UCW leaders ash out

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will now be elected for two year terms, while full-time officials will now have carte blanche to appoint shop stewards to union industrial conferences. This was blandly claimed to facilitate the democratic representation of union members.

Left-wing demands for an end to political bans and proscriptions were defeated as were those calling for election of all full-time officials: the right wing simply reminded conference of Communist Party activity during the ballot-rigging era of 1960. Using such methods they also ditched proposed democratic changes including calls for the union leadership to be bound by conference decisions.

One significant feature of this conference was the extent to which white-collar EESA sections predominated. This "union within a union" was able to fund some 40 delegates representing just a few hundred engineering staff.

Contrast this with the combined membership of two large EETPU branches such as London Central and Southampton.

Together these represent some 10,000 members yet at conference they were entitled to just two delegates between them. THE Executive of the Union of Communication Workers (UCW) has chosen to make a national issue out of our criticism of the union officials' handling of the September postal section strike in Basingstoke.

The week-long strike to reinstate Alan Fraser - postal section secretary, South East organiser of the Communication Workers' Broad Left, and la Socialist Organiser supporter -was sold out by national fulltime officers Gerry Casey and John Taylor.

Since then the postal section members in Basingstoke have drawn the lessons of the sell-out and spread them to many areas in the form of an official branch circular. Socialist Organiser supporters have produced a pamphlet, 'Solidarity Betrayed' which explains how the rising consciousness of the branch was seen as a threat by both management and union bureaucrats alike, and gave them a common interest in getting Alan out of the Post Office.

The bureaucrats have now responded with a lengthy and laughably hamfisted document signed by general secretary sion and inaccuracies, to discredit Alan Fraser, Socialist Organiser, and by direct implication the members of the UCW who struck to support Alan.

The document has apparently gone to every UCW branch in the country.

The issue is now much bigger than different views of a local strike. The New Year will see a national battle on the questions of union democracy and on the clear failure of the union's current leadership to take a fighting stand in defence of its members.

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Mass picket outside the Body Plant during 1981 strike THE witch-hunt is now threatening to turn into a purge at Labour Party grassroots level. Six Militant supporters willbe expelled from Blackburn Labour Party if the party's executive gets its way. On December 4, the EC decided to recommend their expulsion to the next meeting of the GMC.

The national witch-hunt, the JOHN HARRIS expulsion of the five members of the Militant editorial board, the attempt to ban sales of Militant at Labour Party events - all this has set up a framework within which any local group of determined right wingers feels free to try to organise its own local burning of alleged witches. In Blackburn the right and soft left supporters of Jack Straw MP have got together to purge Militant and head off any challenge to Straw at reselection time.

The EC's procedure was scandalously undemocratic. The accused were not allowed either enough time or adequate facilities to answer the charges brought against them.

Allegations

These charges were laid by one Michael Gregory who rejoined the local party in 1982, pretended to be a Militant supporter for five months and then produced a document containing a welter of allegations about the "Militant conspiracy" • Yet the Executive

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Alan Tuffin. Tuffin tries, by a combination of distortion, omis-