The Next Step: No. 41, November 1983

next step review of the Revolutionary Communist Party No 41 November 1983 Dodworth Colliery BarnalawA rea Fighting foi the unions we need Neil Kinnock can't save jobs in the NHS p9. 20p highling *the Tories

TAKING CONTROL outlines a strategy for reclaiming our unions and rebuilding them as effective fighting organisations Dodworth Colliery Barne

N.U.T

M 4 Sexism a Sexism and the Labour Party Abortion - feminists retreat Striking: a blow for real freedom 6 Backsmo Back-door repatriation Sari Squad fights on 7 Troond Troops out when? - Labour, Liberals and the left 2 November 1983 the & Labour movement Kent NALGO strikes back Labour and the NHS Fighting for jobs at GEC government the Labour working class? next step No 41 November 1983 monthly review of the Revolutionary Communist Party Publisher Junius Publications Ltd, BCM JPLTD, London WCIN 3XX.

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Correspondence to The Editor, the next step, BCM JPLTD, London WCIN 3XX.

ISSN 0144-350 X November 1983 John Smith and examine the obstacles to victory.

NALGO workers v Labour councils The POEU and privatisation The Broad Lefts - budding bureaucrats 15 Labour councilism and Labour councils In response to Tory attacks on local Party has summoned up the ghosts of its past - the Fabians and municipal socialists - to defend its institutions. We examine the record of municipal socialism and ask can today's revamped version defend the

TAKING CONTROL

A handbook for trade union militants 12 The right to fight For the past two years Norman Tebbit has had the TUC leaders on the run. Now Tom King has taken over at the Department of Employment, the union chiefs are rushing to make concessions, hoping the new minister won't prove as nasty as his predecessor.

In a special feature we reveal how the bureaucrats' long-standing complicity with the bosses in running the unions in the workplace renders them incapable of safeguarding workers' rights. The only way to defend our rights against the Tories is by fighting for them. We also look at the experience of workers who have taken on the employers and the Government 17 The collapse of the world economy Claims in the financial press that the world economy is recovering cannot disguise the reality of deepening recession.

We look at the 'upturn' in the USA and Britain, the debt crisis in the Third World and the squabbles in the IMF. The day of reckoning is not far off.

20 Ravinys Hackney: slumming it France: reconstructing capitalism Marx and human nature Imperialism in Latin America Art and revolution 22 Letters 23 Activities Out soon Order your copy now! junius

HOTE

A time to go forward T he Tories won the General Election but have yet to win their battle to save British capitalism. The Thatcher Government is confused and disoriented in the face of Britain's accelerating economic collapse. The Financial Times, commenting on the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool, pointed out thatthe Government seemed without strategic direction or ideological thrust.

Economist warned of the moment of danger for any government, the point four years into office where tiredness sets in and scandals catch up'.

But what really worries these staunch advocates of hard-line Thatcherism is not the misdemeanours of Tory Cabinet Ministers, but the limited impact of Tory strategy in stemming the tide of recession.

The Tory Party conference was replete inconsistencies with and indecision. Some stalwarts found it hard to reconcile Chancellor Nigel Lawson's optimism about recovery with the prevailing gloom expressed in Treasury reports on public spending. His bland promises, to go on controlling inflation and public expenditure, and eventually to reduce taxation, cut little ice at Blackpool, The Tory faithful have so far been disappointed on both fronts by the Thatcher administration. The Cabinet is divided over how far and how fast to proceed with the privatisation of the public sector, and over where to impose cuts in expenditure. Only one thing unites the Tories - a determination to make the working class pay the price for the crisis of their system.

The Tories" major success has been in demoralising the leadership of the labour movement. 'Realism' was the keynote of this year's TUC conference, as the trade union leaders gave up token The resistance to the Tories.

Government's aggressive approach to the unions and its break with past traditions of negotiation and arbitration have left the labour bureaucracy isolated and vulnerable. The bureaucrats have been suitably humbled by the impact of the and the contemptuous IcCessIon treatment meted out by the establishment.

Immediately after the TUC conference they crept off for discussions with Norman Tebbit on the Government's scheme for policing the unemployed and interfering further in the internal affairs of the unions. 'Compromise was the theme of the Labour Party conference. Sobered by its thrashing at the polls, Labour has united behind a new leader whose singular merit is his readiness to abandon some of Labour's most deeply held - but also most deeply unpopular - convictions.

came Neil Kinnock, and out went unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the EEC, opposition to council house sales - and the Militant editorial board. Self-preservation is the instinct that lies behind Labour's new yearning for unity. In both the unions and the Labour Party, the bureaucracy is adopting defensive postures to hold the movement together. The labour bureaucracy's retreat before the Tory advance only accentuates the remoteness of the official labour movement from the working class. The General Election campaign exposed the gull between the policies of the Labour Party and the TUC and the preoccupations of workers. The problem is most acute for the trade union leaders.

they concede to the Government and the employers, the less capable they become of defending their members' interests and the greater the risk they run of losing touch with the rank and file.

The increase in unofficial strikes, even in unions like the miners' and the railway workers whose leaders claim to be The left wing, indicates the growing scale of the conflict between the officials and their members. step we take a close look at a number of workers' struggles to defend jobs and living standards. Workers in many sectors, workers like the post. office engineers or residential social workers who are relative newcomers to industrial action, are prepared to fight back against management attacks. the conservative strategy of the union leaders is a barrier to success.

result of their moderation, the bureaucrats • can no longer be sure of keeping control of the action. undermines their capacity to contain rank and file militancy. n the current climate, a gap has also opened up between the more militant workers and the rest of the working class. Mass unemployment and economic insecurity have strengthened conservative tendencies among some workers. of the unions and the Labour Party's lack of credibility have engendered a mood of passivity and cynicism. Some workers have proved more susceptible to the appeals of the Tories and the SDP-Liberal Alliance than to the calls of the labour bureaucracy. economic and political pressures has slowed the forward movement of the more politically conscious workers. They have been held back by the fragmentation and demoralisation that prevent the mass of workers from taking action to defend class interests. The crisis of the labour bureaucracy and the new volatility of working class political loyalties opens a situation of some danger, but one which also contains great positive potential. The British left has been profoundly influenced by the more conservative moods within the labour movement. agonising reappraisals of the nature and structure of the working class, and ' gloomy commentaries on 'the downturn.

The left responds instinctively in its reliance on the labour bureaucracy.

is obliged to come to terms with its lack In of an independent programme through which to appeal to the more politically active workers, left factions in the orbit of the Labour Party, the only alternatives are to move to the right or to become irrelevant.

this sense Labour left-winger Peter Hain is right when he poses the options as choosing between unity behind Kinnock, or becoming 'massively marginalised' in the Socialist Workers' Party.

The remnants Kinnock have a role to play in reviving the Labour Party. to say to the working class but wait for an upturn to produce more strikes. But there is another alternative.

next step Jor power. The more working class, In this issue of the next into the labour bureaucracy.

In every dispute, But as a Their very defensiveness goals in accordance redefined to The ineffectiveness Kinnock make any pledges at Brighton. This combination of left: her policies." This has led to Stalinism. It Hence, for the various In of the left around The SWP has nothing working class, Kinnock at Brighton. Preparing the programme of the Revolutionary Communist Party, outlines a perspective for building a party now that can organise effective defence of workers' interests in the recession and lead the struggle for a different form of society. But the radical left is incapable of seizing the time provided by the crisis of the existing Labour leadership to build a fighting alternative. Rather than try to overcome the despair that haunts the By the left effectively prolongs it by trying to breathe new life The left has taken much of the blame for Labour's defeat in the June General Election. It stood accused of lumbering the party with unpopular policies, and it has suffered a series of setbacks during the long drawn-out inquest. Eric Heffer and Michael Meacher - its candidates for the Labour leadership - were trounced; its position on the national executive committee was weakened, and most of its policies were discarded. In response, the left has further and further restricted its with what is acceptable within a party moving rapidly to the right. At times, the left's instability has reached almost comic proportions.

For Socialist Action during the Labour Party conference, the key task was to 'rebuild the Bennite left'. By the following week, the strategic priority had been organising to commit 1 Kinnock to the pledges he has made to conference. In fact nobody apart from the editors of Socialist Action heard Whatever the terms, the left has agreed to serve the Labour Party.

working -n an ironic gesture, History has assigned the dying Eurocommunist wing of the Communist Party an influential role in guiding the new Labour leadership through its present troubles. In September Bob Rowthorne outlined a strategy for the "There are two separate but interrelated tasks: the first task is to revive the Labour Party and review its links with the people. This will not be easy and will take considerable time.

The second task is to rally all the various people in Britain opposed to Mrs Thatcher and movement. That a member of the Communist Party, itself on the verge of disintegration, system. should identify as his first task the revival of the organisation his party was founded caretakers. to destroy is a fitting epitaph for British It is also an indication of a turn up'. wider problem of the British left. In the midst of the deepest recession for half a century, the central concern of the left is not to defend working class interests but to save the Labour Party. But there is a direct conflict between Rowthorne's 'second task' and workers' interests. His broad anti-Thatcher alliance can only be established by ruling out actions against the existing system which are vital for the working class, but which would be modest anathema to the middle class supporters of the Liberals and the SDP. Saving the Labour Party means sacrificing the Communist Party intellectual Professor Eric Hobsbawm shared a platform with He delivered a homily for the benefit of the new leader: Thatcherism aims to transform Britain irreversibly in its own way, not just to keep the system on an even keel. To defeat it, is therefore more than the routine demand of any opposition when it happens not to be in government. It is the condition of survival for a decent Britain, and of such chances as exist of advancing to a better society.

all Kinnock accounts nodded vigorously throughout, though this may.

have been in an effort to keep awake.

But Kinnock could find little to disagree with here. For Hobsbawm there is a cause greater than the survival of Labour - the salvation of Britain.

The retreat from the needs of the working class is complete. Hobsbawm, who not too long ago wrote about the Forward march of Labour halted', is now talking about it being reversed. British workers have never lived in 'a decent Britain', but in one built on exploitation and oppression - at home and abroad. Thatcherism confirms the urgent need to free the working class from the brutality of the capitalist system. But the bureaucrats can only dream of a return to their pre- Thatcher golden age when consensus politics gave them some status in the British establishment. he official labour movement survives because it has so far avoided a systematic national challenge. It now rests on a shrinking social base, largely in the public It has failed to broaden its sector unions. influence among new sections of the class: women, blacks, the It now faces an uphill unemployed. struggle to rebuild a credible reformist movement within the working class Kinnock has set about providing a focus for this project by identifying with campaigns against cuts and closures in the National Health Service. Various groupings in the Labour Party and the unions are responding to this same preoccupation by getting involved in campaigns against deportations; some are even talking about the Irish War. This is the left's function for the bureaucracy - to provide a campaigning image to revitalise the decay ing structures of the official labour The working class has no interest in restoring the rotten prop to a crumbling We have nothing to gain from saving British capitalism or its Labour Nor do we have to wait in despondent resignation for something to The paralysis of the official labour movement and the ideological disarray of the left offers a unique challenge. Now is not a time to retreat, but a time to take the opportunities opened up by the malaise of the bureaucracy to build a genuine working The Revolutionary class alternative Communist Party has no stake in the existing system, and no links with the To fulfil even the most bureaucracy. needs of the working class today demands a struggle that goes beyond the limits imposed by the institutions of the labour movement. Our approach is to get involved in the struggles of the working class, and to build a party now that can lead the fight for power in the struggles ahead. November 1983 3

Women THE CRUSHING OF the women's movement at last year's ference was a tragedy. Its humiliation at this year's conference was a farce. Women delegates were ignored, insulted and jeered at by Labour's trade union old guard, led by the party chairman, salty Sam McCluskie from the seamen's union. Three compomotions put forward by site organisations were defeated.

bewailed the week's events as an exposure of growing sexism among male delegates.

"The most macho conference for years was Socialist Organiser's verdict.

McCluskie's behaviour was typical of the backwardness, sectionalism cracy on which the Labour Party was built and which remain its defining charactething ristics. The only the women's movement's Brighton was accommodation to the Labour Party.

Ten years ago the women's movement campaigned for free abortion and contraception on demand, for nurseries and equal of crisis pay. As threatened to wipe out women's rights, the feminist movement responded by retreating under the protective wing of the official labour movement.

five years the dominant theme of feminism place to has been that the women's rights is inside the Labour Party.

Feminists have lowered their honzons to accommodate the prejudices of the labour bureaucracy. falling women's employment and wages, the need for a political struggle against women's oppression is more pressing than But to sustain their relationship ever. with Labour, have given up struggling.

movement has regressed from fighting for women's rights in society, to fighting for women's rights inside the Labour Party, to just being in the Labour Party.

Degenerated revolutionaries women's The illustrated just conference feminism has slipped. concerned the status of and elections to the women's organisations in the Labour None of them Party. oppressed status and rapid immiseration of millions of working class women in the real world outside the Labour Party.

left's fixation with constitutional manoeuvres has let the labour movement off the hook in the battle to defend women.

Even veteran anti-feminist and right-wing candidate leadership deputy Dunwoody has been able to pose as a more principled protector of women than the women's movement. the Campaign for Labour Party Women's cracy's Action dismissed the feminists Dun woody *preoccupied with party squabbles constitutional theorising the need to defend women's rights in a wider social contest against Mrs Thatcher'.

In the event, the union block votes defeated the women's conference motions with ease. 1970 (founding conference, Oxford): Equal education and job oppor- 2. Equal pay 3. Free 24-hour nurseries 4. Free on demand. Labour women make their peace, not policy Labour Party conmotions. to the leadership. women's was so harmless The left has The But clearer. and bureauto become exposed" necessary ference support. the 'seventies Over the past programme. fight for win CaSE younger today's conditions of the left and the feminists women off. The women's inability to motions to this year's struggle for far how All three motions mentioned the liberation The Gwyneth Challenged by Demolearn'. Committee, and while ignoring Women's The bureaucrats' crushing of The demands of the women's liberation movement Labour Women contraception and abortion agenda. the feminist reforms was not prompted by any threat to their hold over the party.

Rather, it underlined the banality of the The union barons were able to stomp on the motions because there was no pressure on them to make concessions.

The feminists posed no political challenge Their motion calling for the convening of a rules conference attracted the that it support of the TGWU and the NUM. The subservience of the women's movement to the Labour Party could not have been the party's future tor women's organisations was mapped out by AUEW-TASS deputy general secretary Barbara Switzer. She advised the feminists better bureaucrats and get educated in the ways of conference infighting because the motions lacked the gain consophistication Insults and illusions women's The activities of the tamed movement have been reduced to building bridges between working women and men and the Labour Party's anti-working class The Labour leadership has recognised that inoffensive young women friends and influence people where old bores like Roy Hattersley or like campaigners Kinnock fear to tread. The feminist campaigners of a decade ago have become the canvassers of the 'eighties.

But the feminists' attempts to recruit more women to They Labour have had little success.

claim that the lack of positive discrimination in the party's structures has put But it is the Labour Party's women's rights fight for which makes membership unattractive to with more pressing concerns than who elects whom to what committee.

The spectacle of women queueing at the speaker's rostrum to be cat-called and degraded was an insult to all who take the seriously. women's rights The responsibility for their humiliation lies firmly with the left. It was the Labour left which drew the feminists into the party and reduced the fight for women's present pathetic state. And it is the left in all its naivety which continues to sow illusions in its ability to For Labour change the Labour Party. Herald, Mandy Moore announced before the conference even started that 'whatever happens we will be back. For Socialist Action, the lesson of the conference was that the labour bureaucracy should lead a fight against sexism in the movement.

