Organise As Thatcher looks to troops, strikers must REACH OUT FOR SOLIDARITY

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candidate one dingh ellen dependent Lot lt othere Cancaes independent Communist Party, the RCP, various nationalist and fascist

candidates and a number of cranks as well as the Tories and the SDP/Liberal Alliance. The most serious challenge will come from former Southwark council leader John O'Grady, backed by former Labour MP for Bermondsey Bob Mellish.

With the prospects of a massive Fleet Street intervention against Peter Tatchell, the campaign is going to be a hard one. But the outcome could prove crucial to the left within the Labour Party. Socialist Orgariser will be following the progress of the campaign during the coming weeks and SO supporters will be participating in the by election campaign.

If you want to help, contact your local Party secretary.

Weekly paper of the Socialist Organiser Alliance. No. 118. 3 February 1983. 25p (Claimants and strikers 10p)

IN several areas water workers have withdrawn emergency Pickets at Sandford, near Oxford, explained why to us.

Management had been falsifying emergencies and driving In other areas, too, where emergency cover was being maintained, pickets were angry at management tactics.

At Minworth sewage treatment works near Birmingham (the largest in Europe), for example, pickets told us that they felt management were abusing the emergency cover. It would certainly be withdrawn if troops were sent in.

Emergency cover under workers' control should be the answer. But if the employers' tactics force strikers to withdraw the cover, then the employers must be responsible for needs fund-raising to keep it afloat. And just as important as the big contributions from committed supporters are more numerous, Many readers wouldn't feel ready to become active supporters or sellers, but feel that the paper does a job worth supporting. If that description fits you - then we're appealing to you to give Socialist Organiser 75p a week, by paying f1 for your paper "CONTRARY to what the quoted by management are press say, the real average earnings of craft workers and 75p a week won't bankrupt you - and it wage is £85.50, and the supervisors up to grade 6."l will help us fight the Tories and the witchIN its second week, the water strike is getting stronger.

The latest offer has been massively rejected. On paper it was 7.3%. But since it was Why spread over 16 months, it was worth no more in real terms than the previous 5.9% offer: in fact, less, because inflation will almost certainly be increasing again by later this year.

"Newall (the GMBU negotiator said at the weekend that he might settle for the going rate. But with the vote to reject, he's got no option but to carry on" , said Brian Halcup, a GMBU picket from Farmoor works smaller donations. near Oxtora, speaking to Socialist Organiser.

"There's no wavering. Everybody's of the same opinion - we want what we originally came out for, the full 15%"

Tim Sirett, a GMBU fitter at Farmoor, added: "The statements by Tebbit, instead of the normal 25p. King and Thatcher have enraged people and made everybody more determined.

"If I'm part of a union hunters. that brings down the government, then I'll be very proud.

"We need more picketing. The longer this goes on, the nastier we'll have to get".

Craftworkers like Tim Sirett are out alongside the manual grades in many areas. Support has also come from other parts of the labour movement. In Birmingham, one of the DHSS offices recently on strike over jobs lowest £78. Sewage workers are taking home £54 a week. Included in the average cover.

scabs through picket lines. the consequences.

has donated £100 to the water workers.

But the Tory government will not easily give way. It would be their first major industrial defeat since the miners victory on pit closures in February 1981.

From all evidence they were ready for a fight. They intervened to push the initial pay offer down to 4%. They propose this year to scrap the National Water Council, and with it all national agreements.

If the strike begins to hit industry seriously the Tories will implement their wellprepared plans to send in troops.

Water workers need to prepare too. Making contacts with power workers, sending delegations to power stations, seeking commitGraham Atkinson, GMBU senior steward, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent The water workers' case - four page Socialist Organiser broadsheet ments from power workers to refuse to work with water supplies provided by army scabs, would greatly strengthen the strike.

Power workers themselves have a pay claim outstanding. Action both in solidarity with the water workers and for their own claim would put the Tories on the run.

Contacts need to be made with other industries which are major users of water, too. And gas workers and power workers both have pay claims outstanding: by taking action for these claims now, they could get the Tories really on the run.

The top union leaders are taking no such steps to strengthen the struggle. Just the opposite: GMBU leader David Ranett last wienl DAVAU Desave Idol Woon specially phoned the Labour Party National Executive to get it to suspend a resolution of support for the water workers (story, page 2).

Union leaders have also kept Scotland out of the strike (story, page 15).

Water workers cannot trust these leaders. And they cannot trust a negotiating committee which is entirely. - all but one member -made up of full-time officials.

As well. as contacting other workers, local strike committees need to be contacting each other to lay the basis for a rank and file network which can ensure victory despite the top leaders. Peter Tatchell interview, see pages 6-7 IN 1974-5 TGWU general secretary Jack Jones was the lynchpin of the social contract and then of the £6 pay policy.

Now Jones' successor Moss Evans is bidding for a similar role.

In an interview reported in the Financial Times on Tuesday 1 February, he proposed not only incomes polcy but also a no-strike pact in the public sector.

"If a Labour government is elected, I think the unions would be prepared to conclude what you could term an accord. There are a number of important public sectors in which we have to devise a way of solving our problems without recourse to industrial action.

"No-one wants to take away, in a free society, the right of workers to withdraw their labour. But there ought to be some practical arrangements made to make a stoppage of work in these sectors a last resort."

He said that he would support a:

"progressive incomes policy, allowing flexibility for plant level collective bargaining within a framework of the national economic assessment" and added that even with the Tories in office unions could not "insulate themselves" from the government (i.e., they should collaborate with it.

AUEW general secretary Gavin Laird has called in the latest issue of the engineers' journal for the unions to talk to Tebbit on his latest anti-union Green Paper.

Meanwhile Moss Evans' deputy Alex Kitson was voting on Labour's National Executive to proceed towards the expulsion of all "members' of Militant (story, page 2).

Will TGWU members allow their leaders to get away with this?

Centre pages:

Why has Thatcher been winning?

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no.118 1983 Page

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