On their knees to Tebbit

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public spending cuts and of the subject a free market control of the money supply guarantees.

Join the ORGANISER Party ORGANISER tumt Scargill gets it right Inside Sunscribe!

for 3 months; £8.50 for 6 months; and £16 Please send me .... months' sub, I enclose £ ... To: Socialist Organiser, 28, Middle Lane, London Published by the Socialist Organiser Alliance, 28, Middle Lane, London N8. NORMAN Tebbit's arrival at the Department of Employment in 1981 represented the complete conquest of the Conservative Party by Thatcherism.

From now on government withdrawal from the economy, attempts to restore the selfremilatinn nf the markot Stoze Get SOCIALIST door by post!

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Address could proceed unimpeded and the essential rhetoric of 'public suffering government intransi tion' and gence' could proceed unimpeded.

Absolutely central to Thatcherism is the decisive weakening of the unions which as cartels distort the free workings of the market whilst intertering with the political liberties Join the socialist Labour Fight the NUM ICuts Women!

"JOBLESS KEY TO Tebbit By dare Kent's appeal to ORGANISER each week delivered to Lancan But Thatcherism, which developed in the Tory party as a reaction to the Heath U turn away from his similar policies of 1970-72, owes as much to Heath as it does to the apostles of monetarism and political freedom, Professors Friedman and Hayek.

As Tebbit's predecessor, Jim Prior, wrote: "We have to recognise that at the end of the day the new legal framework set out in the Industrial Relations Act of 1971 was unable to command the general acceptance necessary to make it work."

Piecemeal

This time legislation to control trade unionism would follow a piecemeal, step-by-step approach allowing both an exploration of the response and a synchronisation with the pace at which other aspects of policy debilitated the working class movement.

First up was the 1980 Employment Act which severely limited picketing and blacking, abolished union recognition provisions and cut back on a whole series of individual rights such as unfair dismissal and maternity protections. It also, by requiring rigged ballots with impossible majorities for new closed shops, attempted to curb the spread of trade unionism.

If the Tories had learned the correct lessons of the four years in the '70s which led to Heath being blasted into oblivion by the miners, the TUC had not. They failed to understand that it was the self assertion of the rank and file in a much more favourPrinted hy Fast End Offset (TU). able situation that was the determinant factor in doing for the Broadstairs piano player. They failed to grasp that the new deteriorating economic situațion and the demoralising impact four years of Labour government had had on a rank and file inadequately prepared politically meant that if the legislation which they wanted removed because it hit their institutional interests was to go, then leadership from the top was essential.

The 1974 Labour government was elected because of the selfasssertion of 1968-74 which the TUC was able to mould and control for its own ourooses contros fog this point phey proproceeded to do everything they could to limit action on the ground, this time believing their own decorous conduct and diplomacy would achieve the return of a Labour government which would repeal the legislation.

They subordinated everything to this goal. But even within their own framework, they used the wrong tactics to achieve it.

Media

Instead of a one day strike against the 1980 Act we had a Day of Action which they did all they could, in the fact of an intense media campaign, to limit.

Despite the fact that nearly a million workers came out, Murray was soon stating, •The General Council recently consulted affiliated unions and I must tell you that there is little or no support for a repeat of the Day of Action in the near future.

So Tebbit was soon back pressing home his advantage. The 1982 Employment Act was the trade union leaders' nightmare. It made unions as organisations and hence their funds responsible in legal actions rather than individual members.

Congress

And its proposals for ballots in all closed shop situations, if successful, would break 100% trade unionism.

A special Congress was summoned to Wembley in April 1982 which agreed on boycotting closed shop ballots, withdrawing union representatives from tribunal cases heard under the legislation and gave the TUC powers to support unions attacked by Tebbit - powers which stopped far short of automatic support.

Nonetheless, the retreat continued despite the lessons of the 1981 miners action - faced with determined industrial action the Tories could be made to withdraw.

The summer of 1982 saw the Day of Action replaced by Hours of Action, the spirit of the NHS workers dispersed in an orgy of every conceivable form of industrial action known to humanity except the all-out strike, and the Sean Geraghty affair.

When Fleet Street trade unionists proposed a one-day stoppage in support of the health workers. the employers got an injunction under the 1980 Act. Despite the fine words of Wembley, the NGA and SOGAT instructed their FoCs to withdraw plans for action after a request to do so by Albert Spanswick, chair of the TUC 7i out NHS Committee. Only the electricians, disowned by union, stood out.