But, it observed, 'one begins to wonder whether the trade union leaders will ever While the left One does indeed. begins to wonder, more and more women are becoming convinced that the Labour Party is no place to fight for freedom.

the 'eighties liberation in demands a struggle against the Labour Party and its divisive politics.

Carol Taggart 1983 (Labour Party conference): 1. Women's division of the NEC should be elected by National Conference of The NEC should convene a rules conference to draw up a constitution for the women's organisation 3. The National Conference of Labour Women should have the right to put five resolutions on the party conference Labour's sexism: while wo I DON'T GIVE a fuck about your trade union organisation, exclaimed an angry National Abortion ference, 'what about me?'.

between a defender alliance with the labour bureaucracy and the individualist preoccupations of the women's movement throws some light on, the debate that has split the official campaign for abortion rights down the middle. Abortion from several directions. cologist Anthony Hamilton has been hauled before the courts on a charge of attempted murder for carrying out a late abortion. Catholic bigot Victoria Gillick carries on her campaign to restrict the availability of contraceptive advice. Fowler swings the axe on the hospitals - abortion facilities are often first to Meanwhile the National Abortion go. locked in Campaign squabble over the best way to keep the campaign going as its activists retreat from the fight for abortion rights.

The acceptable face of feminism The National Abortion Campaign was founded in 1975 by socialists committed to women's right to abortion as one aspect of the struggle for women'sliberation. It has organised opposition to a series of attempts to restrict the 1967 Abortion Act through new legislation. adopted narrow approach, concentrating on lobbying MPs and winning the support of doctors and other respectable people.

has restricted its activities within the limits what 1s powerful backers in the Labour Party and the trade unions. In response to the pressure of middle class feminists and politicians, NAC abandoned the original demand of the women's liberation movement for free abortion on demand' in favour of pleading for a woman's right to choose Upholding the call for a woman's right to choose' turned a broad struggle capitalist against narrow issue of individual choice made what was a cause for the whole working class into a private matter for every individual woman. tion of Conservative Students could agree with NAC that abortion should be a matter of personal choice for the women concerned'. Feminists retreat the 1967 delegate at last month's House of Commons. Campaign •con- This clash of the feminist rights are under attack

NHS.

Luton gynae- The between which abortion, Tory health minister Norman The

NAC

into campaign' an internal of others unions and 1967 Act. feminists and Last commented, The campaign has parliamentary her acceptable to its right. ment wedlock. into oppression The Federaon demand. And NAC could marginalised, Glenys Kinnock starred as housewife lobby sufficient MPs to ensure that the White, Benyon and Corrie Bills to curb defeated in the

PHEWELC

But neither NAC nor its supporters could advance the struggle for abortion rights beyond the strict limits imposed by the 1967 Act And NAC has proved ineffectual in defending abortion rights against the latest combined onslaught of Britain's 'moral majority' (SPUC, Life and the Responsible Society) and cuts in the Reproductive rights and the left split recent NAC conference faction ultra-feminist an wants to turn the campaign away from its exclusive emphasis on who want to and those maintain links with the labour bureaucracy and continue in the old way.

ultra-feminists want to change reproductive rights avoid which would une offensive against abortion rights by dissolving the issue among a plethora On the other hand, the remaining radical left activists in NAC want to cling on to their allies in the defending the carry on The bureaucrats are happy to endorse a parliamentary pressure less enthusiastic about but sponsoring a diffuse feminist campaign minister Cecil month Tory Parkinson's woman friend Sara Keays response to press in suggestions that she should have had pregnancy terminated, that she •was not aware that political expediency was sufficient grounds for an abortion under the 1967 Act' Sara Keays is Neither are poverty, unemployor squalid housing conditions grounds for termination of pregnancy under the 1967 Act, though that is of little concern to those who conceive in top Tory circles, in or out of Yet thousands of working class women are denied the right to abortion through restrictive laws and Neither faction public spending cuts. in NAC has any answers to these problems; both sides in the split have retreated when faced with the advance of recession and reaction defence of women's rights now depends on mobilising working class resistance around a campaign for free abortion Sheila Phillips

ONE WEDNESDAY EVENING in June, Hindle decided to John Newman home from work. Gears in Bradford, left his car where it was parked and crept out of the back of his factory. His urge for exercise was prompted by the fact that the wives of his striking workers were doing their first spot of picket duty. weeks Hindle made a point of leaving early When the women turned on Wednesdays. up for their regular stint on the picket would tinda ime mey waiting for them. taken to varying the time and day they arrive to keep Hindle on the hop.

continuing strike at Hindle Gears is one of a number of disputes recently covered by the next step in which women have been centrally involved, either as strikers or in support of their men. They all provide examples of how women, when they do take action, are often more militant and willing to break with past traditions At Britains Toys in East Lonthan men. don it was the women strikers who upped the action by iving in And during the dispute at the lorries. Nigg Bay oil platform construction yard in Scotland, strikers' wives and blocked the main road of the town of Alness to stop buses full of scabs entering the site. Women's conventions The militancy of the Britains and Hindle's flies in the face of conventional wisdom about women's attitudes to strikes. shunted in and out of work.

fined to the home and housework, they are readily available for the bosses to them into the workforce when bring needed and kick them out again when demand drops off. Britains Toys, told us what this meant for work at Britains in 1980 her: " began By mid-1981 I was sacked together with seven other women because they had no more work for us.

end of 1981 they had a bad fire in the works and so they called some of us back'.

The fact that cooking, cleaning and childcare are seen as women's main job keeps them isolated from the political and social he or the Women's first concern is reduced to how walk Hindle, boss of Hindle For the next few police escort The women have now The front of scab children women at Nigg their children. Women are regularly When conget suffers first. Hazra, a striker from they said At the are sometimes working class. Real freedom Are you fed up with trade unions that won't fight for women's rights? Are you unconvinced that a women's place is on her knees in the Labour Party?

want to fight the Tories' drive to push women back into the home? Kate Marshall shows how we can build a work ing class struggle for women's liberation.

BUY IT!

€1.95 plus postage (50p) Striking: a blow for real freedom

TILLEE LL

On the picket line: Britains' women workers lead the way they can afford to pay the rent and feed Whether it is women themselves or their husbands who get involved in an industrial dispute, the housekeeping bud- Women are faced with the prospect of spending their Christmas or holiday money on food or missing HP payments. The sooner the strike ends, the sooner they can get back to their everyday problems of survival. Women's worries about the effects of a long dispute can prompt either of two reactions. The media able to whip up small, over-publicised "back to work' movements among strikers' wives. Disputes at British Leyland's Cowley plant in the late seventies saw several such marches.

un une other hand, women can get involved in fighting for victory in the strike. Women's decision to stand for or against a strike is Do you Send cheques to Junius Publications, BCM JP Ltd, London

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influenced by both the attitude of the union and the appeals from the bosses and their press. To involve women in disputes can only be to the advantage of the working class. Yet movement actively discourages working from getting class women Women have often been left isolated, worrying about the rent or or the electricity payments open to anti-strike propaganda Britains Toys, At encouraged the more backward workers to stop the women strikers lying in front of lorries and told women they were not needed on the picket line. The incident is typical of trade union attit- Each union udes to women. protect a particular group of workers in a certain sector of industry or services.

doesn't Because capitalism women as a regular part of the workforce, the unions have women as a regular part of the labour movement. At Hindle Gears, the AUEW has accommodated to the women by allowing them to use the union offices as a base. But the union's only 'organising" the strikers' control them. A clear division of labour been enforced. The women are a has support and social group, raising money for family outings and occasional protests while the men run the strike. The official labour movement's women's participation in strikes means that women often get involved in a spontaneous attempt

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isolation. Eileen Wilson, one of the women who joined the Nigg strikers' blockade explained how it took off. 'It really snowballed. A few women suggested it, wanting support. What to show spontaneous, nothing was organised.

Workers divided At Britains Toys, many of the women only joined the union when they came out on strike. They immediately took to effective picketing of the factory, to the consternation of union wanted to back down in the face of the heavy police presence. Lying in front of and ambushing lorries not normally trade union activity. Women's exclusion from the traditions of and compromise strike, Britains, the strikers erences in language back to work. strategy the officials' approach forthcoming. the official labour women as stuck in. irresponsible mortgage bill, and TGWU officials union attitudes. male exists to who are industrial action. recognise recognise refused to recognise go back' story. interest in wives around looking for media 11 indifference to overcome their street. happened was working union officials who employers are considered to be part of British trade Women unionism means that their action is often militant and tactically innovative. Women workers who are 'uneducated' in the union leaders' preferred methods of conciliation will take whatever action they see as necessary to win the rather than what is accepted as official picket-line practice.

Such militancy is embarrassing for the bureaucrats But the unconscious nature of the women's action also has its limitations.

where the sexual split among was compounded by diffand ethnic origin, women who had come out on strike in support of men from another department became disillusioned and began to drift The union bureaucrats did not challenge the divisions among the strikers. In the absence of a clear political perspective, the workers militancy could not unite them against The recent strike at Dodsworth colliery in Yorkshire illustrates the problem of uniting men and women in a dispute. Five days before the end of the strike, miners' wives picketed the Barnsley headquarters of the South Yorkshire NUM. Carrying placards with the slogan Think of your future, they demanded that the union make the strike official and issue strike pay. But with the responsibility of keeping the home going weighing them down, the women were also calling on their husbands to get back to work if strike pay was not The women's ambivalence sums up the volatility of their position as both isolated houseworkers and members of the working class. It is this confusion which the media seize upon to depict and mothers sensible wives trying to curb their striking husbands' antics. The ruling class makes women responsible for scrimping and saving to make ends meet. In a strike, it tries to manipulate their dilemma to put pressure on workers and stir up anti- Beating the media The failure of the labour movement to involve women in strikes has allowed the media to sustain the myth of docile wives 'naturally conservative about When male workers with their common interests women, the press-hounds are hard pressed to find a 'we're on sex strike till the men Eileen Wilson described how they went about it at Nigg: "we're fed up of reading that wives are putting pressure on their husbands to go back...

one particular reporter kept asking my husband about it. Other reporters went women against the strike. The South Yorkshire miners on strike at Dodsworth gave an exemplary demonstration of how to handle When the such situations. pressmen ignored the ferocity and militancy of a mass meeting of 500 striking miners and scurried around looking for women opposed to the action, the whole meeting turned on them. All the Fleet Street parasites were thrown out into the In beating up the media rather than berating their wives, the showed a positive approach to forging unity. The other job class that remains to be done is for male trade unionists to direct their anger at the trade leaders. Their divisive politics provide scope for ruling class propaganda to undermine working class propaganda By fully involving women in all forms of working class struggle and taking up the broader issues of women's oppression, workers can ensure that the militancy unleashed at Britains, Hindle's and Nigg is channelled into a fight for real freedom for the whole of the working class Richard Tench the next step, November 1983 5

Back-door repatriation Racism "THIS government is not in the business of telling people who have made their homes unwelcome" "you neIc... are "clear off": some money" (Minister for immigration Waddington, 13 October 1983) The Tory conference voted down MP Harvey Proctor's motion calling for repatriation. But in practice government policy amounts to the same thing. Thousands of black families are being confronted with an impossible choice; it works like this El the Home Office tracks down a black couple who have 'overstayed' according to the immigration rules frequently they will have lived here for many years and have British-born children whom the government is not entitled to deport • the couple are served with a deportation order and left to decide what to do with their children The Hasbudak family know all about the government's repatriation techniques.

The parents, Polat and Kebire, Britain from Turkey in 1975.

garment worker in Hackney; his wife does some home-working as a machinist. Their two children, aged seven and five, were born in • Britain. been trying to deport the parents since 1981 for Now overstaying. scheduled for expulsion on 2 November.

Immigration minister Waddington wrote to the Hasbudaks to express the nowfamiliar concern of the Tory Government to preserve the family unit. He wanted to make sure they together: 'If their two children accompany them, their it necessary BaTes Call funds." The campaign to prevent the deportof twenty-year-old widow AFIA BEGUM has gathered momentum over the past month: • fifty black women from the Sari Squad, led by the group who recently chained themselves to Home Leon Brittan's home, held a militant picket of the Tories' Blackpool conference.

•a rally was held Commons to coincide with the re-opening of Parliament, hosted by some of the 50 Labour MPs who have backed the Afia Begum campaign. Afia has been in hiding with her baby daughter Asma for over a year, since the Home Office decided that her husband's death in a Brick Lane fire was grounds ration laws. 6 the next step, November 1983 "here is David Like them, including promise police station. came to Polat is a the interests of family unity.

The Home Office has they are

WAR

were all kicked out be met trom public Sari Squad fights on Bangladeshi ortation order homes in the South East. Secretary of at the House ort to: c/o BOX 22 Afia WILL STA

SARI SQUAR

SONIA HASSAN 18-year-old Sari Squad member from Coventry: The Sari Squad is the best thing for black women to join if they want to fight for Afia Begum and against this country's racist immig- Michel and Sheila Vythelingum have been offered similar inducements to take their three children - all British citizens with them when they are deported to Mauritius on 8 November. Like the Hasbudaks, the parents are in breach of the 1971 Immigration Act for overstaying.

they have suffered years of harassment from the immigration police, short spells of imprisonment.

Their nightmare began in 1975 when they put their faith in the Labour government's of an amnesty for overstayers and presented themselves to their local The response was instantaneous - a deportation order.

The Vythelingums have lived here even longer than the Hasbudaks, since 1970.

Michel works in the garment trade and they have lived in Tottenham for years.

All this makes no difference to Waddington, who provided the Vythelingums too with a little homily on the Tories' Victorian values in a letter to their MP: I hope that the couple will feel able to take the children with them to Mauritius in But neither couple is willing to submit to the Home Office's moral blackmail.

The alternative to the choice between abandoning their children in Britain or involuntarily taking them to countries to which they have never been is to fight their deportation orders. And that is what they are doing, with a lot of backing from Both families have considerable support from teachers and parents at their children's local schools. WAR has set about translating that sympathy into action: by mounting a campaign throughout the National Union of Teachers in Londfor her deportation. She defied her dep- July by refusing to in tur up at Heathrow for a flight bound for Dacca. Ever since, the Home Office has been trying to hunt her down and has conducted raids on friends' and relatives' Home Secretary Leon Brittan recently said in a letter to Peter Shore MP that he would 'not be forced into reaching a decision...solely because of a well-orchestrated publicity campaign. Now is the time to make him eat his words!

Send donations and messages of supp-

AFIA BEGUM DEFENCE CAMPAIGN

136 KINGSLAND HIGH STREET E8

MACTIO

SAR

spearheaded by on, school in Hackney and the Downhills Tottenham, school in principle that every attempt at behind-thescenes repatriation of children fought organising demonstrations and pickets by teachers, pupils and parents at the during school hours •by demanding other support from the Labour authorities in Hackney and Haringey, and from the Greater London Council controls the Inner London Authority) We are also demanding support for these two families from the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers.

