Patrick Spilling

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tion, might not seem obvious.

That there is a link was shown, will to sacrifice human life to profit. as so often, by press coverage of this year's TUC. (Do not confuse press overas the Te rather as visible.

Dress covers mne the police 'observe' street demonstrations - truncheons drawn, and ready to hit a few heads at country's economy the first sign of trouble.)

The week started with the crying question on every Sunday front page. Did Arthur Scargill personally shoot down the jumbo jet? Or had he merely provided the missile?

Either Scargill denounced the Soviet Union, or he would be deemed to be complicit in what was immediately branded as an act of international terrorism.

Nicaragua. This 'guilt by non-dissociation' has been the keynote of the week. or history, lebane ee TOC% chair for the year when it finally called a halt to cven a verbal fight against the Tories.

The chic obstacle to this position was obviously the forces led No: Reagan's hands drip with blood. The by Arthur Scargill. The Russian British ruling class question was therefore a stick own, longer, blood- with which Chapple would disstained record. credit his opponents in advance.

The answer is to stop the arms race. And to do that we must Hence, when Chapple links the represent. and the class they iwo issues ('Some trade union leaders will travel half way across the world to sympathise with communist dictatorships, yet seek to prevent the TUC from talking to the elected government of Britain'), he was reflecting the sentiments of every rank and file newspaper editor in Fleet Street.

The Daily Mail led its front page on Chapple's call for Soviet observers to be banned, under the headline, 'Russians keep out.

Campaign The press campaign has the purpose of stamping all those who fail to endorse Reagan's war-cries as being in favour of the shooting down of civilian airliners. And as so often, the press was precisely in tune with the most right-wing elements of the TUC - Chapple and Kate Losinska, the president of the CPSA.

The short-term purpose was to ensure that the forces of the Left - arguing against a dialogue with Tobbit - would be isolated by being as pro-Red' and unpatriotic. Red-baiting and jingoism spreads perhaps more quickly through the ranks of the trade union bureaucracy than anywhere else. If the government is really desperate to end an official strike, it utters the magic words 'national security' and watches as the officials bury their members under red, white and blue 'get back to work" posters.

The long-term aim, however, is still more important. It is to break the link between the TUC and the Labour Party. One important by-product of talking to Tebbit would be to strengthen the hand of the SDP, who are making the running in calling for the link to be broken.

Coverage

The Guardian has long been giving massive coverage to every call by Dr David Owen to the TUC leaders, and the campaign is beginning to bear fruit.

It has spread from the Guardlan to the more intelligent of the High Tory papers in Fleet Street, who see the importance of the TUC initiative in talking to Tebbit as a way of dividing and weakening the labour movement day, praising Chapple's speech as being 'of immense significance' It said, "The TUC should revert to political independence. Those leaders such" as Arthur Scargill and Moss Evans who continue to talk in terms of the class war and the glories of nationalisation are yesterday's men with the day before yesterday's ideas.

"The TUC's real function, as outlined by Frank Chapple, is to protect its members' interests.

"It will do that best by promoting the country's efficiency. The unions ought to be thinking about how to increase tomorrow's dividends for everyone, not raking over the reasons for Labour's past failures."

For the Dally Express, this is political sophistication. They recognise that the trade union movement has more to fear from the enemies within - like Chapple - than from a direct attack from the government.

The relentless anti-Soviet propaganda - blurring every question of progressive and reactionary nature - and the continual branding of militants in Britain as traitors, has the object of developing the influence of their own fifth columnists for the press and the Tories within our ranks.

We can spot them easily enough. We don't need a spy. plane. We do need some strategy to root them out.

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no.145 September