Broad Left victory in front-line

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HALFWAY through June, and our fund's With £55 in this week, we've reached just There's two weeks to go. Time to collect donations, hold collections for the fund at 'After the Election, Where Next?' meetings, and to organise extra paper sales.

And every group should act now to plan a big fund-raising The fund stands at £434.50. We need £565.50. Send your donations now to. The Treasurer, 214 Sickert Court, London N8. Printed by East End Offset (TU). Registered as a newspaper at the GPO. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the SOA. IN A dramatic shift which surpassed all our expectations, the Post Office Engineering Union conference (June 5-7) swung to the left with all the weight and intensity of the demolition crane's cast iron hammer for the first time since 1948, and in the most crucial period the union has ever faced. ( As the General Secretary read out the results of the National Executive Council ballot, delegates cheered and leapt to their teet as each successful Broad Left candidate's name was read out.

The final results were 13 Broad Left, 9 of the right and one non-aligned.

From the Sunday afternoon until Tuesday, when the conference was curtailed because of the election, a large number of delegates opposed the right wing dominated executive.

When the General Secretary, Bryan Stanley, made one of his famous electrifying speeches which normally freeze the attention of the whole conference, most delegates continued chatting to eachother, paying so little attention to Stanley that the union's president had to: intervene. But the executive's proposal that Stanley was supporting - to merge with the STE (BT's management union) - was defeated on a card vote.

At the Broad Left meeting on the Monday evening, the mood way to raise £1,000.

event for July.

N1 2SY.

Thanks this week to.

Gordon £10, Will Adams porters £20 from a social.

Püblished by the Socialist Bryan Stanley was ecstatic. Some of the comrades were moved to tears.

Speaker after speaker gave commitments at the. meeting that the newly elected National Executive would ensure the maximum trade union democracy possible, and urged that the rank and file keep. up the maximum pressure.

ND dropping behind. over £400 on our Amanda Richarason £5, Mildred Southwark/Lambeth supOrganiser Alliance, 28 Middle Lane, London The Special Conference agreed to merge with the CPSA Pand I group, and 'an amendment to the Executive report calling for five-yearly election of the General Secretary of the new union was carried.

The union is also committed to continuing discussions with the UCW with a view to uniting.

The major decision of the conference was taken on the Monday, in the debate on privatisation. A proposition from LNCI Branch radically changed the POEU's stance.

The conference overwhelmingly committed itself to "immediately embarking on a campaign of industrial action in the event of a Tory government being elected at the June 1983 election which announces its intention to privatise BT."

Immediately following this commitment the conference heard Colin Talbot of Westminster branch relate the saga of the selective industrial action in Westminster which was called off just at the moment it was beginning to bite. He moved a motion of no confidence in the Industrial Action Strategy Committee. Harry Jagoe of Liverpool Power described events in his branch during a strike of postal engineers last December which the National Executive stabbed in the back. The conference carried the proposal.

The extremely low pay offer was accepted for both BT and National Girobank. But in a return to trade union solidarity the offer for postal engineers -half a percent less than BT and Girobank - was rejected.

About This was a complete about turn from last year's conference which accepted that postal engineers then would receive a pay increase 1½ % less than BT.

The POEU now goes into the most crucial period of its history facing privatisation with a left wing executive which will be under immense pressure from the rank and file activists to deliver the goods. It will also be under incessant attack from the right wing, whose secret organisation the Bloc (which, now forced out into the open, calls itself Mainstream) issued a leaflet on the Monday declaring war on the newly elected executive. Simon Mogoerane, Marcus Motaung WITH courage and defiance which are an example to the international workers' movement, three young members of the banned African National Congress went to the gallows on June 9 for their part in the ANC's armed struggle against apartheid.

Unbroken after a year of imprisonment, torture and the ever-present threat of the death sentence, they went to their deaths denouncing their executioners and insisting that:

•The struggle of all oppressed peoples throughout the world should continue until the world is a peaceful place to live in."

The ANC men were the first to be executed under South Africa's treason laws; but their hanging, despite a massive international campaign for a reprieve, has triggered fresh outbreaks of black anger and resistance, particularly in Soweto.

Illegal Large crowds singing illegal ANC songs and slogans turned out to a memorial service at the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches where SACC General Secretary declared that South Africa would be freed 'through bloodshed and violence" if not through negotiations. . Tutu said that he supported the aims of the executed ANC mittads, but "not yet their And as students in the black universities of Zululand and Fort Hare boycotted classes, broke windows and set a police vehicle alight, the regime announced a 48 hour ban on demonstrations.

There is no doubting the massive popular support for the ANC amongst South Africa's brutally repressed black majority. Particularly since the Soweto uprising of 1976 this support of young recruits to the ANC's guerrilla forces, now estimated at between 5,000 and 7,000 strong.

Though the ANC's armed Registered as a newspaper at by Harry Apartheid PM Botha: he has welcomed Thatcher's re election actions are all too often detached from and run at a tangent to the daily struggles of the black working class for unionisation and wage increases, for defence of their illegal urban squatter camps, and against the chronic poverty, malnutrition and exploitation in the rural areas and "homelands", the heroism and tenacity of the guerrilla forces give vent to some of their pent-up anger and frustration.

Though Simon Mogerane, Jerry Mosololi and Marcus Motaung have now been hanged, there are countless more young black militants who will fight with equal courage and determination for the overthrow of apartheid. They need every possible support and solidarity from the British and international workers' movement.

Claim Even now, newly-organised South African mineworkers are pressing a 30% pay claim.

Trade unionists in Britain should investigate the links between their firms and the subsidiaries and conglomerates operating in South Africa, and seek to forge direct links with the embattled rank and file of the black unions, through which the most effective solidarity can be established.

Published by Socialist Forum: for Southern Africa Solidarity.

Available (at 90p plus 20p post) .c/o SO, 28 Middle Lane, London N8.

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FUND £565 to go. Plan now for July

By Ricky Houston

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A QUESTION OFSOLIDARIY Independent Trade Unions Winsouth Africe