Along with the South East Region of the

TUC,

this union recently attempted a recruitment drive amongst Turkish and other immigrant workers in north and east London. Clearly such workers will only feel willing to get involved in trade union activities if they are confident that the union will back them up against the Home Office. WAR intends to drive this point home in the NUTGW. No special cases! The Hasbudaks and the Vythelingums are just two of the countless victims of the current clamp-down on black immigrants and migrants. They have had numerous made representations usually by Labour Office - all of which have been turned down. Labour politicians are discovering that they can no longer combine support for some kind of immigration controls with successful appeals for individual constituents on 'compassionate' grounds. First, Full colour video • 33 mins a VHS# £5 to hire from Phone 01-274 3951 for further details.

Family unity: the Home Office says the Vythelingums can stay together — if they all go to Mauritius William Patten the Basedo cases created must be other school staff Home Office Waddington's financial, legal and have signed (which Education widely the 'overstayed' has paved

WAR

behalf, on their MPs, to the Home done sterling economy', abiding Home tation victims.

THE CHEC

No race checks on the dole.

Join WAR's campaign to wreck the government's new scheme to harass black claimants.

Order the WAR video and invite a speaker for your trade union branch, youth club or college.

See WAR in action fighting deportations and police harassment • organising against the checks and racist attacks on building solidarity with black workers on strike.

Workers Against Racism BM WAR London WIN 3XX• WAR. Video because the Home Office feels less and less obliged to give way on individual a climate of opinion has been which makes deportations of illegals appear wholly legitimate. Second, Waddington intends to make it impossible for anyone but the deportee's own MP to make a representation in future.

infringement of MPs traditional rights has created some consternation at Westminster. Fifty members left MP Stuart Labour Holland's 'early day motion' to preserve the status quo. However, it will take more than parliamentary manoeuvres to block the government's racist ambitions. Decades of Labour Party operation and approval of immigration laws have made acceptable to deport families like the Hasbudaks and Vythelingums on grounds that they have, after all, Labour's their welcome. recognition of the right of the British state to regulate the flow of immigrants way for Waddington's the schemes for back-door repatriation.

from all welcomes support quarters for its campaigns against deportations. But we will not restrict the scope of our activities to what is acceptable to the labour bureaucracy. We will fight again and again for our policy - an end to all immigration controls. We will oppose all attempts to fight deportations on the grounds that the victim is a 'special case, We refuse to more deserving than others.

use arguments such as this person has service for the British or has been a good lawcitizen' to win the ear of the Secretary. We do not beg for compassion on behalf of black depor- We demand the labour movement fights for their rights.

ven the doll

Troops out when? The most important single issue for the United Kingdom'. This was how Labour's left greeted the discussion of Ireland at The this year's conference. ference made the same point more subtly by not discussing Ireland Tories are unanimous in their support for the military occupation of the Six Coun United in its loyalty to the British ties. state, the Conservative conference had nothing to debate. As the war in Ireland enters its fifteenth year, even the wettest the Tories that policy using supergrasses, unarmed nationalists in the street - is the only option for Britain. The Irish debates at this year's other party conferences saw the rest of the British political world trying to come to terms with the Tories' determination. WHILE THE TORY conference was silent on the Irish War, the Liberal Assembly's debate turned into a shouting match. The contrast between the two underlined the Liberals' problem of coming to terms Tory Irish policy. with the Liberals are both straight bourgeois They get their votes from parties. same people and they owe allegiance to the same class But the ruling class only needs one political party to represent it. The Tory and Liberal parties have competed for that since nineteenth the

DON BOR

The Tories established themselves as the leading force in bourgeois politics during the 1920s. Ever since, the Liberals have searched for policies which could attract support away from the Tories.

issue, coming up with a different policy to represent the same class as the Tories has been difficult for the Liberals.

the Irish War, it has proved impossible.

No party which supports the ruling class can oppose its war against the Irish. The Liberals have been unable to challenge the military Britain needs and which the Tories pursue best. The controversial motion before this year's Liberal Assembly called for the party to accept 'the principle of a united Ireland as a long-term objective', creation of an All-Ireland Council' and the phased withdrawal of British troops to be replaced by UN or EEC troops if necessary. The motion was backed by the Young Liberals, an unworldly group of under-thirties to whom the expense and bloodshed of the Irish War appear to be irrational. On their return from their summer trip to the Six Counties, Liberal delegates complained that British troops had been rude to them in the warzone of Crossmaglen. this sort of thing, have consistently lobbied governments of all persuasions to bring the British Army's boys home. Their motion to this summer's Assembly angered right-wing who condemned it as a recipe for the "Lebanonisation of treland was passed narrowly in an amended form.

The call for the withdrawal of British troops was replaced by a woolly appeal for the British and Irish governments to

EEC

police

BUY LLO

CHICS

Counties and the border. The press headline-writers proclaimed the Liberals' new commitment to eventual Irish unity to be a great breakthrough.

Liberal leader David Steel disagreed: can live with it' he observed. The Times' editorial on the resolution saw his point: "Mr Steel...remains sensibly calm about it.

It expresses not a policy but an attitude... You cannot make a policy out of Irish unification, which is not available, and a Euro peace-keeping force, which belongs to the same order of reality as the contents of a medieval bestiary.

you can with such props strike an arresting attitude.' David Steel and The Times both under- Tory con- The at all. Government's shooting The Tories and the the British capitalists. century. On any On British terror water stand that concerned is military occupation now. policy is the the six counties today enraged ment, Young problem To put a stop to the Young Liberals nothing to Liberals, The motion years ago with the Six Labour's Irish policy. But Tony Benn: the Liberals' adoption of Labour's Irish policy exposes the left's illusions 'eventual Irish unity' is a meaningless notion for the Liberal Party.

What matters as far as British strategy is the Liberals support for Liberal Irish divided into three convenient parts: unity some day, negotiations with Dublin soon, troops on the streets of Far from being new policy, Liberal leaders have noted its potential.

The policy allows Liberal activists to strike arresting attitudes' against the Governwithout endangering the party's relationship with the British state. It goes some way towards resolving the Liberals' of how to differentiate themselves from the Tories and still support British imperialism in Ireland.

It will do assist the nationalist community of the Six Counties.

Lib-Lab Pact Two All of this sounds vaguely familiar.

the Labour Party was faced a similar problem of distancing its politics on Ireland from the Government's. Labour's response was to produce precisely the same policy fudge.

The 1981 Labour conference took place after 10 Irish hunger-strikers had died in the H-Blocks. The Labour Party had attracted some scathing criticism for its unquestioning support of the Government while the Tories murdered the 10 republicans.

The conference demanded a change in It voted for the three-stage plan which the Liberals have recently adopted: unification somewhere over the rainbow, talks with Irish parties in the medium term and military rule from London in the present.

The change in Labour's Irish policy.

has had no effect on its attitude to the war. The party's continued commitment to. Direct Rule 'for now' has enabled Labour leaders to avoid any embarrassing confrontations with the state. At the same time, the broke the bipartisan front between the Tory and Labour parties which had lasted through 12 years of war. back British repression in the Six Counties while pointing out its substantial policy differences with the Tories.

The Labour pressing need than the Liberals to differentiate itself from the Government on Ireland. Unlike the Tories or Liberals, Labour is not seen as a straightforward representative of the ruling class.

Labour Party shares its opponents' loyalty to the British state. respond to pressure from workers who identify Labour as the party of their class.

Labour's historical role in Britain's oppression of Ireland has been to shift its stance when necessary to contain working class discontent and frustration. None of these policy changes Labour's resolution to interests in Ireland. at the 1981 conference is intended to distance Labour from bipartisanship to satisfy its labour movement critics, while allowing the state without working class interference.

Labour's Irish policy credibility problem. sent the troops into Ireland in which 1969 and introduced the policy of 'criminalisation' in the mid 'seventies, Labour's ability to pose as a friend of Irish freedom In addition the three-stage is limited. policy is too transparent a cover to hide Labour's unchanged attitude to the reality of the Irish War. moved in to rescue the leadership.

left acclaimed the commitment to eventual Irish unity as a great step forward.

Left-wing Labour Party activists have enthusiastically paraded Labour's Irish policy through the official labour movement.

somewhat War. left has made. two years. clear through always not even The Irish 1981. 'unity" clause formally since Labour could Labour's -vague Partition. bureaucracy Party had a far more strength. British The supporters on But it also has to efforts. cals opposition. policy. weakened has British The policy adopted follow him. to pursue its war isolation. • has a serious As the government jectives. unification. The Labour left has today, not wasting The Ireland The left admits that Labour Party policy may not yet be perfect. But it always pleads that a start has been made?, has begun, 'attitudes are changing, ' a debate has been opened up.

It is solely due to the activities of the left over the past two years that the party has its sordid record redeemed among workers concerned about the Irish The here and now The events around this year's party conferences showed just how small a start the The reaction of Liberal Party leaders and the bourgeois press to the change in Liberal policy is instructive.

The commitment to eventual reunification has been the keystone of the Labourleft's enthusiasm for party policy over the past Yet a reactionary politician like David Steel could dismiss it as irrelevant, while The Times editor made it that future Irish unity was not available'. As the Liberals, the party of Partition, moved to adopt Labour's radical policy, the left's much-vaunted breakwas revealed for what it had been: a cover behind which Labour could continue to support the Counties. The occupation of the Six ruling class understands that plans for uniting Ireland at some future stage are What worth arguing about. matters for the state is the war being fought in Derry and Belfast today.

So long as the Liberals and, more importantly, the Labour Party support the army in Ireland now, the ruling class is content.

For the last two years Labour's new Irish policy has not prevented it from endorsing more British terror in the Six Counties.

The Labour left has little to say about the victims of RUC/army shoot-to-kill squads or corrupted informers. Its gaze is fixed beyond the horizon, on the crock of gold that is 'eventual Irish reunification'.

discussion at this year's Labour conference closed the debate which the left claims to have opened up Tony Benn made only one speech in Brighton. He proposed a motion which sought to make firmer ending references to The Labour and trade union would have none of it From the bureaucrats' point of view, the lack of clarity in Labour's policy is its It allows them to present it as all things to all men and to avoid any enibarrassingly precise commitments to withdrawal. The block votes defeated Benn's motion decisively. Benn's the left applauded his But former Northern Ireland minister and H-Block builder Don Concannon showed up the limits of the radi- As Concannon pointed out, Benn had chaired the Home Policy Group which drafted the present Labour Benn had not opposed it then, so why was he doing so now? The constituency delegates barracked Concannon, but they had no answer to his arguments.

Benn's apparent change of heart summed up the approach of the left-wingers who They are capable of rhetorical flourishes from their present political But practical opposition to the Labour Party's support for Britain's war is beyond the scope of their limited ob- The Liberal and Labour leaders are at home with vague notions of eventual re- The left has accommodated to their timescale and refused to confront the British state. Workers' interests lie with defeating our own ruling class time in debating the possibility of a future negotiated settlement. The only coherent alternative to Tory policy is to fight for a working class alternative: the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland.

Mick Hume the next step, November 1983 7

Labour movement AFTER FIVE YEARS of negotiations, workers in children's and old people's homes have resorted to industrial action in a bid to win better pay and a reduction in their standard 60-hour week.

have faced major obstacles: the intransigence of their council employers, and their union leaders' steadfast refusal to give them full backing. problem has been Labour councils which use rhetonc felt-wing workers' militancy. Residential social workers are employed by councils which national wage claims through the National Council. Joint About residential workers are organised in the local government union NALGO.

the employers refused to concede the workers' demands for a 35-hour week and increased pay for working shifts, weekends and public holidays, NALGO gave official backing to a ban on overtime and new admissions to homes. suspending workers, industrial spread and intensified. Selective action Caught in a dispute which they have given anything to avoid, the NALGO bureaucrats have done it. It was left to Contal NALGO's from Local Committee aspiring bureaucrat Dennis Reed - to run the dispute.

'national guidelines' designed to restrict the workers to a minimal level of action.

At a 250-strong national delegate conference on 11 October the bureaucrats sidestepped calls for an national escalation of the action and a ballot for an all-out strike. They favoured selective action organised at a local level.

Militant supporters put the case for the bureaucracy in a leaflet arguing that 'an all-out strike of all residential workers would risk losing the support of much of the rest of the labour movement, because of the suffering it would cause, and such a move would give the Tories and their press the opportunity pour out vile propaganda against the residential workers'. Militant's argument is nothing more than an apology for the NALGO bureaucracy. It is true that the media will try to undermine a residential workers strike by exposing individual cases of hardship and accusing the workers of endangering the lives of children and old people in their But the answer is not to give in to care. press hysteria and let the bureaucrats off the hook. Social service workers have to

LACESS

NALGO workers in other departments of local government have the bring any borough to a standstill. They need persuaded to come out in to be This was how 2500 council solidarity. workers in Haringey prevented the victimisation of one of their colleagues - by all-out action. The NALGO bureaucrats are desperate to keep control of the militants.

justify their reluctance to ballot the mem- 8 the next step, November 1983 workers They more But the biggest negotiate to media scaremongering. 75 percent of When attempt to with persist demoralising tactics. In fact, right-wing When councils started action Labour councils would Lung used their influence their utmost to officer Government their advantage. Reed drew up which immediate lavour and nence ments in an anti-Tory guise.

At first, local agreements. have some activists in key boroughs.

"on a plate", to in Camden. reaucrats. win. capacity to ships, patterns of collaboration.

They nolge

OFFICIAL

DICKET

Lambeth social workers picket 'the council that cares: left Labour councils have proved NALGO's biggest obstacle The road to compromise bership on the question of industrial action with the argument that the more backward win a majority against strike action and thus isolate the militants.

At least with selective action, they argue, it is possible to carry support from the militant sectors. What terrifies them is that their members might go too far and bring Norman Tebbit's anti-union legislation down upon their heads.

But selective strikes by the militant social services sections inevitably lead to isolated action and leave the strikers open It would be far better to involve the more passive union members in a debate over strike action in the course of a ballot, than to make no broaden struggle and ine ineffective and ultimately Sham socialists workers are not the major problem, as the bureaucrats argue.

A much more serious problem is Labour's influence on militant workers.

From the start of the residential workers' dispute attempted to distance themselves from the Tories' hardline pos- Left-wing Labour councillors with NALGO officials and activists in an attempt to win local agreements which would work to In London, the newly formed Association of London Authorities, comprising 10 Labour boroughs, the GLC and ILEA, said it would make an offer embarrass the national employers into following suit.

In reality it wanted to resolve the dispute in its own presented local agreemilitant

NALGO

SeVeTa branches were prepared to go along with the Labour left strategy and hammer out This reflected the influence of radical left organisations which supporters

NALGO

For example, in London the Socialist Workers' Party is active in Lambeth and a combination of Militant and the SWP has some influence These groups often have close links with the local Labour Party and tend to make concessions to left-wing Labour councillors and the NALGO bu- In Hackney, RCP supporters argued strongly against acceptance of a London or local deal as a divisive compromise. Other branches followed Hackney's lead and rejected Labour's offers.

Working together The influence of the radical left on union militants, however, has been an important factor in the ability of left-wing councils to win acceptance of their policies from the workforce. Through an intricate local network of personal and political relation- Labour councillors, NALGO bureaucrats and radical left rank and file activists have built up well-established Hackney Council, for example, recently appointed former Labour group chairman nalgo

OFFICIAL,

PICKET

Richard Shields to oversee the council's decentralisation plans. up the workplace Labour Party branch, became a NALGO steward and proceeded to argue that workers should support the council's schemes to transfer administration of housing and other services from Town Hall to area offices.

the means asking workers to accept plans to working and pay in the name of efficiency and service to the community.

branches resisted these nave Labour has sought negotiated local agree- It has found it much easier than ments. Tory councils to win acceptance for such agreements because of the influence it exercises in the unions that organise the council workforce. The role of left-wing groups has been to win acceptance for the arguments of the local bureaucracy and file militants. Socialist Workers' Party past, and supporters in Hackney and Lambeth been have involved in local agreements on ities, new technology, grievance procedure and health and safety.

