Will Thatcher get the TUC message?

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- the leadership of the NUM.

thened the hand of the right wing everywhere.

support from the NUM nationally' and we are confident it will be forthcoming'.

closure programme.

supporting action.

OITS. portion of workers in unions.

ing for leisure'.

the feelings of the working class. SWEET reason and pious pleading with the Tories, rather than industrial mobilisation, is already de facto TUC policy on Tebbit's new anti-union proposals.

But at the TUC Congress next week there will be moves to give an official stamp of approval to this policy. A composite to be moved by Terry Duffy's AUEW (Engineering Section) and Clive Jenkins' ASTMS "determines that the Government proposals are best opposed by reasoned It also "stresses the importance of raising the awareness of members, employers (!), the public, Parliament, and Government (!!) about the adverse effects on industrial relations of Tory anti-union laws.

Class interests? Not a bit of it! The problem is that Thatcher's Cabinet and the top bosses just haven't read enough TUC educational leaflets.

The composite does mention "the need for the General Council to coordinate support from affiliated unions with industrial action where appropriate to defend unions if employers use the Acts" , and 'instructs the General Council to give both moral and material support to those trade unions which at the request of the General Counoil take secondary industrial action in support of another affiliated trade union"

Note that "at the request of the General Council". The refer ences to direct action are all hedged with sufficient qualifications to make them safe.

This composite is to be expected from the notoriously rightwing AUEW (Engineering Section) leadership. But it is also supported by several supposedly left-wing unions, including ASLEF, the FBU, and NUPE.

the TUC much the FIRST THE good news. The Royal Family is safe with Neil Kinnock.

I read it in the Telegraph in a two-paragraph piece headed, 'Queen Secure, says Kinnock'. report of his TV-AM interview said: "Although the Labour party is committed to a number of radical policies such as abolishing the House of Lords, he made it TASS General Secretary Ken Gill Amendments come from AUEW. (TASS), to ban talks with the Tories on anti-union laws; from the National Union of Mineworkers, for a general policy of non-cooperation with the Tories and non-compliance with their laws; and from the Sheet Metal Workers, to remove the clause "at the request of the General Council" from the reference to secondary industrial action.

POVERTY is growing fast in Tory Britain.

A recent survey, conducted by the opinion poll firm MORI for London Weekend Television, shows that over seven million people regularly go without food because they simply can't afford to eat.

Three million household can't afford to heat the living areas in their homes.

Only the NUM amendment even begins to map out the policy we need to fight Tebbit. The Tories are quite "aware" of the "effect on industrial relations" that they want. For the TUC to act very, very humble and very, very reasonable will not persuade Thatcher and Tebbit. It will only weaken the labour movement.

Nearly 3½ million houseing machine, or a fridge.

About six million people go without necessary clothing or footwear. Three million can't afford to celebrate Christmas, or to buy presents once a year for their family or friends. And 1½ million children don't have toys because their parents can't afford them. Daily Hail EXFRESS "A BLOW against one is a blow against all'. . That is the basic idea of trade unionism.

. It applies to workers outside Britain as well as those within. The TUC supports, on paper at least, the rights of workers and trade unionists fróm Chile to South Africa.

But what about the workers in the 'socialist' states like the USSR and Eastern Europe? There are no free trade unions in any of these countries _ with the exception of Solidarnosc in Poland, and that is outlawed.

The official 'unions' in the Stalinist states are not unions in any real sense, but state police agencies for controlling the workers and preventing the development of free trade Real trade unionists in the USSR — like the miner Vladimir Klebanov, who tried to organise an independent trade union — are locked up in jails, camps, and 'mental hospitals' One of the worst scandals in the British labour movement is our attitude to the Stalinist state 'unions' and to men and women who are victimised for trying to start real unions. The TUC maintains links with the policestate unions.

Poland's Solidarnose was created in mass strikes in the summer of 1980. Throughout those strikes the British TUC maintained links with the officia Polish state unions, whose lead. ers were among the worst strikebreakers.

The NUM has accepted the official USSR explanation about the imprisonment of Vladimir Klebanov. The representatives of Solidarnosc in Britain were expelled from the Scottish TUC conference when they tried to set up an information stall there (see letter, p.13).

It's time that this scandalous strikebreakers' attitude to unions in the Stalinist states was rooted out of the labour movement. Get your trade union and Labour Party branch to pass resolutions of protest. behind the Iron Curtain for them to spout whatever vapid blatherings came into what. passes for their brains.

The Express suggests we boycott events Livingstone appears at. The Tories have already acted on this advice. They have banned a GLC stall from their party conference to show they won't stand for political censorship.

I don't want you to think from all this that I am a fan of

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holds don't have enough money for carpets, a wash-