The issue was defused when an anonymous donor settled Geraghty's £350 fine. But the silence from the General Council combined with their action on behalf of the Tories in undermining ASLEF's defence of basic union conditions to con firm to thousands of militants that nothing could be expected from the union.

The Tories were ready to go & third time. The Green Paper of early 1983, now to be embodied in autumn legislation, had a clear purpose. Having legislated to weaken union organisation, finances and membership, over the closed shop, and the means they used to defend their members through the prohibitions on blacking and picketing, the time was ripe to attack the ability to strike at all - through strike ballots — and to mobilise the demoralised rank and file against their leaders through breaking the links with the Labour Party and through the new proposals for union elections.

Logical The response of the General Council to reverse existing policy and talk to the Tories on their terms can only further disorientate trade unionists.

It is the beginning of a submission to the Tories that is logical in relation to their stance since 1979 after the bitter fruits of that stance were reaped on June 9. It is clearer than ever that a response to Tebbit will have to come from below.

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Socialist Organiser no. 144 September 1 Page 1 JONATHAN Hammond, last year's president of the National Union of Journalists, and chair of the Socialist Organiser Alliance, died on August 17 at the age of 41.

Although his health had not been good and he had suffered from a number of asthmatic attacks, his death was unexpected and sudden. He had gone home early from work the day before he died and called the ambulance himself after a bad night. By the time he arrived at hospital he was in a coma and he died without regaining consciousness.

A memorial rally has been called by a number of organisations including his own NUJ branch on September 28 at Bishop Creighton House, Lillie Road, London SW6. The meeting will start at 8pm and will be supported by Socialist Organiser.

Jonathan was a political activist up to his dying day. On the Monday before he died he had been on the picket Penguin Books where he stayed until he died.

The book sector which had a few hundred members when he first joined the NUJ went from strength to strength until it became one of the larger sectors of the union.

Members there however were treated as second class citizens by more elitist sectors of the union, since they were accused of not being real journalists' Jonathan led the campaign for the London book membership to have its own branch, a task made easier when he was elected to the National Executive by the former Magazine and Book branch.

In 1976 the Book branch was formed and emerged as one of the most consistently left wing branches in the union, famous for submitting motions several hundred words long to the annua conference and infamous amongst the right wing of the union for getting some of them passed.

Jonathan was elected as National Executive member Jonathan's first step was a principled stand in support of Solidarity. He gave up space in his union office for the Solidarnosc Trade Union Working Group in exile to have an office and telephone. He took part in a number of demonstrations and pickets in support of Solidarity.

His action caused him to become unpopular with the Stalinist element amongst the NUJ officialdom - but since it had the enthusiastic backing of the vast majority of the membership they were forced to suffer it in silence.

Jonathan was however worried about the divisions within the union. He - wrongly in my view - saw his role as a bridge between the left and the right, because of the digure ad was of there esig He was also aware that his election was evidence that the Book section of the union was finally fully recognised and didn't want that upset by controversy. National Union of Journalists Provincial Newspapers Industrial Council member He had started his year of office with some senior lay officials resigning because they had been overturned by the annual conference. In trying to mend bridges with them, Jonathan put himself at odds with rank and file militants for the first time in his political life.

It was not cowardice on Jonathan's part or a selling out of his beliefs, but rather a wrong strategic assessment of the role of a left winger elected to an influential position in the union. It meant that opportunities for the left were missed.

After his year finished in April Jonathan himself seemed to realise this. He wrote recently in Socialist Organiser that the time had come for more active propagation of Trotskyism inside the Labour movement. He intended standing down from the National Executive next year so that he could spend more time supporting We salute comrade. Jonatian Hammond activists at branch and chapel level. His death came for that reason at a particularly tragic time.

Jonathan's cremation last week was attended by right wing eminences within the union as well as by Labour Party and union militants. It is clear however that Jonathan was one of ours not one of theirs.

him THE COMING period, after Labour's biggest election defeat since the war, paradoxically gives us in the Socialist Organiser Alliance the best opportunity we have ever had to win converts in the trade union and labour movement to our interpretation of Marxism and Trotskyism as the surest way forward to socialism.

One of our main strengths, arising out of our commitment to maximum left unity in action wherever possible, is our openness and lack of sectarianism.

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