While they now reject the consequences of these deals, they cannot escape responsibility for having helped to implement them in the first place. Into battle Following the revolt on local agreements led by Hackney NALGO in the residential workers' dispute, began to show their true colours.

workers closed down 14 homes in Lambeth, left-wing council leader Ted Knight challenged workers in other homes to walk out and leave homes unattended The did walk workers brought the children along to the counci meeting in Lambeth Town Hall and left them with the council that cares.

Hackney the radical new social services Gordon Peters threatened to discipline workers who left homes un- Following Kent, attended. fostering extending closing four children's Hackney social services chairman Patrick Kodikara announced council meeting that homes closed because of the dispute would be shut down for good. Lambeth, Haringey made similar threats. Permanent closures would fit in well with their reorganisation' and 'decentralisation' plans - cuts by longer names. To win their dispute, workers need to fight hard for an all-out strike. They must reject the arguments of the bureaucrats which backwardness for their own failings, and mobilise solidarity action in other sectors.

Most importantly, they need to expose the hypocrisy of the left Labour councils.

Victory requires a direct challenge to the Labour Party and its apologists at every level of the NALGO machine.

Shields helped set This conditions union leaders. When union reinstatement tor measures NALGO leadership. amongst rank For example, in the

BECADEN

conditions services negotiating decided to equal opportun disciplinary and child to a and two breaking his contract. the Labour councils When but out they In director of Islington is and service homes. the October reaucracy. Brent, Islington and strike with residential strike. blame workers' council tried injunction. strike's success; grind to a halt. Joan Phillips junction. son told conference. stricter work discipline.

clause. Whatever the Aknife in the back THE TWO MONTH STRIKE by NALGO workers in Kent County Council's social services department is a stark example of what union solidarity means to our trade The bitter struggle to win sacked shop steward John Kirkpatrick, in the face of a concerted attempt to smash union organisation, has received virtually no support from the The cause of the dispute is the breakdown of local negotiations over pay and service conditions in July and the council's attempt to replace residential homes with Family Support Centres. The new centres are part of the council's drive to push through redundancies and change working by reorganising its social When NALGO department. boycott admissions to the family centres to support the pay claim, the council threatened dismissals.

On 3 August, NALGO steward and leading negotiator in the dispute John Kirkpatrick was instructed to transport a family centre. John refused sacked for hours later At a mass meeting of 500 the next day, NALGO members from the social services department voted overwhelmingly to take strike action.

Victimised: shop steward John Kirkpatrick Despite a strong will to win, the strike has been undermined by the NALGO bu- The union executive gave its official blessing and then made no attempt to call out Kent NALGO or to link up the involving other disputes NALGO members nationally - it has consistently rejected the call for a national When the strikers picketed the council's central supplies depot at West Malling the unsuccessfully to get an The depot is the key to the if the depot workers came out the work of the council would NALGO proved how much importance it attached to this by balloting its members there who cross the picket line every day - rather than instructing them to come out.

TGWU officials have told their members to cross the NALGO picket line because it is a The strikers are not moving from the depot and are challenging the NEC to support defiance of any in- As leading militant Colin Harrius, 'there is a tremendous resistance by NALGO to take on Tebbit despite militant motions passed at annual The union's inaction has led to half the original number of strikers returning to work. Management has taken advantage of the strike to reorganise jobs and impose Those returning to work have been forced to sign new contracts containing a 'normal working effectively industrial banning To win, the Kent workers need to take complete control of the strike and get backing from workers in other sections.

outcome of the dispute, they have fought hard to win and as Colin Harrison put it, they are determined that the experience will not be wasted.

Save jobs not Labour NEIL KINNOCK DECLARED at the Labour Party conference in October that the call to defend our NHS' must become the rallying cry of the labour movement.

Kinnock has chosen the Tory attack on the welfare state as the popular issue through which to win back the lost millions of Labour voters. The Labour Partycontrolled campaign to prevent the closure of Thornton View hospital in Bradford shows this strategy in action.

Thornton View - known as Thornton Bastille to locals who have been around long enough to remember it as Clayton Workhouse in the 1920s is an 82-bed geriatric hospital. To cut costs, Bradford District Health Authority has decided to close it down together with the 23-bed pre-convalescent Shipley hospital. early August the workers at Thornton View occupied the hospital to prevent its closure and the loss of 100 jobs. Local RCP supporters have conducted a vigorous debate with Bradford Labour Party over the course of action required to win.

The 'patriotism of efficiency' Labour has failed to fight in the past. In the present, its approach to defending the

NHS

undermining the IS strugge Thornton View. The Labour Party accepts that the NHS must be made more efficient and that the 'community' must shoulder some of the burden of caring for the sick.

Labour leader Neil Kinnock's 'patriotism of efficiency is not much different in Tory practice from minister Norman Fowler's brand of economic rigour. In Bradford, Labour councillors insisted that the District Health Authority produce a list of cost and efficiency savings as an alternative to closing Thornton View and Shipley hospitals. Labour-controlled Bradford Community Health Council argued that the DHA had been lazy and had made insufficient attempts to achieve efficiency savings. Labour's advocacy of community care means that it is incapable of standing up to the Tories cost-cutting measures. The Tories justify closures and manpower cuts by arguing that the elderly will be better looked after in their own homes. Bradford Labour Party's 'care in the community' campaign merely echoes the Tories.

As Labour councillor Barry Thorne put it: I prefer that old people should be taken out of institutions and cared for at home by their loved ones and friends. Having accepted that the burden of caring for the elderly would be better carried by the 'community' than by the state, Labour cannot argue effectively against the closures. As the DHA stated, the closure of Thornton View was 'not only entirely consistent with the "care in the community" initiative but an essential feature of it'. Say no to Labour To boost its electoral appeal, the Labour Party has limited its campaign to make it acceptable to middle class people.

The campaign has received extensive backing from local doctors and health workers, patients and relatives. But Labour's notion of a broad-based campaign does not extend to workers in other hospitals and industries. The NS union bureaucrats have been happy to keep their heads down and let the Labour Party run the show, from because it exempts them mobilising solidarity action from other workers and unions. bureaucrats reality, labour conception ot a broad campaign imposes limits on the fight to stop the closure.

The separation of the staff occupation committee from the supporters' occupation committee is the mechanism through which Labour keeps control. The staff deals with the more committee mundane matters of keeping the hospital running, while the supporters' committee organises the picketing and campaigning.

Three months into the occupation, the workers need to do three things to win.

First, they must be clear what they are fighting for. The Labour Party says they are fighting for 'our NHS'. But the NHS has never been 'ours' - something which we have a responsibility to make more efficient. Working class people suffer at the hands of the NHS every day because the bosses have always run it on the cheap. The 'efficiency" of their NHS has nothing to do with the maintenance of our jobs or even with patients' interests.

The working class has no interest defending the principle of a health service which provides its employees with meagre livelihood and its patients with a third-rate service. Health workers must fight for jobs and services in the NHS, not because it is 'ours', but because we need them. Second, the workers need to step up the action. This requires joint meetings of workers and supporters and active participation by all workers. Local full-time RCN officer Dennis Sunderland instructed his members - qualified nurses - to have nothing to do with the occupation. Sixteen nurses are on temporary contracts which will end with the hospital's closure. This has been used by the union officials as an argument against the nurses involvement.

Workers at Thornton View must reject this conservative approach and fight to guarantee them full-time jobs. The workers need immediate solidarity strike action from other NHS workers and from other unions. The workers cannot rely on their union leaders - they must go out and argue for strike action themselves.

Finally, the workers must make practical plans for resisting eviction - using force if necessary. This is anathema to the Labour Party which has argued against the sort of militant tactics necessary to win the dispute. In its concern to preserve the respectable 'reputation' and "image' of the occupation, the Labour Party has fostered a climate of conservatism among the workers at Thornton View. Its insistence on respect for the rule of law has defused the militancy of many and created an atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty. By occupying the hospital the workers at Thornton View have already broken the law. It would be naive to imagine that they resist eviction without using Call force. In 1978 the occupation at Bethnal Green Hospital in tast was defeated because workers put their faith in Labour before their own interests. We must make sure that the Thornton View occupation succeeds - by throwing out Labour's compromises. Grant French Campaigning against NHS cuts Building the party: Labour left MP Jeremy Corbyn and COHSE official Syed Boukhari appeal to NHS workers to support Labour We want action! According to Tory health minister Kenneth Clarke, to use the word 'cuts' to describe what is happening in the NHS would be 'a misuse of the English language'. Clarke prefers the more innocuous *restriction in growth' to describe the Tories' assault on the NHS. But Clarke's exercise in semantics has not impressed workers at the Whittington Hospital in North London. The reality of the Tories" 'restrictions in growth' is the loss of 45 jobs if the planned closure of the hospital's Highgate wing goes through.

The campaign to stop the closure began at a public meeting on 11 October.

Syed Boukhari, COHSE branch secretary at the Whittington, stressed the lack of "consultation', complained that the "timing of the closure was bad", and proposed a letter-writing campaign to the District Health Authority. Labour left MP Jeremy Corbyn called for a democratically-elected DHA. Michael Meacher demanded greater efficiency. None of them told the workers how they could fight back.

Sixty angry canteen workers turned up to the next meeting, two days later, and attacked Boukhari for his Syed action. When an RCP supporter suggested

SOUL

OU

FROM

JUNIUS

The NHS is not 'ours: NALGO's commitment to defending 'our' NHS - its calls for sacrifices and efficiency — undermines the fight for jobs last world crisis of the capitalist system.

services in the 'thirties and 'forties.

repeat the same mistakes again.

Publications Ltd, payable to Junius Publications.

Labour movement occupying the DHA offices, Boukhari ignored her. He nearly had a seizure when 15 workers supported the idea. He quickly changed the subject. A meeting of domestic staff, porters and nurses on 18 October agreed to a four-point programme: • No cuts, no redundancies, no decline ah serices • A dining room work-in • An action committee of workers and supporters • A lobby of the December DHA meeting Boukhari argued for efficiency talks with the management but this was opposed by RCP supporters and then by the majority of workers. We also won agree.

ment for non-cooperation with manage- Our ment on changes in work practices.

direct action strategy won a small victory management decided against closing the Highgate wing dining room.

Health workers are rapidly discovering that they cannot rely on their officials to fight at the Whittington. With them we all and will continue to oppose cuts redundancies, and to defend jobs and The Depression, the war and the working class Slump socialism Fight to save your NHS inalgo The recession of the 'eighties is the deepest shock to British society for half a century. Slump socialism looks back from 'the second slump' at the experience of the labour movement in the The mistaken notion that the agencies of the welfare state are the property of the working class today weakens trade union campaigns against cuts in the NHS and local government.

This state socialist identification of the capitalist state as a progressive force gained influence in the labour movement in response to the extensive government intervention in industry and Slump socialism is a collection of articles from the next step on the class struggle in the inter-war period and during the Second World War. It shows how British capitalism's welfare state was built on the backs of a defeated working class. Our aim is to make sure we don't Order your copy now! Send 50 pence plus 20 pence p&p to Junius BCM JP Ltd, London WCIN 3XX. Make cheques the next step, November 1983 9

Union protest against the 'piratisation' of BT: the POEU pirates would be more effective disrupting exchanges rather than parading at seaside conferences Labour movement THE LEADERS OF THE Post Office Engineering Union have claimed October's High Court decision to reject Mercury Communications junction against the union as a victory.

The High Court ruled that disruption by post office engineers over the linking of the private enterprise telecommunications company to the British Telecom system was a genuine industrial dispute over job losses, not an illegal, politically-motivated strike. But the POU's victory empty The union's one. leadership had already lifted action and ordered its members to return to work at the first threat of an injunction. The real significance of the High Court ruling is that it will encourage the POEU in its disastrous strategy of looking to the state to safeguard jobs.

After the June General Election the Tory Government reintroduced its Bill to sell off British Telecom to the sector. Up to 100 000 jobs are likely to be lost if privatisation goes through. The

POEU

with 132 000 members, biggest union in the six-union Telecom Union Committee sporadic industrial action against Government's privatisation moves. Some members have implemented a work-torule. Others have been blacking work involving the connection Mercury system to the British Telecom The POEU's campaign is defined by its narrow political approach to fighting privatisation. The emphasis is not on defending jobs but on defending British Telecom as a state-owned enterprise. The bureaucrats argue that one reason Tories are hell-bent on privatisation is because it is electorally popular.

image of the public service is not good, therefore one of the prime objectives of this coordinated campaign restore belief in public service, not private profit!' (POEU Journal, October).

Appealing to the public To further this Telecom Union Committee has gone on the offensive. It is spending £500 000 on leaflets, a pamphlet, and a TUC-led campaign against privatisation to re-educate the public as to the benefits of our public services' (POEU Journal, August).

The POEU has reduced the fight for jobs to a public appeal to save British Telecom as a cheaper, more efficient state enterprise. The current national pricing policy, based on equal provision of services at a standard price, will end with the sell-off to private Competition will lead to price reductions in the more profitable sectors but price rises for domestic users. Like every bureaucrat in the public and private 10 the next step, November 1983 members. application for an in- They is an Broad Left blacking fronting the bosses by communications systems. The private in the the British defeat. - has staged the SO of the private blacked by the union. The bureaucrats use why the "The ance those must be to members levy on its members. objective, the British strike action against bureaucrats argue that failure to own Make Buzby walk the plank sector, the POEU leaders put the defence of the service before the interests of their The bureaucrats have put much more energy into their publicity campaign than organising effective action. strike Telecom's have adopted British 'Buzby' as their mascot, dressed it up in a Union Jack and dressed themselves up as pirates to win public sympathy against privatisation. But trying to persuade the state to adopt a different approach to exploiting the working class is no way to win a strike. The crew of POEU pirates which navigated its way to every single party conference to appeal for clemency would have been better employed conwrecking their bureaucrats' political narrow approach to fighting privatisation is reflected in its strategy of selective action.

Only a small number of POEU members more militant London branches have been involved in strike action. This strategy is leading the POE to certain Not only is it ineffective, it has also left the most militant sections isolated and vulnerable to attack. Of the 2000 or more than members taking action, 1500 have been suspended. British Telecom has now issued dismissal notices to more than 20 workers from the London area who have twice refused to do work Conceding defeat

TWO

justify their strategy of selective action.

First, they argue that it achieves maximum impact by withdrawing key groups of workers without hitting the domestic customer. It also means that the majority who take no part in the dispute can finmembers on strike. Already, the strain of paying out the normal takehome pay of £250000 a week to its 2000 suspended strike has forced the union to reimpose a £l-a-week The second argument the bureaucrats use is that a call for an all-out national would be defeated by the large conservative minority within the union.

At least with selective action, they argue, the militants can sustain the dispute.

