Where we stand

Scan page 12

*Organise the left to beat back the Tories' attacks!

No to attacks on union rights; defend the picket line; no state interference in our unions! No to any wage curbs. Labour must support all struggles for better living standards and conditions.

*Wage rises should at the very least keep up with price, increases. For a price index calculated by working class organisations, as the basis for clauses in all wage agreements to provide automatic monthly rises in line with the true cost of living for the working class. The same inflation-proofing should apply to state benefits, grants and pensions.

*Fight for improvements in the social services, and against cuts. Protection for those services against inflation by automatic inflation-proofing of expenditure. For occupations and supporting-strike action *End unemplayment. Cut hours, not jobs. Fight for a 35 hour week and an end to overtime. Demand work-sharing without loss of pay. Organise the unemployed:- campaign for a programme of useful public works to create new jobs for the unem"Defend all jobs! Open the books of those firms that threaten closure or redundancies, along with those of their suppliers and bankers, to elected trade union committees: For occupation and blacking action to halt the closures. For nationalisation without compensation under workers', management.

*Make the bosses pay, not the working class.

Millions for hospitals, not a penny for 'defence'!

Nationalise the banks and financial institutions, without compensation. End the interest burden on council housing and other public services.

*Scrap all immigration controls. Race is not a problem: racism is. The labour movement must mobilise to drive the fascists off the streets. Purge racists from positions in' the labour movement. Organise full support for black self-defence. Build *The capitalist police are an enemy for the working class. Support all demands to weaken them as a bosses striking force: dissolution of special squads (SPG, Special Branch, MI5 etc), public accoun*Free abortion on demand. Women's equal right to work and full equality for women. Defend and extend free state nursery and childcare provision. *Against attacks on gays by the state: abolish all laws which discriminate against lesbians and gay men; for the right of the gay community to organise *The Irish people - as a whole - should have the right to determine their own future. Get the British troops out now! Repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Political status for Irish Republican prisoners as *The black working people of South Africa should get full support from the British labour movement for their strikes, struggles and armed combat against the white supremacist regime. South African goods * It is essential to achieve the fullest democracy in the labour movement. Automatic reselection of MPs during each Parliament and the election by annual conference of party leaders. Annual election of all trade union officials, who should be paid the *The chaos, waste, human suffering and misery of capitalism now - in Britain and throughout the world - show the urgent need to establish rational, democratic, human control over the economy, to Imake the decisive sectors of industry social propferty, under workers' control. The strength of the Ilabour movement lies in the rank and file. Our perspective must be working class action to raze the capitalist system down to its foundations, and to put a working class socialist alternative in its place -rather than having our representatives run the system and waiting for crumbs from the tables of to defend jobs and services.

ployed. *Freeze rent and rates.

workers' defence squads.

tability, etc.

and affirm their stand publicly.

a matter of urgency.

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Works department o NO SOCIALIST ORGANISER Day School, Sheffield, Satur day March 31. Mount : Pleasant Community Centre, Sharrow Lane, off London Road.

Workshops, videos, plus social. Tickets for day aphool f1 (unwaged 20p) and for social, £1 unwaged 50p.

WOMEN'S FIGHTBACK public meeting, North Staff: Poly, College Road, Stoke. Speaker: Gerry Byrne. For more details contact Jill Mountford, 64 Nelson St., Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent or ring Stoke 84170.

GLASGOW Labour Campaign for Gay Rights meets in the AUEW Halls, 7.30, second Thursday of every month. Contact Box 35, 488 Great Western Rd, Kelvinsbridge, Glasgow. ... :10. faces sires tome on here with e has shar ¡ A Special Council Bul A CAMPAIGN FC .... 1 17% DEFEND London Democracy. Public meeting with speakers John McDonnell (GLC Finance Chair), Phil Turner (Leader, Camden Council), and others, plus discussion. Thursday 22 March, 8.00 p.m. Kingsgate Community Centre, 107 Kingsgate Road, London NW6. Organised by Hampstead and Highgate Labour Party (Kilburn Branch). CHILD Poverty Action Group fringe meeting at East Midlands Labour Party regional conference: Saturday March 17, Ipm, at Manhattan Room, Parade Hotel 'Unfair Welfare is no fun. fair'.

Party workplace branch)

AT LAST the Labour Party is starting to realise that its workplace branches exist.

The Greater London Labour Party plans to begin 'sending regular bulletins and information" to branches though this announcement is also an admission that for the last two years, in London as elsewhere, workplace branches have received no information or help from Labour Party officials.

Lack of central help has not stopped workplace branches growing. Branches have been built round the country. They have recruited new members and begun to campaign.

These new branches are often the most lively and interesting labour organisation workers can join _because they are the least bureaucratic.

Many of them now produce regular bulletins. Liverpool Postal Workers' branch's 'Labour News' is now up to its 14th issue. Islington Council Workers' branch has started to produce 'Council Worker', a four-page monthly newsletter which has carried our arguments on rate-capping, Liverpool council's fight and the need to scrap bonus schemes into every department. Party at work. Experience round the country shows that workplace branches can easily double, treble quadruple Party membership in a workplace within months.

Our branch is pressing for Regional Offices to start sending information to branches on campaigns and policies, and also to agree to distribute material produced by individual branches. • We want regional officials — who have often been unhelpful to groups of Party members wanting to form a workplace branch and invented arbitrary rules on what the definition of a 'workplace' is - to receive a clear instruction: Do what the members want.

SAYS

We are also calling for Regional Officers to give help in setting up meetings between workplace branches in a region or industry.

I urge Socialist Organiser supporters to build workplace branches where they can - and even if they can't, to help by pressing their Constitueney Labour Parties to encourage the formation of branches in their area and by fighting for Labour Party regional organisations to help these branches rather than obstructing them.

* If you want more information about setting up workplace branches, contact Nik Barstow, 165 Liverpool Road, London N1 (01-278 1341).

SAVE

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