The workplace branch creates

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many. Ine workplace branen worK, but there's no chance creates a network of contacts that of that. They let the Post Office along to meetings. It gives them you didn't even know existed Christian Society meet, but you the confidence to start.

said on

"Liverpool Postal Workers

Labour Party branch, and chair of the Communication Workers Broad Left.

He spoke to John Bloxam and Lol Duffy.

Billy: A few of us on the Left had been meeting occasionally, we thought we needed some way for the Left to come out and organise in the workplace. We saw that our union's delegation to Labour Party conference had voted in favour of workplace branches, so that seemed the best way.

We put out a leaflet. On one side we had 'Labour News'. , and on the other side "Tory News' with snapshots of Tory Britain, like unemployed people throwing themselves - off buildings, benefit cuts, and things like that. It went down quite well. At the inaugural meeting there were about 15. That was almost a year ago.

The Labour Party often doesn't make it easy for people to join. But at the workplace branch we have different types of speakers. For example, when the privatisation issue came up [in the Excerpts from the workshop discussio Socialist Organiser':

'How to Fight the ' Tories' conference.

Cammell Lairds shipyard, Birkenhead: Lol Duffy WE'VE got about eight workplace branches in Merseyside in various places - our shipyard, the Post Office, teachers in a Tech, local council housing workers, and a drugs factory.

In Cammell Lairds we have a, shop stewards committee covering all the unions. But it doesn't take a political role. if you try to put politics across the local council], we had a speaker along from the [council] Joint Shop Stewards' Committee. We're also thinking of going in for video. We find that young people will come along.

If you're 18 or 19, and you're interested in the union, so you go along to the union meeting, you're likely to find someone saying, Well, we've met al COPOU level today, and the Central Committee is meeting tomorrow, and they'll report back, and we don't know what we'll do about these 552s, but we might be in an overspend situation... What's the average young person going to make of that?

The workplace branch creates a political beachhead. It gives young people the political ideas, • the encouragement, so that they can get through all that other gobbledegook you've got to learn.

Sept.17 the shop stewards committee to the shop floor you get shot down. • We had tried to develop a Broad Left at Lairds•It fell down mainly because it was going to be based on the shop stewards and the craft consciousness is so bad that the craft workers won't even meet with the general workers union.

So we tried a Labour Party workplace branch. We put out forms around the yard saying that we need a fight back and that it's a political fight.

Now the Labour Party branch is really developing the stewards committee. We're trying to push forward from the workplace branch to positions in the stewards committee, and we've been quite successful in putting pressure on the stewards committee from the workplace branch.

We haven't got a bulletin from the workplace branch, but have got a stewards bulletin going, and it basically says what the workplace branch says. It was amazingly easy to set up the branch. People were crying out for something like this in Lairds.

We got a response from 40 or so people. About three of them were shop stewards, the rest were just from the shop floor. Lok: In Lairds I'd been pushing for ages to set up a workplace Labour Party branch. I knew a lot of stewards were in the Labour Party, and it would be a good source for other people. It worked - we got them all coming along. What we're hoping to do now is to develop more stewards out of it.

Billy: In the trade union movement we've lived under a false assumption for a long • time. Because some unions were industrially very strong, they thought industrial strength equals political strength. And that's been shown to be false. Now we've got to re-learn.

Our workplace is about 2000 nonnla Wave ont ahnut 70 Labour Party members, though was surprised to find it was so JOHN STURROCK (REPORT)

20 or so turned up to the first meeting - during their dinner break, and it's not very easy to get people out in their dinner hour.

We had been trying for ages to get something going in the yard. We've had Socialist Organiser meetings, with five, or if we were lucky, ten turning up when it was an urgent issue like redundancies in the yard.

We put in quite a lot of work during the general election. We held factory gate meetings. We invited local MPs along and we allowed the shop floor to question them.

60-70 came, and it created a good interest throughout the yard. We had most of the Merseyside MPs, prospective MPs etc along at one time or another.

•We organised transport to every marginal constituency in Merseyside and paid for it ourselves.

People also involved their mates, unemployed people, and got them to come along and help out.

That's a good spin-off.

The most right wing Labour Party branch in this area is the Birkenhead branch, but from what we've done we've got ten new active members there.

I was invited through the workplace branch to speak at the Birkenhead constituency meeting the other week and I was able to put forward our criticism of Frank Field (the MP) going hand in hand with the Tory MP for Wirral and arguing that the workers in Cammell Lairds should be working harder and producing more for the boss. It got a good reception, and we've shown the people in Cammel Lairds who live in Field's constituency; that he's not the defender of workers' rights he says he is.

before. If you're an activist in the workplace, especially if you're a letty, everyone thinks you're an oddball. It strengthens you to know there are other people in the workplace.

