White flag over

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month, it did not halt the mobilisation.

opposition Democratic Alliance.

Glasgow Edinburgh Liverpool Mancheste Rochdale Stockport THE WHITE flag of realism' was hoisted above this year's TUC Congress by a revamped, right-wing led crew of capitulators and Group August & Sept.

15.50 26.00 50.00 10.00 10.00 14.50 38.00 10.00 65.00 66.10 10.00 38.90 1.50 73.49 20.47 10.60 50.00 11.00 11.00 30.00 33.60 20.00 126.09 collaborators, who have voted two-to-one to drop the TUC's ban on talks with anti-union hit-man Norman Tebbit.

"We want talks to lower the temperature, to get away from confrontation and to remove some of the legal and financial pressure on our movement" argued AUEW President Terry Duffy.

The reality is that talks will do some of thase things: they will the workers' movement while boosting the morale of the Tories.

'We will do all we can, by principled opposition and reasoned argument (!), to lessen the impact (!) of what the Government has in mind' added SOGAT 82 leader Bill Keys. Such talk must be music to the ears of every anti-union employer.

Betrayal

Clive Jenkins echoed Keys' claims that the proposed talks do not mean "betrayal and complicity" with Tebbit's plans.

But delegates did not have to wait long to see evidence that this is untrue.

Keys rose to the microphone again to argue the case for continued TUC involvement in the Tories' so-called 'Youth Training Scheme' . It is the "duty" of the unions to "help contribute to its success", he declared.

•We cannot walk away from the young of this nation. Where do the young people go to, if we as a British trade union movement walk away from them?"

Where, then, will youth who rightly object to the slave labour wages and conditions of the YTS schemes turn, now that union leaders have once again thrown in their hand with the Tories and the employers, and given their approval to the Scheme?

Re-run

As a delegate from pointed out, YTS is:

"nothing more than a sophisticated and cynical re-run of the old Youth Opportunities Programme"

At the end of the year, the exploited youth will be back on the dole - many of them more cynical and alienated from the unions than before.

The "realistic" approach of seeking to talk the Tories out of their anti-union offensive, and make the best out of their plans to lower wages and destroy conditions, has been a discernible current within the TUC for years: it is by no means simply a 'reassessment' after the June 9 election defeat.

Ever since Thatcher's rise to office in 1979, the TUC right wing and important sections of the so-called left' have shrunk from any serious, concerted challenge to the barrage of spending cuts, closures, and anti-union legislation.

Nerve

Now Duffy has the nerve to complain that 'the un ions have been marking time fol the past few years, waiting for the early return of a Labour government'"!

That been Duffy: what a nerve! panacea peddled by Duffy and his right wing cronies. Now they do not even hold this limited ambition: their message is one of surrender, abject and total surrender to the Tories.

Yet even while these worthless bureaucrats strut and posture in the Blackpool Winter Gardens, strike backroom deals to exchange votes, and manipulate each other in and out of seats on the General Council, shop floor workers in Greenings in Warrington and GKN Northampton have notched up significant victories by adopting the very approach decried by Duffy and co. - walking out and standing firm against management. In Nigg Bay and Bradford determined fights are still in progress.

After this year's appalling Winter Gardens circus is over, it will remain, as before, the task of the rank and file to take the initiative in the fight against Tory policies as they bite into jobs and hard-won public services.

To discuss the experiences of such struggles in the recent period, and attempt to organise for the battles to come, we urge readers to attend the conference called by Socialist Organiser on September 17 in London (see pages 3 and 9).