At a conference at Wembley in September, 80 824 voted for industrial action, but 48 713 voted against. About 2000 members resigned after last year's day of privatisation. Another 3000 are still being disciplined for ignoring it. The bureaucrats use the backwardness of their members to excuse their fight. They impose a financial levy as an alternative to giving a political lead. The point is that workers who want to fight will lose through selec- Overshadowed: the bosses bosses" flag hangs over the POEU They tive action anyway. interest in convincing the minority that a national stoppage is the only way to win Whatever bureaucrats 'victory' about the ruling, British Telecom knows that it has already got the POEU on the run.

the Broad Left to the far right, the bureaucrats have accepted that privatisation is unstoppable. As the Financial Times put it: The action is thus implicitly seen as a marker for the future. said: "We are showing the shareholders and the management of a newly-privatised BT that we are not some tame house union"" But while there may be a future for the bureaucrats in a new, rationalised telecommunications service, there certainly will not be for the thousands of workers whose jobs are threatened.

British Telecom who want to defend their jobs need to do two things have to argue for all-out strike action.

But first they have to get rid of their bosses mascot, and the politics it represents taking immediate completion in 1984. committee approached The council put electrification for jobs. Electrify tisation schemes. ment in share of these markets. their expense, ment bureaucrats. mascot in the capable of market railway workers. have every In what conservative 'Some may say sume that of the High Court From ahead went As one senior official Workers in Sheffield Weekly They will participating gramme Joan Phillips trolleybus. from the ashes. certainly al une tices. trolleybus Electrify for disaster SEVEN HUNDRED WORKERS at the General Electric Company's Traction plant in Sheffield learned in early October that GEC was planning to close the factory with the loss of 600 jobs.

Instead of action to fight the closure, the union bureaucrats and the Labour council have been seeking ways to keep the bosses in business.

Until last year, business was good at the GEC empire's Sheffield But outpost. increased turnover and high export sales hid a real weakness. The plant is depen dent on a single order of 1072 motors for the Seoul metro in South Korea, due for This dire state of affairs precipitated a number of liaisons between the unions and the Labour Party.

The Sheffield GEC Traction shopstewards' Sheffield City Council's employment department to co.

ordinate discussions between the NUR, ASLEF and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU).

the case for railway in its pamphlet Electrify jobs for counterposes strategy of investment in electrification to the Government's cutbacks and priva- It argues that the next 10 years will see a 14000 route-miles world expansion of electrification. Invest- Rail, it argues, British would increase Britain's prospects of grabbing a But even if British capital did invest in electrification, it would be done not for the benefit of railway workers, but at GEC chairman Neither Arnold Weinstock nor the Tory Governthe Labour need advice from They know that to electrify the rail network and build a home industry competing on the world demands attacks on massive is virtually an afterword Electrify outstanding All the offifor jobs acknowledges this.

cial reports supporting electrification prewill entail productivity it increases via job losses and changing work patterns on the railways.

The experience of workers on the section of the Sheffield.

London main line between Bedford and St. Pancras confirms this Electrification introducing one man by operated trains and cutting staffing levels.

Whether electrification goes ahead or not, the Labour and union leaders' campaign can only undermine the fight for jobs.

Accepting the labour bureaucrats alternative schemes spells disaster for workers Sheffield GEC Traction. Although they voted overwhelmingly to oppose the closure at a mass meeting on 5 October, they have been led up a blind alley by the Labour council and their union officials.

Eight days after the closure announcement, Gazette revealed that Yorkshire County Council is in a £500 000 GEC pro- British to develop a modern Chairman of the county passenger transport committee Alex Waugh announced: If this experiment is success ful, we might see GEC rise like Phoenix The trolleybus scheme may mean salvation for the bureaucrats in the railway unions and the council, but Sheffield won't redeem workers from the threat of redundancy.

It may be the case that GEC wants to keep its finger in the electrification pie same time as pushing through rationalisations and changes in work prac- GEC and the council may now try to present the trolleybus scheme as a progressive alternative to closure.

The problem for GEC workers is that the project is likely to only a third of the present workforce.

The alternative to redundancies is not the bureaucrats' rationalisation schemes vamped up as job-savers, but a concerted fight to stop the closure of the Traction plant and defend every job Stan Mason

The bureaucracy's left arm OVER THE SUMMER the newspapers of the British left celebrated the election victories of Broad Left caucuses in two major unions, the post office engineers and the railway workers. In a number of white-collar public service NALGO, NUPE and COHSE - Broad Left significant factions claimed However the left's factional triumphs, in winning a majority on the POEU executive or electing Jimmy Knapp leader of the NUR, reflect no general swing to the lett in the unions. The Broad Left's successes result from the redefinition of the meaning of left' in the unions. lation is simply a sign of its shift to the right. The 'new' Broad Left is different from the Broad Left of old (see box).

forces have converged to push the Broad Left to the fore in a number of public sector unions. Left-wingers in the Labour Party have attempted to strengthen their position at party conference by getting the backing of union block votes.

same time, officials of trade in nationalised industries and public services have sought to defend themselves against cuts by advocating militant action to preserve the existing forms of state intervention in the economy.

Rotten BLOC The rise ot the from the left campaigns inside the Labour Party after the 1979 General defeat. Left caucuses had existed in some unions before, but the left's campaigns - for mandatory reselection, an electoral college, conference control of the manifesto and Benn for deputy impetus to radical activity in the unions.

Benn's defeat only added to the momen- It brought home forcefully to the carriers of the left's conference pocket calculators that to get their way at Blackpool or Brighton they needed union block

VOLUS.

The formation of the Broad Left Organising Committee after the setbacks to the left at the 1982 Conference indicated a more concerted approach to lobbying in At a conference earlier this the unions. year, BLOC defended the block vote system and drew up a 13-point programme to make it more accountable to the Broad The programme is a list of proposals Left. to wrest control of the conference-determining coupons from general secretaries - and transter them to For the Broad Left, democthe activists. all power racy means LO bureaucrats who dominate union conferences and delegations - arenas where the Broad Left is strongest, The left's middle little access to the traditional heavy metal They concentrated their efforts

THORS

on the more easily influenced public ser- Some unions in which the vice unions. Labour left already had members, such as the CPSA and NALGO, were not affiliated to the Labour Party. The left, always prepared to take a long-term devoted its energies to winning backing for affiliation of these unions to Labour.

It also tried to rally support for Labour in the unions using the party's softer issues, notably nuclear disarmament.

Labour's General Election defeat and the subsequent leadership struggle helped to consolidate the developing relationship between the Broad Lefts in the unions and the soft left around Neil Kinnock and the Labour Coordinating Every union with a Broad Left leadership ended up backing the bureaucrats' dream ticket Kinnock and Hattersley. hard left's candidate for leadership - Eric Heffer, was always an outsider, but Michael Meacher expected to do better in the unions. In the event, only a handful of smaller industrial unions, often with a unions advances. The left's jubi- Two At the coal industry unions to cates a thumb of the bureaucracy.

Broad Lefts. new Broad Left dates Broad Left successful strike Election line. - gave a new sector. Scargill's pit closures. militant the hands of the the junior class activists had members Manchester view, tion by the AUEW. influence bureaucracy. Committee. touch with The rank and file. Scargill: militant spokesman for the British substantial Stalinist faction, backed him.

The capitulation of the new Broad Left Kinnock's pragmatic leadership indimovement securely under the Arthur Scargill makes a personal and a political link between the old and new Scargill was involved in the movement that organised the of the early But Scargill's rise to power in the NUM owes more to his fervent advocacy of the case for the British coal industry than to his prowess on the picket In the eyes of many miners, Scargill's most telling criticism of the Gormley years was that the old leadership had not pushed hard enough for subsidies and new investment in the declining British mining From Barnsley to Buzby viable commitment to British coal industry has led to the NUM's close collaboration in rationalisations and Even when Scargill launches industrial action it is always justified as a defence of the National Coal This is how he announced the NUM's token action in protest against a diminutive wage offer in late October: Left bows out It is ironic that as the new Broad Left rises in the public sector, the surviving of the Broad Left in the engineering industry are being threatened with victimisathe right-wing leadership of The Broad Left organisations of the 'sixties were launched by the Communist Party in an attempt to broaden its within trade They became influential among the engineering workers, the transport and general workers and the miners. In these unions the Communist Party's ambition to serve the bureaucracy corresponded with the national union leaderships' concern to keep in increasingly militant an The Broad Lefts flourished in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies, leading resistance to incomes policies and antitrade union legislation. They articu- The Broad Lefts Knapp: more committed to British Rail than to NUR jobs The decision to impose a total overtime ban is only the first step in our campaign to save our industry, our jobs and get a standard of living at least equal to what we enjoyed in 1976.* For the Broad Left in all unions the order is the same: our industry' interests second. The replacement of Sidney by Jimmy Knapp as leader of the NUR delighted the Labour left.

cutive promptly voted to support CND and Neil Kinnock - and to campaign for and electrification British Rail. Against Knapp's advice the new executive voted to boycott further . talks on productivity with BR bosses. But it concurred with his appeal to give the leadership "flexibility' by agreeing to the continuation existing It also obliged BR managenegotiations. ment by accepting a wage rise of 4.5 per cent without a murmur. Broad Left has done nothing to oppose massive job losses in BR's engineering workshops. rail employers are preparing 1 ne another round of major job cuts.

1975 and 1983 they got rid of 55 000 jobs; they expect to chop another 25 900 in the next five years. on his knees in prayer: The old Broad lated the traditional attachment of British manufacturing bargaining methods unrestricted by government interference.

In key unions their electoral machines succeeded in pushing former representatives of the militant shop stewards into national office - Jack Jones in the TGWU and Hugh Scanlon in the

AUEW.

After 1974, the combined impact of the recession and Labour's Social Contract destroyed the Left. Its adherence to free collective bargaining - the business unionism of the boom - provided no answers to the problems of mass unemployment and rampant inflation. Labour's succumbed sacrifices in the national interest, and the movement crumbled. leads the campaign for higher old age pensions. while Scanlon sits in House of Lords. moral responsiolty, reasonable conditions.' No profits. all his nationalisation

NUR.

executive because vatisation. right had achieved. Colin ference. first, our Weighell The new exeinvestment in the bureaucracy. job-cutting at the The NUR's Between Knapp is already ration. efficiency neglected machinery the civil cautionary unions. leadership workers months later. Oxford, factions old Broad politics. Jones and Scanlon for appeals Jones now that gets a hammering. lies in have influence. Labour movement 'As a nationalised industry, railways have a if nothing else, to pay rates of pay and provide decent capitalist enterprise has any moral responsibility when it comes to making Knapp's illusion, one common to Broad Left comrades, that 1S suspends the harsh imperatives of the law of value.

The newly-elected Broad Left leaders in the POEU are following in the footsteps of their colleagues in the NUM and the The Broad Left won control of the many members were dissatisfied with the feeble resistance put up by the old guard to the introduction of new technology and the threat of pri- The Broad Left promised to put up a better defence of BT than the Broad Left leader Talbot explained that 'a large section of the members did not see it as left versus right' at the decisive June con- Rather is was 'that the union had not been doing anything for a year on the major issues affecting us and now see something will be done'. As we report opposite, the Broad Left may have done more, but its political strategy is no more effective in mobilising the membership or fighting the Government. White-collar lefts Broad Lefts are proliferating in the public service unions. This summer's conference season has stimulated left caucuses in COHSE, NUPE and NALGO. In the past, Broad Lefts began among rank and file activists and were later incorporated by But these newer Broad Lefts are virtually extensions of the union The NALGO machines from the start. Broad Left is a good example.

Following a successful fringe meeting conference, the union's ul NALGO left called a conference on priva- The tisation in Leeds in September.

opening address came from the union's former president Peter Holt.

Most of the 300 people present were senior stewards, branch secretaries or full-time officials The key themes of the conference were the defence of state ownership against privatisation, and the preservation of the structures of union/management collabo- Delegates upheld the principle of in local government as an appropriate concern of trade unionists They condemned the Tories' three per cent pay offer on the grounds that it the negotiating proper The experience of the Broad Left in servants' union PSA 1S d • tale for other public service Elected to power under the of Militant supporter Kevin Roddy in May 1982, the left was ousted in a dramatic swing to the right only 12 The Broad Left executive presided over stagnating pay, and sold out important struggles in Birmingham and The left's betrayals led to increased demoralisation in the union and paved the way for the current right-wing leadership of Alistair Graham.

Now the Broad Left is regrouping in several warring with the same old - mostly As long as left-wingers in public service unions subordinate their campaigns to the demands of the Labour Party and restrict their defence of workers' interests to the requirements of the public services, the setbacks will continue. And unfortunately it won't be just the Broad Left The way forward challenging the politics of the Broad Left in every union where they Helen Swift the next step, November 1983 11

right to fight leaders. the Tory attack. TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE of the fears created by mass unemployment, the Government has implemented a series of measures to curb trade union activity.

time the Tories have pressed on with plans to sell off state enterprises in which trade unions are well organised, and have encouraged firms to set up in areas like East Anglia and the South West, where trade unions are weakly established. The success of the Tories' anti-trade union propaganda has put the TUC on the defensive. It has retreated from every vance and is now preparing to change the arrangements for levying the political funds which the through support Labour Party. Only 39 percent of trade unionists voted Labour in the June General Election.

before any Tory-imposed ballot, a majority of members of five major unions - the print unions SOGAT and NGA, television union ACTT, and ASTMS and COHSE out of paying the political levy to Labour.

Even in some nominally lett-wing, smaller unions - the white-collar engineers in TASS, the firemen, the furniture workers, tobacco workers, the building workers and the cinema union NATTKE - large proportions contract out. While many members of these unions vote Tory or SDP, their leaders support CND and the left election tickets at A recent MORI Labour Party conterences.

poll suggested that if ballots were held today, only the miners and NUPE would vote to retain links with the Labour Party.

? labour bureaucracy has become aloof and • out of touch with rank and file union members. Strength in numbers? The continuing high membership figures of the unions - still above 10 million despite a 10 per cent fall since 1979 - only underline The labour bureaucrats and their weakness. the left often take comfort from comparing 12 the next step, November 1983 Fighting forthe The appointment of Tom King as the front man of the Tory attack on the unions, following Norman Tebbit's promotion into the Cabinet seat of the disgraced Cecil Parkinson, brings no change in Government policy.

Tories are pressing ahead with the latest stage in their programme for altering the balance of power between the state and the official labour movement in favour of the capitalist class.

The capitalist offensive has demoralised and disoriented the trade union They have lost status, membership, and income.

fighting back against the state that has built up their prestige over past decades, appeasement has been the keynote of the bureaucrats' response to Government in the hope that the onslaught on the unions would be mitigated. But their vacillation has only made the Tories bolder.

The fight to defend trade union rights today has become a fight to rebuild our unions - from the bottom up - into organisations that fight for workers' interests, instead of preserving the privileges of the bureaucracy.

We look here at some problems raised by the offensive against the unions and some of the difficulties workers face in fighting back through strikeaction.

today's recession with the inter-war slump, when union membership fell to less than a quarter of the working class. But this con- At the same trast exposes the between workers and their unions rather than any real advance in working class organisation. In the twenties and 'thirties, joined unions because of a personal commitment to defending their class interests against the bosses. own pockets Tory ad- Where possible they shop as a system of collective solidarity against the employer. the over the past 20 years has been radically different. public sector, through agreements between employers and Even union officials. checked off their wages by the employer and paid directly to the union.

has increasingly been imposed as a means of - COLLeCU streamlining conflict by formal agreement between bosses and bureaucrats. the The closed shop under attack The unions of the Depression had a fairly small but relatively highly-committed membership, for whom trade unionism was a conscious choice. sion have a much bigger membership, but for many workers a trade union card simply comes with the job, as an empty formality The The much vaunted organisational strength' of the labour movement is in fact a measure of the integration of the union machine into the capitalist system period. The inability of the bureaucrats to safeguard trade unions against a number of recent Tory attacks indicates that to defend our rights at work, we will have to break the bureaucrats stranglehold and take over our own organisations.

