POET Stays so d

Scan page 16

Last Sunday, 18th, the Post Office Engineering Union voted 81,000 to 49,000 at its Special Conference to continue industrial action against the Tories' plan to privatise British Telecom.

• Though the vote was more than three-to-two for continued action, activists who want to defeat the Privatisation Bill will have to step up the campaigning among the mass membership, pushing for branches to demand that the National Executive immediately escalates action.

The National Executive report which was adopted merely mandates the NEC to continue a campaign, without specifying how to strengthen the struggle.

The right wing 'Mainstream' faction lost control of the Executive in June, but is still entrenched in the union's head office, among the full-time officers.

They are well organised and were well prepared for the conference.

They scored a victory when they got the conference to censure the Broad Left dominated Executive's refusal to re-nominate John Golding, a prominent witch-hunter and a full-time officer of the POEU, to the Labour Party National Executive.

The tone of the conference was set in the debate on an amendment to the National Executive report tabled by the Leicester Internal branch. The amendment, if carried, would effectively have ended the union's fight against privatisaton.

In the debate it became clear that the union, as yet, is not prepared to go further than selective industrial action. Left activists still have to convince the members that to defeat the Tory Bill all-out action will eventually be necessary. The Swansea branch had raised this before the conference.

A number of propositions calling for specific action now were never reached because of an amended conference timetable proposed by the National Executive. Obviously the NEC wanted to avoid reaching proposals which would have tied them down to immediate and specific escalation.

This indication of uncertainty will be exploited by the right wing of the union and (almost certainly) by BT _management and the government.

The membership must be alerted and mobilised now. Broad Left supporters must argue in their branches for an immediate. escalation of the fight:

• For immediate action against the Bill, by blacking goyernment department lines and equipment, • For an-escalation of action gainst Project Mercury and its financial backers.

So far the action has been confined to small groups of members in London. The maximum number of members throughout the country must be involved in effective industrial action so as to create a fighting mood throughout the union.