["WOE to the vanquished: to the victor the…]

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"WOE to the vanquished: to the victor the spoils". This is the idea which will guide the Tories in their second term. They feel that they won a crushing election victory over Labour, and that they now have a mandate to govern as they like.

The details will be set out in the Queen's Speech on Wednesday afternoon. We go to press before it is delivered, but an outline has already The Tories will start by: bringing in a further measure of union 'reform'; taking away union immunities for any strike not preceded by a ballot; completing the hiving-off of British Telecom and bringing in new measures of privatisation; tightening the financial controls on local councils to make them mére instruments of central government; and starting the process of abolishing the metropolitan councils and the GLC.

These are all measures of class war against the labour movement. What is the labour movement going to do about them?

Docile acceptance will encourage the Tories to step up the attack. The Tories have targeted the welfare state and will openly attack it once a decent interval has elapsed since their denials in the election campaign But is the labour movement in a state to fight? Pessimists will cite the recent smashing electoral defeat, and the ravages which mass unemployment, the employers' offensive, and wretched leadership have wreaked on industrial militancy. The right wing and the softer Left will therefore In fact the electoral defeat of Labour does not accurately reflect the relationship of class forces in Britain. The massive Tory majority in the Commons does not even accurately reflect the Tory vote, down 2% on 1979, let alone tell us anything about what the attitude of millions of workers who voted Alliance, abstained, or even voted Tory, will be in struggles that the labour movement initiates over wages, conditions, un58% of trade unionists who voted, voted Alliance or Tory. What they may have thought or imagined at the election does not change the fact that they will be affected by most of the class-war measures of the Tories. Their views on wages, jobs or unions in general may not correspond to what they do when i their own wage, job, or union is at stake. They will fight back if the stable hard core of the labour movement does.

that the mass of workers will take to direct struggles and how they vote. In 1968 the most powerful general strike in history occurred when ten miltion workers struck in France. Factories were seized throughout the country. The workers refused the initial wage concessions 'offered them. It was plain even to hostile commentators that they wanted more, that Yet a mere matter of weeks later, after the Communist Party and Socialist leaders had sold out the strike, these left parties got fewer votes in the subsequent general election than there had been strikers. And the same holds in reverse: it is possible for a bad election defeat to be followThe worst thing that could happen to the labour movement would be for us to accept, even subconsciously, that on democratic principles we must agree that it is "woe to the vanquished". If the labour movement mobilises, it can be 'woe to the electoral victors' before Thatcher's elected span is out. Health workers and carworkers have recently shown how much militancy there is. It can be developed and built on.

We must fight back. The first thing to do is to withdraw from collaboration with the Tories. The TUC must break off participation in bodies We could have won the election if we had launched an anti-Tory crusade, organising all those groups who have reason to hate and fear the Tories - women's groups, black groups, etc. - around the local Labour Parties (as Socialist Organiser proposed). We can still mount that crusade.

Labour MPs can disrupt business and dramatise the issues: they We must rebuild the shop-floor stewards' movement. It is impossible to predict exactly the course a revival of industrial militancy will take: been leaked to the press. that they had a 'hidden manifesto' counsel docility and patience. ion rights or the welfare state.

There is no mechanical relationship between they wanted to transform society.

ed by militant struggles.

Woe to the victors IN THE week following the general election, many activists must have looked to the left press for new inspiration.

And the left papers certainly addressed themselves to the challenge. The question is, how?

For socialist Worker the answer was: Don't worry too much about large-scale politics. the way torward 1s small strikes. "Opposition to Thatcher can be built in the factories and workplaces. It won't be built by calls for action from the top...

SW's 'What We Think' column expands further on this scenario of local struggles and reveals a real pessimism about the current mood of the working class.

"Winning financial support for [the Greenings strike] on the shopfloor is important... Most workers won't contribute just now, but those who do can be to identifying with that fight for jobs... Small disputes like Greenings can be important in changing workers' ideas.".

In the centre pages, SW goes even further overboard, singling out the Bermondsey by-election, Benn's defeat in Bristol and Pat claims, "all showed that the left Calls cannot draw the different sections of the working class into a new political unity any more than the right can"

SW is conspicuously silent about the two Militant supporters who were élected in Liverpool and Coventry.

Instead it spells out the SWP's strategy.

«The central task of winning the attitudes workers to socialism a few at a time [!] and of building and spreading the struggles of large numbers of workers, has never been taken seriously"

In short, for the SWP all the policy and leadership struggles in the existing mass labour movement are so much froth and fury. Never mind all that, it tells us -instead, the job is to build a new, really socialist, movement, bit by bit. This 'new inspiration' looks Press very much like despair.

Nobody could accuse Militant of despair. In a crazy mirror image of Socialist Worker, it insists that the existing labour movement is_moving irresistibly to the left. It's not so much a matter of struggle, more an unstoppable Law of Nature.

It presents a scenario in which: "The Tory Party could split in the same way or even on a greater scale than has the Labour Party". And "The SDP/Liberal Alliance has probably seen its high point"

In the Labour Party, argues Militant, "There will be no major swing to the right". Objective processes will work wonders: "The chronic decline of British capitalism, as well as the general policies of Thatcherism, wil have a profoundly politicising effect upon large layers of workers"

In fact, everything looks good, with a prospect of "stronger shop floor trade union organisations... the general developments inside the trade unions will be towards the election of militant leaders. more willing to fight... Office and shop floor representatives will be replaced, especially by younger militants. District and regional committees... likewise... some workers will even go direct from Toryism to Marxism... The defeat and the abysmal performance of the right wing will only accelerate the moves to the left and increase the support for Marxist ideas" and, hey presto! "More and more workers will come to the conclusion advocated by Militant"

Don't worry a bit about the future. "The recovery and renew-

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al of the Labour Party is assured". -Daily " Mail m EXPRESS FINANCIAL TIMÉS The Daily Gregraph •Süin