All the established practices and proce The Incapable of They have made concession after concession to the collaboration changing relationship tions on workers. workers Managements They paid their dues out of their to union representatives.

tion, often enforced the closed with the unions. The unions' growth Union membership, especially in has expanded largely less of the views of employees'.

Workers' dues have been The closed shop accept over the past decade negotiations and disciplining.

Public agreements' - in the moving to abandon them. industry The unions of today's recesby more recent events. the consequences over the post-war union member strike. They control benefits for five years, dures the union bureaucrats have built up in with management are now open to reappraisal. It has become commonplace for employers to overturn long-established agreements to impose harsher condi- Militant shop stewards have been victimised or neutralised; many have been replaced by workers representatives who go along with the bosses' demands.

have pushed through large scale redundancies and new working practices to raise productivity and intensify exploitaafter only token consultation The recently published annual report of the Government's Advisory, this year. Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) observes that many employers have decided that measures must be implemented regard- In recent months employers have begun to question the institutionalised closed shop and the check-off system which they had come to employers, who led the way in introducing 'union membership -institutionalised closed shops sixties and seventies, are now bosses. Employers in the water announced in September their repudiation of the closed shop agreement they had endorsed in the mid 'seventies This followed a statement earlier in the year protest. from British Rail personnel director Sidney Hoggart that the industry's trade union membership agreement had 'been overtaken He was referring to of the NUR's ill-fated strike in summer 1982. At that time 12 000 encouraged by BR chief Peter Parker's promise that no worker who crossed picket lines would lose his job if expelled from the union - scabbed on the were subsequently deprived of the rights to hold union office or claim as a disciplinary measure short of expulsion from the union.

closed shop:

JUNE

SAVE

OUR

JOBS

Picket lines at Vauxhall (top) and Monktonhall: A few hundred set up the breakaway Federation of Professional Railways Staff earlier While BR has refused to recognise this scab union, management has withdrawn from its joint supervision of the closed shop with the NUR and made it clear that union no longer a condition membership is of continued employment on the railways Paying our dues Union officials who never had to fight to establish closed shops in the first place are proving ineffective in defending them when agreements are unilaterally broken by the Of the three unions representing the

GMBATU,

NUPE

workers and TGWU - only the last, which has the fewest members in the industry, has made any public At a meeting of TGWU shop stewards, national official Jack Dromey announced that the union would not take any action to enforce the closed shop, but would simply wait for management to act. It was the sam: story at the NUR. Back in February a union spokesman assured members that BR would honour the closed shop agreement, which was 'of great help to them and the industry" When a few months later the board effectively tore up the agreement the bureaucracy was dumbfounded. In Preparing for Power, the programme o the RCP, we outlined our approach to th

instead of combat organisations for the working class

LET

US

WORK

kers' readiness to take strike action has been weakened by the bureaucrats' readiness to compromise 'The institutionalised closed shop, which reached its zenith under the provisions for automatic dismissal contained in Labour's 1974 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, can never be a reliable instrument of shop-floor power. A closed shop enforced by the bosses and their state will be used more to victimise militants than it will to deal with scabs. Insofar as it strengthens the unions, such an arrangement strengtens oniy me bureaucracy The automatic closed shop turns entry into a union into a meaningless act: it is not surprising that as the practice has spread, many workers do not even know which union they are in. The closed shop as a deal between bureaucrats and bosses must be replaced with a system of 100 per cent union membership based on a dynamic relationship between the rank and file and its representatives."

Now that the bosses have shifted the balance of power in the workplace decisively to their advantage they no longer need the machinery they built up to contain workers' past militancy. They are moving in to dismantle the closed shop and other mediating institutions. The response of the bureaucracy to the bosses' opening salvoes shows that they have become so subservient that they are incapable of fighting even to save their own machines. It is already apparent that the only way to secure 100 per cent union membership is by workers unilaterally breakunion/management ing agreements and enforcing their own closed shops, on their the trade unions were built by workers to defend their interests -but they have become part of the system

SAVE

OUR

PITS

WE

NEED YOUR

SUPPORT

isent mati ?? The check-off system for the payment of union dues spread rapidly in the 'seventies to cover virtually the entire public sector and around half of private firms. While some large private white-collar employers have begun to review their check-off systems, the first major breach has come in local government. In September NALGO failed in a court action to press Birmingham City Council to restore the check-off system for its 9500 members on the council payroll.

The Tory Council scrapped the 10-year-old agreement after

NALGO

disciplined 33 members who scabbed on a strike in the social services department in October 1982.

The union's response was to insist that stewards would collect dues during working hours - and to warn the authorities that this would cost the council £90 000 a year in Council leader Nigel Bosworth lost time. replied by threatening disciplinary action against any steward who collected dues in work time: within days four stewards received warning letters. The union proceeded to hold a mass meeting of NALGO members on 5 October, which voted by a majority force management it withdraw its discipinit to withdraw its disciplinary action against the stewards.

The union's 10-year cooperation in a system which put control over union funds in management hands and distanced stewards from rank and file workers meant that the stewards could not rely on grass-roots support when managclothing output slumped by 36 per cent.

for ever. petitive and intensified the recession.

of traditional manufacturing.

workers also helped to boost trade and jobs in the retail and distribution sectors.

the nationalised industries, the NHS, the civil service ital workers and town hall clerks are next in line.

ement turned against them.

While NALGO pleaded to no avail that the check-off would save the council money, the Daily Telegraph was canvassing the radical bosses' opinions of Birmingham's departure from 'seventies industrial relations practices. The Institute of Directors was the most forthcoming. It advised caution in sweeping away check-off as it would force shop stewards to go around collecting dues and thus give them an opportunity to campaign on behalf of the union and propagate political views'. This is exactly why we are in favour of workers getting rid of the checkoff system. Preparing for Power puts it like this: The check-off system makes sense for the bureaucracy, but the automatic deduction of dues from wages by the employer removes a crucial link between union and workers and gives management and bureaucrats direct control over union funds. Union membership becomes a passport to passivity and the rank and file can no longer take traditional sanctions against their leaders.

The collection of dues at union meetings should be reestablished. Union representatives must be forced to convince their members of the need for active involvement in union affairs.'

While we are resolutely opposed to any further state interference in trade union affairs along the lines the Tories propose, we are in favour of workers deciding to stop paying the political levy to the Labour Party.

The automatic deduction from wages of political levies to the Labour Party must also be stopped.

Instead, a proportion of each worker's union dues should be put into a fund for political activity useful to the working class as a whole.'

Workers' control over the funding of their own organisations and activities is vital for the defence of workers' rights.

Accountability in the workplace To become effective the unions have to be made accountable to their members. Over the past 20 years the union bureaucracy has expanded through the incorporation of fulltime convenors and shop stewards.

Many ? have been provided by employers with offices and 'facility time' to carry out trade union functions. Such representatives have Jobs shuffle The recession has dealt British capitalism a blow from which it will never recover. For the first time in history the workshop of the world has become a net importer of manufactured goods. Britain seems well on the way to becoming a nation of shopworkers.

Between 1979 and 1982 steel output fell by half and car production by 54 percent.

There was a 63 per cent drop in the tonnage of rherchant ships built, and textiles and Britain's industrial collapse has accelerated the transformation of the working class.

In the first three years of Tory rule 1.4 million jobs disappeared - making a total of more than two million in the decade from 1972. British Steel has cut its workforce from 210 000 to 75 000 in six years; the British motor industry has shed almost a quarter of a million jobs since 1979, and more than 310 000 textiles and clothing jobs have gone Over the past few years Britain's long, slow retreat in the face of overseas competition has turned into a disorderly rout. By the end of last year manufacturing output was 12 per cent below the slump level of 1975. Ironically, North Sea oil, greeted as the saviour of British capitalism, has only accelerated its demise. While Britain has become a net exporter of oil, the positive effect of oil revenues on the balance of trade boosted the exchange rate of the pound by some 20 to 25 per cent. If it were not for North Sea oil British manufactured goods would be cheaper on the world market and foreign imports would be more expensive. Thus North Sea oil has made British industry even less com- The Tories and their backers are pinning their hopes of recovery on the 'new technology sector. But they have few grounds for optimism. Since 1979 the government has implemented 70 different measures to assist small businesses. Computer entrepreneur Clive Sinclair is Thatcher's golden boy. But small firms are going bankrupt almost as fast as they are being set up. The few jobs they create cannot compensate for the collapse Britain's largest computer company,

ICL,

has made 10 000 workers redundant over the past three years. The only future for the dynamic small industrialist lies in enforcing intensive rates of exploitation on non-unionised The service sector continued to grow through the 'seventies: it now accounts for 70 percent of GNP and employs 12.5 million people, nearly two thirds of all those at work. Services are relatively insulated from market pressures. But even services such as international transport and finance which do face competition have managed to expand in the recession. Oil tax revenues have helped to finance public expenditure and public employment. Increased consumer spending encouraged by sterling's high exchange rate The public sector has played some part in cushioning the impact of the industrial decay of the past decade. But public spending cuts now threaten more and more jobs in and local government. The National Coal Board and the civil service have both shed 10 per cent of their workforces in the last five years — and they are both scheduled for more drastic cuts to come. Hosp been increasingly drawn into collaboration with the bosses and have become more and more remote from their members.

The urgent need for a break with these practices is clear to many active workers.

Yet when a prominent industrial militant in the Socialist Workers' Party recently suggested in the party's monthly review that stewards should reject facility time and organise independently of the employers, he raised a storm of controversy. The SWP's leading trade union activists condemned this as 'ultra-left nonsense'. The central committee itself joined the discussion, arguing that 100 per cent facility time was undesirable 'rather it should be spread as widely as possible among the stewards'.

The entire debate in the SWP missed the Workers central issue - that of control.

should force their employers to concede time for workplace representatives to keep in touch with their members. But this should be allocated by the workers themselves and kept under their control. The issue is not the percentage of working hours spent in facility time but whether the steward is accountable to management or to the rank and file. As we argue in Preparing for Power 'only through the direct accountability of representatives to workplace assemblies can the interests of the majority be expressed.

Fighting to win Strikes in 1983 have reached their lowest level for 20 years. There has been a steady decline in trade union militancy since the 1979. The recession worsened sharply in main burden of responsibility for the failure of the labour movement to mount an effective defence of jobs and living standards lies with the trade union leaders. To win any the dispute today workers need to raise stakes and broaden and intensify industrial action. But this is anathema to the bureau- They fear that militancy will only Crats. further provoke the employers and the Their strategy is to keep their government. heads down and pray for a revival in the good old British economy to restore the days of the sixties and seventies.

While the leadership of the labour movement indulges in wishful thinking about an continued on page 14 the next step, November 1983 13

continued from page 13 upturn, the working class has suffered a The failure of the series of setbacks. bureaucracy to give any lead in struggle has paved the way for defeats.

It has helped to create despondency about the efficacy of trade unions and strike action in fighting redundancies and deteriorating conditions. As a result, workers are more reluctant to strike and when they do take action they often aim for limited objectives. At the same time many workers have shown a willingness to fight back against the Tories. Sections of the working class with little or no experience of strike action have come out in recent months civil servants, water workers, local government officers and post office engineers.

And some workers who have a long tradition of militancy have shown that they are still prepared to have a go - in the car factories, on the docks and in the mines and shipyards. It is possible to distinguish three broad types of strikes over the past few months. Public sector set pieces The biggest strikes of the Thatcher years have been the confrontations over pay in the public sector - in the civil service in 1981, the health service last year, and the The water industry earlier this year. Government's determination to enforce even lower wage rises and impose further privatisation cuts, either through through direct rationalisation programmes, makes further disputes similar to current conflicts in British Telecom and the NHS So far all the major strikes inevitable. have ended in more or less unfavourable compromises. These strikes have thrown up a number of common problems.

The public service unions always prefer a diffuse protest campaign to hard-hitting strike action. Their object is to put pressure on the Government by winning public sympathy. The bureaucrats go for selective, limited, local action rather than an all-out national stoppage.

They make a show of leading strike action to retain the allegiance of the rank and file, not to defeat the employers. Their model is the notorious September 'day of action' in last dispute a maximum of year's NHS public performance with a minimum of punch. The officials of the public service unions have been too closely tied to the state machine for too long to be able to effective action break away and lead against it.

GMBATU

dependence of the labour bureaucracy on the state. crats' constant attempts to justify industrial action in terms of their commitment to the public service itself.

GMBATU called the water workers out because it had the best interests of the water supply industry at heart, and COHSE organised nurses on picket lines to save 'our' NHS. leaders never claim that they are organising strike action simply working bureaucrats put their faith in the state's arbitration and conciliation procedures, and if they fail, they hope a state-appointed inquiry will get them off the hook.

They dare not trust in the power of the working class, because if that force was unleashed it labour movement's cosy compliance with the capitalist state. In each sector of the public services effective action is undermined by sectional conflict among a number of different unions - CPSA versus SCPS, NUPE versus COHSE, GMBATU versus NUPE. The need for a single union in each service sector is apparent to any worker who has consequences of the existing seen the divisions and rivalries. A single sector union could coordinate united action at a national level and provide maximum scope for rank and file initiative at local level. "Enough is enough' The second of strikes happen group more often in manufacturing industry, generally in response to changes in working conditions or the announcement of compulsory redundancies. The slogan 14 the next step, November 1983 'enough is enough' sums up the response of the workers at BL's Cowley plant who went on strike in April over the withdrawal of washing-up time, after they had suffered a long series of setbacks in pay outlook of workers at Highlands Fabrication's Nigg yard, Michelin's Stoke plant, and at Greening's engineering works in Warrington, all of whom have taken strike action conditions against aggressive and provocative managements. workers at the Vauxhall car factories at Ellesmere Port and Luton to embark on industrial action to win a decent wage rise after a long period of stagnation when the to be improving. These strikes are virtually always unsuccessful - even though the bureaucrats sometimes claim short-term The most significant feature of 'enough is enough' strikes is their very limited obmore involved in their industrial action, the formal demand of workers at Cowley was to retain a few minutes respite at the end of the working day. At Vauxhall the claim was for a marginally improved pay offer. Deepening recession has tended to further still. reduce workers' horizons East strike at Britains in The recent London aimed to take one hour off a stand of workers vemands alle winced 50-hour week! limited standard siderable scope for compromise and for the bureaucrats to claim victories when For example, very little has been achieved.

in the strike at Hindle Gears in Bradford, the officials greeted the referral of the dispute to an industrial tribunal as a great breakthrough. The central problem with 'enough is enough' strikes is indicated by the slogan It implies that workers have been itself. prepared to make sacrifices in pay and conditions or even in jobs, but now want to draw the line at the latest or most extreme humiliation proposed by manage- BL, workers' representatives ment. At claimed that they had made a series of Party intends to direct its marketing resources? There have been very few workers whose living standards have improved significantly since Harold Wilson predecessor to win a general election - took office as Prime Minister in 1974. There has been intense media anxiety recently as the rate of wage rises edged above the level of top of the unions shortly after taking office. Yet pay rises are currently running at their lowest level for 16 years. By the end of the year workers are expected to be winning earnings increases averaging around seven per cent, while inflation reaches six per cent.

earning male manual workers? They will find here miners, dockers, printers and other and they may have succeeded in maintaining wage levels since the onset of the recession.

productivity and shift work bonuses indicates that they often have little time or energy to catch up problem for Labour is that virtually all of these occupations are in steep decline.

nology sectors? Workers for Esso and Mobil earn among the highest craft rates in the

COULEY.

by basic pay differentials of up to £100 a week. But workers in the labour-intensive new technology sector remain a small minority of the working class.

grammers have now made it into the top 20 male occupations. In this league they rub shoulders with doctors, university academics and police inspectors new Labour Party. million pensioners have been pushed remorselessly below the poverty line.

concessions to the bosses on manning levels, labour flexibility and workplace organisation, The attempt to cut washingup time was the last straw. At Greening's, convenor Arthur Conheeny declared that the union had accepted a 15 per cent cut in the workforce last year and was ready to find volunteers for redundancy this year. But the bosses insistence on compulsory redundancies, cuts in bonuses and the emasculation of the shop steward was going too far. At Vauxhall, system shop stewards at all the major plants protested that they had cooperated in raising productivity and keeping down wages over recent years. The left does a disservice the working class by celebrating as victories the limited compromise settlements some- 'enough times achieved in is enough Greenings, strikes. At the bosses were forced to withdraw 24 compulsory redundancies after a six month long strike, but the AUEW accepted a high degree of work-sharing, flexibility and redeployment. At Nigg, the workers went back as agreed to enter negotiations the over a 21-point plan to cut labour costs.