We tried to make the workplace branch as broad-based as possible. The secretary is a postman, the chairman is a PHG - which is a higher grade of postman - the vice-chairman is the secretary of the POEU branch, and one of the auditors is in the CMA, which is the supervisors' union. Politically, too -we try to argue with the right wing, not just browbeat them.

We usually get 15 to 20 to meetings, about once a month, 11.30 on a Saturday morning, in tho Curan Hatel It was 50 or All to the meeting before the General Election: We'd like to meet in Basingstoke Post Office Workers: Alan Fraser TO GET at the root of our workplace branch being formed, I think it is important to look first at the way the union branch was transformed.

In the last four years we've had three strikes: Before then we had never had a strike in the Basingstoke Post Office in its whole history.

This change wasn't due to three or four 'loony leftists' arriving in the branch all of a sudden. It was because there was a reactionary Tory government and the members clearly felt that there was a need for the apathetic leadership in the branch to be changed.

What precipitated the change was a strike in 1980 over victimisation.

From the strike, a new leadership emerged - a leadership that wanted to involve the rank and file. I was part of this leadership. Young people in the branch, in particular, started to come forward.

dispute But the membership in Basingstoke weren't just satisfied with fighting the local issues. More and more wanted something else.

The NHS dispute was important. On the Day of Action last year, 70 of our members stood on the picket line with the hospital workers. More and more we realised it was fine to be industrial militants and to beat management week after want to bring politics it...!

If you're saying to people that they should join the Labour Party, the workplace branch makes it much easier. Otherwise you give them a form, and they'l get a reply six months later if they're lucky, and if their name's not Tariq Ali. Then if they go along to a ward meeting, often they find it a bit overpowering when they're not used to political activity.

They get used to the idea of formal meetings. And we get away from that thing in work - I don't know if you've noticed, but working class people, when they start talking seriously, feel they have to punctuate it with a few jokes, Just to say, I'm not that serious...

Oil encourages peupit l come nano nnlo to roma BASIN 4N BARRA week, but it wasn't enough. Something else had to be done. We had to draw those people further into the labour movement and politicise them more.

It was a natural expression of the rank and file when we set up a workplace branch. To do it was comparatively easy.

Recently we've had a dispute about victimisation - the management decided it was time to chop the leadership because the branch was becoming increasingly political, so they decided to dismiss me.

Unfortunately we lost the battle, thanks to the trade union bureaucracy. But the workplace branch played a tremendous role in the struggle. We've got 14 members in the branch. That might not sound a lot, but if you get 14 people who are aware of the political fight that is going on in the country at the moment it can have a big effect.

By giving our membership the opportunity becoming political activists the workplace branch has opened up a whole new door for them.

The SWP said that our branch was only being used for sending resolutions to the GC and so on and so forth, and we weren't getting involved in any workers' struggles. After the struggle in Basingstoke last week, an SWP comrade came up to me and apologised and said that they had been mistaken - they had never seen such a struggle in Basingstoke like it. I said I put it down to the workplace branch - the fact that there was a political organisation inside the union branch.

Now, even though I've been removed, there's still that political organisation in there. And they've learned tremendous lessons about the trade union •bureaucracy from the dispute. John: How many new members have you recruited to the Labour Billy: About six, 1 Lol: In our place, the majority of the 40-odd we got weren't Labour Party members before.

John. Have they been recruited now?

Lol: No. We pass them on to wards and constituencies, by they just get pushed under a mat or something. The fact that we're not allowed to take money off people and recruit them directly is one of the things that really needs changing.

You're relying on people who might not have the same commitment to get in people like we're trying to get into the Local authorities:

Mick O'Sullivan described the Haringey council workers' branc and Louisa Blackwell mentioned some problems in the branch at GLC County Hall I WORK at County Hall. We've had a workplace branch set up quite recently, but I'm completely confused as to what is going on. It's only very occasionally that you get to hear about a meeting coming up.

The main political influence in the branch is Militant.

It started with a YS workplace branch meeting. The meeting had 40 people there, and that was quite heartening.

But now, we're having a lot of trouble. Senior officers seem to control the meetings.

Another problem is that the meetings are all an hour long. But the lower officers, like me, get skinned alive if we take more than 45 minutes for our lunch We were told 'If you've only got 45 minutes, come in the second half of the meeting because then you might get to know of the decisions, but they are not prepared to shorten the meetings or have them after work.

'They don't really seem to build the branch. There aren't any posters for the meetings. It's done through an unofficial mailing list, and certain people like me don't get the mailings.