass and destabilise the Zimbabwe government as part of their pressure on neighbouring nationalist regimes in Mozambique and Angola.

The decisive factor in forcing the Zimbabwe approach to South Africa was the sabotage of fuel storage tanks at the Mozambique port of Beira which supply the pipeline to Zimbabwe.

The tanks were blown up oy members of the South Africa-run guerrilla grouping, the so-called Mozambique National Resistance.

But Zimbabwe's government-backed newspaper has also pointed out the failure of the oil monopolies to supply adequate amounts of fuel. If these firms had broken sanctions to keep lan Smith's regime running, the

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

•Lessons of NHS struggle Our leaders: more frightened of their members than the Tories!

By Jane Goss

WAY. TUI