The Michelin managers were forced to withdraw proposed shift changes but anticipated introducing some changes in the medium term'. In all these instances the only real victors were the bureaucrats.

whose rights to consultation were strengand file action. It is thened by rank certain that anybody returning to these plants in six months time will find fewer workers working in worse conditions. The left celebrates compromises that save the face of the bureaucracy to boost its own despondent mood. But the working class needs accurate assessment of the of industrial action, not radical results cheerleaders. When the left is not cheering on the bureaucrats, it joins them in blaming the backwardness of the working class for own reluctance to give a lead in their struggle. Thus in the Britains' strike the SWP echoed the TGWU official's view that little could be achieved through militant action. It limited its intervention Pay patterns Who are the 'upwardly-mobile workers' towards whom the new model Kinnock Labour Kinnock's last inflation this summer, for the first time since the Thatcher government began to get on Perhaps Kinnock and his aides have been scrutinising the league table of the highest skilled industrial workers. These workers may be able to buy their own cars and houses But the fact that between a quarter and a half of their earnings comes from overtime, with Labour Party political broadcasts on their home videos. Another Maybe the new Labour leadership is looking towards the booming oil and new tech- . Other highly-paid skilled workers are employed by Westland Helicopters, British Aerospace and Amersham International. Workers in the few growth areas of British capitalism are now separated from those on the bottom rung of the wages ladder Are white-collar workers the target of Labour's more dynamic image? Computer pro- - not social groups generally considered a strong constituency for the Labour Party. But the vast majority of white-collar workers are concentrated in clerical grades in banking and insurance or in the public services. More than 80 per cent of clerical workers on the lowest rates earn less than €100 a week. As most of these workers can expect their wages to be 'downwardly-mobile' in coming years, presumably they will not be a central concern of the With substantial variations, those in work have just about managed to hold their own.

The four million unemployed, the seven million on Supplementary Benefit and the nine Those at work have often maintained wages at the cost of conceding to punitive productivity deals, flexible working arrangements, no-strike agreements, and long-term, inflation-vul- The South has sustained its relative prosperity, while the North- West and the Midlands have plunged into poverty. Women have dropped back again far behind men after a slight advance in the 'seventies. Labour's futile quest for support among some section of the working class as a means of restoring its electoral fortunes only underlines the irrelevance of the Labour Party to the real problems thrown up by to criticising RCP supporters, who did give some direction to the strike, and be moaning the conservatism of the workers.

This approach makes defeat more likely It defies the elementary principle that it is always better to fight and force the bosses to make concessions than give in and make concessions to them without a When workers return to work after they have forced something out of the having setbacks inflicted upon them, they are vulnerable to the sort of victimisation Britains workers after their defeat.

token gestures of militancy, sponsored by the bureaucracy in response to closures of workplaces that involve substantial job losses. The posturing of the steelworkers' union over the major shutdown at Corby, the miners' leaders token protests over pit closures in South Wales and Scotland.

and Labour-sponsored occupations against page 9) are recent examples.

The bureaucrats have cooperated fully drives that have decimated jobs in stee and coal. And they have participated in hundreds of hospital closures - especially under the last Labour government. But when it comes to major plant closures and an even more drastic round of NHS losing all credibility in the eyes of their members if they refuse to endorse action against mass job losses. However, the bureaucrats' gesture strikes have a uniformly major closures on the grounds that they are not in the interests of British capitalism. The shutdown of excess steel capacity shortsighted policy presented which will leave British industry behind when the upturn comes. According to Arthur Scargill pit closures are the result of a misconceived national energy policy which prefers to import cheap coal rather than mine expensive coal from clapped- The bureaucrats protest against out pits. mass sackings on the grounds that redundancy and dole payments will be a bigger burden on the exchequer than maintaining unprofitable industries or unproduc For the unions and the. tive services. Labour Party, , closures are always a threat to industry, the government, local shopkeepers, anybody before they are a menace to the working class. The bureauextend their tradition of class crats collaboration campaigns against into The effect is to demoralise closures. working class resistance to major attacks.

middle The bureaucrats want class closure, not against lobbying tactics class action. Hence the union working leaders always try to restrict the scope of militancy. If workers occupy a threatened plant, the officials try to keep it legal and decent. They vigorously oppose attempts to escalate or spread the action. If workers go on strike the union leaders try to keep it local. When they are sure the situation is under control they make the official. The manoeuvring of the strike

NUM

the threatened Scottish over closure of the Monktonhall pit is the latest example of the cynical strategy that has paved the way for closures at Kinneil and Cardowan. When miners despair of the union and refuse to give their support to further phoney strikes, the bureaucrats accuse the workers of being bought off by redundancy pay-outs. In reality they have been sold out by the NUM before and see no alternative but to make the best of their expulsion from the ranks of the employed. Our approach to the gesture strike must be to give full support to workers' struggles against closures whilst exposing the role of the bureaucracy. These strikes mote than any others reveal the urgent control need for workers to take of the unions out of the hands of the leaders who have usurped them, and turn them into effective fighting organisations.

After Labour's General Election catastrophe in June, ties. and services. Helen Simons unravel the strands of Labour's lifeline.

IN A RECENT PIECE in Labour Herald, the house journal of Labour's municipal socialists, Tony Benn pointed to the local councils as the roots to which Labour should return: The rediscovery of municipal socialism, with all its potential in terms of services, education, health, transport and campaigning for peace is of critical importance...for it was the struggles of the nineteenth century to develop local government which provided the great growth points to train our people and create the foundations on which the later welfare state was built." Benn is right to see the development of local government as a formative experience for the Labour Party. Labour's people" were 'trained' in the mechanics of capitalist administration in the local state bodies created during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fabian reformers government has never been Municipal anything more than capitalist administration at a local level. From the early nineteenth century, parish and borough councils took over responsibility for basic services, such as gas supples and road works. Party politics rarely impinged on council affairs. Councils were often made up of sturdy local businessmen trying to from the chaos create some order Victorian Britain. The burghers were in favour of expanding local state services because they recognised that a modern capitalist economy could not run along unlit, dirt roads. The mundane affairs of local government were first invested with the title of municipal socialism in the 1870s, when Liberal imperialist Joseph Chamberlain pioneered the systematic expansion services in Birmingham. Chamberlain was a vociferous supporter of the British state, both in its empire-buildingexploitsabroad, and in its organisation of municipal facilities at home. He expanded Birmingham's local government under the slogan rates mean a healthy city'. Chamberlain's council was 'socialist' because it saw the The long march back to the parish pump David Blunkett was the hero of this year's Labour Party conference.

radical leader of the Sheffield City Council won a seat on the national executive at his first attempt and won plaudits from right, left and centre.

municipal socialism seems a promising way to revive the party.

Last month the Tories announced plans to abolish Ken Livingstone's Greater London Council and the six Labour-controlled metropolitan coun The Tories also plan to cut the rate support grant to local government (again) and to 'cap' the rates of high-spending councils. The Government's assault on Labour's municipal bastions is a direct attack on workers' jobs But can municipal socialism defend them?

need to accommodate the swelling ranks of the working class. Labourers' Dwellings Act of 1875 was the first municipal housing measure.

Bourgeois local government reformers tried to impose order on the sprawling towns and cities thrown up by industrialisation. urban was also the impetus behind the middle class reform movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Fabians. Webb, the Fabians had a profound impact on the development of the early Labour Party. The society's problems could be solved by a rational administration made up of intel- • lectuals and experts' viduals (such as members of the Fabian Society) could use the expanded machinery of local government to benefit 'the community' as a whole.

'municipalisation' sought not to challenge capitalism but to make it more efficient.

Their aim was 'not the subdivision property, whether capital or land, but the control and administration of it by the representatives of the community (Socialism: true and false, Fabian Tract 51).

The Fabians used the emergent labour bureaucracy as a vehicle for advancing their policies. The Fabians welcomed the 'new unionism' of the late 1880s.

saw the 'respectable' labour movement as a buffer against the feared and hated residuum' of unemployed and casual labour- The Webbs manipulated the power ers. of the labour movement to carry Fabian plans for local government to fruition.

Fabian tracts on every aspect of municipal government were circulated widely, and Beatrice Webb in particular cultivated the union leaders. The Fabians argued that socialism could be built on the instalment plan by local with the appearance leaders in local government, after the 1888 high Local Government Act established popularly - elected councils.

councillors in the Liberal Party, the Inde- The Blunkett's brand of The Fran Eden and society and to suppress the seen as a danger to Councils such as His Artisans' and ty'. function of local The attempt to come to terms unchanged. chaos and social instability municipal shoddy communities Led by Beatrice and Sidney the Labour Party. Fabian view was that all Enlightened indiand Socialism). councillors The Fabians' around housing, for of municipal plans. They After the First Labour's Their intervention coincided vances in local government.

working class Working class Sheffield Council leader Blunkett: can Labour rally in the town halls?

• pendent Labour Party, and later (after 1900) in the Labour Party, were attracted to the Fabian ideas of state intervention.

infant labour bureaucracy was as keen as the intellectuals to reorganise residuum', organised workers. West Ham, which was controlled by an alliance of progressives from 1898, pursued the management of control. services on behalf of the local 'communi- Many early working class councillors wanted to use local government to imunion prove workers' living conditions. But the remained government Whoever sat on them, the councils assisted capitalist expansion and provided a minimal level for services working class The Social Democratic Federation was the largest radical organisation outside The SDF proclaimed its support for revolution and characterised "municipal politics' as 'a phase in the class struggle against the exploiters and not in any sense a petty affair of local government reform' (Quoted in J Hinton, Labour But in practice, SDF supported Fabian politics stamp. "fair wages, and even "labour colonies' - concentration camps industrial malingerers'. The

SDF

failed to provide a political alternative to socialism. Its inability to young establish any coherent opposition to Labourism condemned the working class to be used in the Fabians' reactionary From Poplar to Parliament During the first decade of the twentieth century, Labour Party councillors learnt the rudiments of council administration.

World War, the party sought to put its experience to use at national level. The Labour leaders drew up a new constitution and launched the party as a national force in British politics But local government remained Labour's most important sphere of influence. While representation parliamentary fluctuated dramatically in the 'twenties and 'thirties, the party made steady ad- Labour Party councillors were changing.

The old municipal socialists had come up from the roots of the labour movement and were forced to strike radical postures The to contain working class pressure.

&Labour councils new Labour councillors were increasingly removed from any working class base Their concern was to present Labour as a respectable party. The conflict between the two wings came to a head in response to Poplar Council's fight against public spending cuts in the 1920s. Poplar mayor and Fabian fellow traveller George Lansbury led a militant campaign against the - cuts, to keep it under Labour Party Hackney mayor and London party secretary Herbert Morrison joined bureaucrats and Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald in condemning Lansbury's actions and Poplar's prodigal spending of ratepayers" money on benefits to starving unemployed. Morrison's concern was to establish Labour's reputafinancing and sensible tion for sound defeat of administration. After the Poplar, the Morrison wing and the labour But leftbureaucracy established control.

wing figures like Lansbury still had an important part to play in delivering the working class up for the sacrifices the system required. His role in the Labour Government of 1929, and as party leader in the 'thirties, was to give the reactionary politics of the bureaucracy a socialist Far-sighted members of the new Labour Party bureaucracy recognised the usefulness of the old municipal socialists.

As mayor of neighbouring Stepney, the Clement Attlee supported the Poplar campaign. Attlee was typical of the new breed of local Labour leaders. A moderate barrister, Attlee was co-opted as mayor. During his stay in office Attlee was busy on the mushrooming local state bodies - hospital committees, boards of Whitley school governors, councils through which the Labour bureaucracy was consolidating its influence.

After his election as MP for Limehouse in 1922 Attlee served as the chair of Stepney During borough's electricity committee.

the General Strike of 1926, Attlee nego.

tiated a compromise with local union leaders which ensured that the electricity workers stayed at work "to keep the hospitals running. Local businessmen took advantage of this cynical move to keep their factories running throughout the During the 1930s Labour councils in Sheffield, Glasgow and eities such as London helped British capitalism through the Depression. Through a combination continued on page 16 the next step, November 1983 15

of coercion and conciliation the councils held back the struggles oftheunemployed.

In 1935, unemployed workers staged huge and violent demonstrations against cuts in welfare payments, which were then administered by local government. In Sheffield, for example, about 40 000 unemployed iron and steel workers were joined by Yorkshire miners in a march to the city hall to demand that the Labour council restore the cuts. meet the workers delegation. Instead it unleashed a wave of police baton charges to force the workers off the streets.

When it became obvious the police could not win, the Labour councillors rushed to London and obtained the Government's permission to restore benefits to their previous miserable level.

action ensured that the protests did not go beyond Labour's political control.

The year 1935 marked a turning point in Labour Party fortunes.

London County Council for the first time and Attlee became leader of the party.

Ten years later, Attlee was prime minister and Morrison was a leading figure in his Both put their experience of managing capitalism at municipal level to good use, enforcing wage rationalising industry and extending state ownership. Labour, already established as the natural party of local government, was fast becoming the natural party of national government. During the years of the post-war boom, municipal socialism became a forgotten term. Labour adminibecame divorced working class. Labour councillors confined their activities to committee rooms and developed cosy relations with local businessmen. the "sixties, councils became notorious for the mass The Tories call it 'reorganisation'. The Labour left calls it "decentralisation'.

The Tories do it in the name of efficits justification, anding Some teaching different tried to rally attacks Tory services into offices: *Local people will be able to get things done quickly and efficiently...while more complicated issues should be handled more efficiently with fewer officials in the town hall. (Hackney goes local) The council's new methods of cutting costs have not halted rent and rate rises.

