[•The idea of workplace branches has now become…]

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•The idea of workplace branches has now become far more important. In the past you could relý on the trade union branches as being in many respects the voice of the Labour Party, but whilst that is still important, I think that the Party itself has got to hay a real presence in the workplaces. We can do that by building up the workplace branches. "We have to be seen in the factories and in the workplaces as part and parcel of the leadership of the workers in those workplaces in their struggles for poses to use the law to break the organic link between the Labour Party and the trade unions. By severing the link between Labour Party local constituencies and the workers on the shop floor he hopes to dissolve the greatest strength the party has and to tear the Labour Party out of its roots.

This is nothing less than an attack on the existence of the labour movement as we know it.

There have been other attempts in the past to break the link between unions and party - and, before that, to stop the unions creațing a Labour Party.

Since the 19th century the bosses, their paid thinkers, their legislators and their state have tried to confine the unions to everyday economic concerns. They argued that the job of the unions was to represent their members' economic interests within the prevailing circumstances and that i was no business of the unions to engage in politics.

The establishment of the Labour Party - between 1900 and 1906 - marked a big defeat for the ruling class.

Since then the dream of the right in British politics has been to transform the Labour Party into a non-trade union force. After the defeat of the general strike they put the unions under legal restraints, to limit their power to finance the Labour Party. The 1945 Labour government restored to the unions the right to freely finance the Labour Party. Now this is being challenged once more.

But a major weakness throughout the 80 years the unions have been independently in politics has been the separation between political organisation at Labour Party constituency and ward level and workplace organisation, which has been purely on a trade union level. For the first 82 years of its existence the Party opposed workplace branches. In 1982 all that changed and the party started to create workplace branches. The need to link the Party to the workplaces and to root it there has never been greater.

Norman Tebbit is the hatchet person for the Tories. His job is the breaking of the trade unions by legal means - in the same way that his colleagues in other ministries try to break them by cuts, privatisation and monetarism.

How can we build the campaign against Tebbit?

*We must make the leadership face up to the issue.

*We must explain to every member of the trade unions and of the Labour Party what is at PICKET ROTA trying to break the link between the unions and the Labour Eric Heffer *We must rebuild the basic link between the workplaces and Labour Party.

«One of the most Workplace branches can provide a vital link with the local to build the Party Labour Party. Members of all work. trade unions can get together to bring anti-Tory and socialist policies into the life of the workplace.

Crucially, they also provide & basis for campaigning for a political fund in all trade unions.

Tebbit is out to smash the trade unions. The fight back is a political fight and it can only be waged politically. Too many work places lack any political forum, organistion or leadership.

The political climate of today requires that we develop workplace Labour Party branches as rapidly as we can. Tony Benn "We must build a mass party with an immediate target of one million mem bers, drawn from among Labour voters known to us from our canvass cards. "We must campaign for individual members in the trade unions. Workplace branches will be essential if the Government proceeds with its plan to introduce a system of 'contracting in' "

To start a workplace Labour Party branch is easy. You just need to get together ten Labour Party members and invite the regional Party official to a meeting.

The Labour Party membership of workplace recruits has to be processed through their ward branches important things we have to do is but the workplace branch in the factories and in the places can send one delegate to the Labour Party GC in each constituency where it has at least ten members living.

That's the mechanics. But what about the political gist of it? In this supplement we try to show, by interviews and reports, how Labour Party workplace branches can open up new possibilities for working class politics rooted at the point of production.

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Billy Hayes is chair of

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better conditions, improved wages and so on." NORMAN TEBBIT pro-

stake, and why the Tories are UNDER DECUPATION