The left-wing councils have promoted broad alliances of councillors and 'the community' agalist measures. abour councis use radical anti-Tory rhetoric and eulogise about 16 the next step, November 1983 The council refused to National This w we can Labour won controls, construction cated housing estates. councillors the North. from the Labour MPs began Going local local punitive means only one trial action. councils such as redundancies and But left ingly using programmes. councils Camden and now contracting and is now ing SOMEOns. Council is developers. They have against agencies government local

COVCHCHE

have "eXE years and reluctant vices the Tory fight to get defend

LOVCHCL

JOB SA CHANGE

019 ne pieces together?- see inside Planning to make Labour popular: the GLC's alternatives to fighting to save jobs of soul-destroying tower blocks and damp and draughty pre-fabri- Scandals like the T Dan Smith-Poulson affair exposed the web of bribery and fraud linking Labour and building contractors, especially in Labour's rotten boroughs in Labour's national leadership turned a blind eye to municipal corruption. Local councils became little more than a conveyor belt to national office.

Between 1945 and 1979, 45 per cent of Labour their rise to parliamentary local control and accountability to win support for their cost-cutting exercises.

In addition, left-wing councillors use Hackney and councils are Tower Hamlets using private traditional functions -on the Partnership City Youth Training service - will become more desperate.

The experience of council workers in Hackney, Lambeth and Camden shows that they have no interest in supporting left-wing Labour alternatives. We must what we need, not to Labour's niche local

A JOBS PLAN FOR LONDON

Produced by the Popular Planning Unti glory as humble Labour councillors.

The recession has brought a renewed enthusiasm for municipal socialism inside the Labour Party. collapse has forced the party to unite in defence of the areas of local government which are still under its control.

off Tory plans to abolish the metropolitan councils, and retaining the rate-setting of other municipal bodies, is a powers cause dear to the hearts of all who want to salvage the Labour Party.

Labour Party came of age in the municipal Now senile, Labour is having authorities. a second childhood trying to get back to the local councils that served its purposes in the past. The rates and our jobs The Tories' proposals do represent a real attack on the working class.

Labour councils' resistance to the Government's plans is not rooted in any concern with working class interests.

poration of Labour administrators into the local state has made them more concerned to balance accounts than defend workers' living standards.

as the GLC or the 'red' London boroughs of Islington and Lambeth have responded to cuts in central government funding by raising the rates at the same time as running down services. the councils open to the current round of High rates and shoddy services attacks. which leave the streets strewn with rubbish and council houses in a chronic state of disrepair have made local government unpopular with the working class. Government has been able to manipulate workers' dissatisfaction with the councils to win popular approval for its attacks on jobs and services The Labour councils have replied to the rate-capping and abolition proposals by resurrecting the tired ideas of municipal socialism. Labour left has rediscovered the notion that there is something progressive about local government. are aware of the lack of public sympathy for the red tape and rotten services of local government. to mobilise support by refusing the claims of inefficiency, by appealing to middle class sentiments about local democracy and arguing for more by involvement' as a way around the shortcomings of municipal government.

In the best traditions of Fabianism, the Labour councils today declare their efficient commitment to The Tories' regional transport plan, which proposes shifting the responsibility for bus and tube services in the capital to a government-appointed board, has been attacked by GLC councillors as unneces- GLC Transport Committee chair sary. Dave Wetzel pointed out the stringent efficiency measures which his council is already helping to introduce in London Transport: •Good-housekeeping exercises have been carried out in LT and we're delighted that they have been so successful in reducing unnecessary costs since we took over' Just what these good-house-

SPECIAL

EDITION

works, The GLC's

LONDON'S IN

communities depend

HECES

trying to of petition gone Labour's electoral peddled its Staving The young local government. leaders like capping' proposals. But the The incorfrom the communities. Councils such support for This strategy has left recent pamphlet house repairs) which sitively pal socialists After half a century the involving But Labour councillors They are now trying tieth century, 'community ite ideologue that the altogether. capitalist London for example, fight for the keeping exercises' mean for the working class was illustrated last month London Transport announced plans to axe more than 1000 jobs at its Aldenham, Essex Another 1900 jobs are under threat at LT's Chiswick bus works.

These measures for reducing 'unnecessary costs' were prompted by the discovery that contracting the work out could save LT £8m "efficient' local government means attacking public sector workers and the services on which working class Instead of taking a stand to defend jobs and services, the Labour councils are save their institutions. The councils have appealed for a campaign to protect local democracy. Aware of the disquiet many Tories and Liberals feel about the Government's latest proposals, left-wing Labour councils have set out to unite every body who 'cares' about local The Labour councils that have combined to form the Association London Authorities are spending £100 000 on their London Charter', designed to court middle class opinion. GLC leader Ken Livingstone has The GLC has spent even further. £800 000 promoting its appeal to defend local government as a vital check on the centralising power of government and a defence for the individual'. The GLC has stall around the country during the conference season, lobbying anybody who will listen from the CBI the Tories or the Liberals. The Labour councils are willing to accommodate to .

any anti-working class politicians or emp loyers if it will save their own skins. Ther aim is not to defend workers, but to .

protect their place in the structure cf Left-wing council Lambeth's Ted Knight recently admitted that it would be almost impossible for them to fight the rate- But they dismissed the idea that they should give up their positions and make local Tories carry out the "inevitable' cuts. Labour's plea is that it can administer the same cuts in a more caring and compassionate manner.

The early municipal socialists came up working class and tried to use local government to benefit their They failed because they accepted bourgeois rationality in Fabian packaging. Today's Labour councils are attempting to use a multitude of munic.pal quangos to win back working class Labour. David Blunkett's 'Building from the bottom: the Sheffield experience' (produced, appropriately enough, by the Fakian Society) readily admits the problem: 'No one will easily defend a socialist principle (like for example direct labour) if it is encapsulated in a service (like council is paternalistic; authoritarian or plain inefficient. Blunkett's solution is to provide services senand efficiently' and extend the 'accountability of local government by involving the community. But the munic:cannot defend workers by more trade union officials, liberals, professionals and local entrepreneurs in a morass of quangos Democracy and dictatorship The ruling class is not sentimental about local government. Throughout the twenshifted state power las away from Hackney and Hampshire towards Whitehall and Westminster. A recent feature in The Times by leading Thatcher- Roger Scruton suggested sensible thing would be to dispense with elected local authorities The municipal socialists are trying to persuade the working class to stake its future on the defence of an anachronistic layer of the bourgeois state.

The history of Labour in local government shows that workers have nothing to gain from municipal politics. What the working class needs is not rhetoric about "local democracy' but a national movement that fights for jobs and services a: all levels of society. The British working class broke out of its parochial past 150 years ago. Instead of retreating to the parish pump of local bourgeois democ racy, the task of the proletariat remains establishment of its dictatorship at the level of state power

in the downturn Detroit in the doldrums: no real revival in US industry "This means war' is the response of everybody who has seen the Cambridge forecasts from the Economic Policy Group's new computer model of the world economy.

Ten years ago the Cambridge school, whose political sympathies embrace the spectrum from Tory Eurocommunists, anticipated the collapse of British industry. Today the Cambridge economists predict deepening world recession intensifying global conflict. their grim forebodings come at a time when many Western politicians are tentatively greeting a capitalist revival. A look at the world's biggest capitalist economy of the USA - shows little grounds for bourgeois optimism. a glimpse at the British economy justifies the deepest apprehensions of the Cambridge computer.

ON THE SURFACE the American upturn looks impressive. The US economy grew at an annual rate of more than nine per cent between April and June of this year.

In comparison with a 1½ per cent fall in 1982 this seems to be The real question, however, is recovery. whether the recovery will be sustained by Up to now the main new investment. stimulus to the economy has been provided by consumer and state spending bolstered by record budget deficits.

Rearmament has given a boost to US industry. It has provided new orders to manufacturers and indirectly encouraged consumer spending. Both house building and car sales have picked up this year.

Yet despite cuts in welfare payments, the Government's massive rearmament programme is likely to keep the budget defi- $200 billion level for years to cit at the And the underlying structural weakness of US industry remains unsolved.

American goods are still uncompetitive on the world market. In 1983 US exporters have lost out further and further The recession in Britain and the USA No upturn to the more dynamic economies of the EEC and Japan: billion deficit on the US balance of payments current account. $20 billion surplus, is likely to be the main beneficiary of the limited US recovery as it continues to undercut US prices on both world and US markets.

Only new investment wets to solve America's economic problems.

here the American bourgeoisie faces the same constraint as capitalists throughout the Western world: there is no point in investing capital until levels of profitability and Yet are restored. has not baulked at taking ruthless measures to improve itseconomic performance.

Thousands of less competitive firms have been driven to ruin. than 20000 bankruptcies last year.

ployers have launched a remorseless cam- - that paign of wage-cutting and union-busting.

At Continental And even bosses have scrapped their labour agreements, sacked union members, and then rehired a select few on half their previous Despite all this, wages. still remain too low to justify new invest- Structural decline Falling profit rates and low investment have dogged the Western world for the past 20 years. Settlements recently observed that investsubstantial ment has been tailing off in all the major capitalist countries since the late 'sixties.

The decline began well before the 1973 o1l price explosion on economists always blame the onset of the recession. Over the past three years total fixed investment has fallen not only in the USA, but also in Japan, West Germany, Britain and France. Economic Outlook expresses the view of a bourgeoisie which is deeply troubled, and just as profoundly mystified, by the continuing grip of the crisis of profitability: *Even more striking has been the sharp drop in realised rates of return, measured as the ratio of gross operating surplus to gross capital stock For example, taking six of the largest OECD countries as a group, realised rates of return in manufacturing fell from 20 per cent to 13 per cent from 1973 to 1981. For reasons which decades.' likely end of 1983. evidence of the economic crisis. countries. $10 billion. interest rates. going. the result is a $30 abroad to borrow money Japan, with its imperialism. can begin to But The American ruling class imperialist competitors. There were more Emeconomies. for example, current growth rate into 1984.

profit levels recession. sumer spending, stock levels In accelerates. The Bank of International which Western modest economy. The latest OECD turn down again. TO petering out scrutiny. remain unclear, the productivity of capital has abolition shown a marked decline over the last two As a result of stagnating profit levels, industrial investment in the USA is more to fall than to increase by the The decline in US net foreign direct investment provides further intractability of its The USA sustained its position of global economic supremacy during the post-war period through the large scale export of capital to other recovery After 1981, however, the recession produced a dramatic reversal in the flow of capital: the net outflow of capital became a net inflow of more than Rather than reinvest their profits abroad, American companies repatriated dividends to stave off the collapse of the parent companies at home. At the same time, US companies were squeezed out of domestic money markets by high levels of government borrowing and high They went to Europe to borrow the funds to keep themselves When American capitalists cannot generate enough surplus to keep their domestic industry running but have to go - Third World its home market will help to keep the economy going for a few years ahead. Although the USA has been losing out to Japan and West Germany in terms of productivity levels, shares in key foreign tment, markets, and spheres of investment, it still accounts for 20 per cent of world output.

This economic weight, backed up by its world-beating military strength, enables the USA to withstand pressure from its Businessmen in Tokyo and Bonn may complain about the damaging effects of high US budget deficits and interest rates on their domestic But the USA is still strong enough to resist bowing to their demands.

In The US economy is likely to sustain its There is still some scope for there-supplying of companies that ran down their stock of finished goods in the early years of the As a result of increased conlower than at any time since the sixties.

The British disease While America stagnates, Britain's decay 1960 Britain could still jostle with West Germany for the position of the second largest imperialist economy.

Today it ranks fifth after the USA, Japan, West Germany and France, and it is still falling in the charts. The two to three per cent growth rate forecast for Britain this year is simply a pale reflection of the small improvement in the world While the rest of the top five expect to continue growing into 1984, the British economy is already beginning Fortunately for Chancellor Nigel Lawson, the Cecil Parkinson affair overshadowed his optimistic projections at the Tory Party Conference.

ment, and His protestations that the long-awaited British economic recovery was not already escaped much critical In Britain, as in the USA, the initial stimulus to growth came from a pick-up in consumer spending in late 1982.

The of hire-purchase controls last summer helped to encourage domestic consumption. However, credit-encouraged spending has made much less impact on economic growth in Britain than it has forher competitors. The British recovery has been so slow that two years after the low point of late 1981, when the upswing is supposed to have begun, industrial output is still almost five percent below its previous peak in 1979.

Such a slow rate of growth is unprecedented in the been little more than a slowdown in the pace of collapse.

The malaise of manufacturing output has been unaffected by the superficial upturn: this year it is 15 percent below 1979 levels. Low productivity levels and poor competitiveness caused Britain earlier this year to register its first trade deficit in manufactures since the industrial revolution. In the midst of the current upturn, manufacturing investment continues to decline - to the lowest levels for 20 years. The trends towards the de-industrialisation of Britain now seem unstoppable. Low investment is both a symptom of the British decline and a factor in accelerating it. Net investment levels have followed the downward curve of profit rates throughout the post-war period. From an average four percent increase in net capan average of one per cent in the 'eighties the productivity improvements celebrated by Thatcher and friends can give little real encouragement to British capitalists. Indeed the 12 per cent improvement in manufacturing productivity between 1980 and 1981 was a manifestation of deepening recession, not a sign of impending recovery. Far from being the consequence of new, efficient investment productivity levels only rose because of the drastic shedding of plant and labour the less competitive sectors of the economy. Industry became leaner, butthat which remained could still not compete on the world market. On average, productivity in British industry remains 60 percent lower than in the USA Recession without end The collapse of manufacturing leaves the British economy vulnerable to the rigours of the world recession. The service sector - particularly shipping, tourism and financial services - has always been a useful asset for British imperialism. But it is simply too small to fill the gap left by the demise of manufacturing. Some government ministers may still be able to fool the Tory Party conference with talk of new technology industries, business and •success stories, promises of recovery to come.

But the painful deliberations of the same ministers the following week over implementing major reductions in public expenditure expose the real preoccupations of ruling class crisis management. Cuts and closures in the NHS, civil service and local governthe continuing shakeout of nationalised industries, show the real deadend British capitalism has reached. The Cambridge computer has no confidence that the USA canlead the Western world out of recession. It can see only gloom at the end of the tunnel for the capitalist system.

Phil Murphy the next step, November 1983 17

Grave-diggers of imperialism - Much media attention has been focused on the tremendous debt problems of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, South Korea and other Industrialising Countries. But there is a graver threat to interests in the NICs than problem of repaying loans.

THE BILLIONS OF dollars owed by Newly Industrialising Countries to imperialist banks expose the fragility of the world banking system and other international capitalist institutions. But external debt is only one side of the problem. All the NICs are wracked by internal political and economic crises. Western interests are becoming increasingly sensitive threat of domestic convulsions in the NICs. Earlier this year The Economist surveyed the strife in Brazil, Chile and Argentina and asked whether it was wise to push too hard for debt repayments: *Most of the loans are irrecoverably lost.

The question now is: does it make much sense for the bankers to try to stretch the Latin American economies on the rack to recover their losses?' The message is clear: it is unreasonable to expect to recover the loans, and too muchforeign pressure on the NICs risks exacerbating internal instability. To appreciate the scope for unrest in the necessary to examine the background to their previous economic development over the past two decades.

Born in blood Today's NICs are the product of the needs of imperialism at the height of the postwar boom. To sustain the momentum of the upswing of the sixties and seventies Western powers were forced to expand activities in the Third World. The their subsequent high growth rates in the NICs were by-product of the expansion of the major capitalist economies. However, before the Western powers could boost their activities in the Third World they had a number of local problems to solve. Most of the countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia were no longer European colonies.

Many of the Third World regimes were at least formally committed to the policy of independent national development; their leaders frequently declared their determination to control foreign capital. More importantly, in many areas of the Third World the ruling class was on the defensive against mass working class and popular movements. The growth of popular mass movements was both a challenge to the indigenous ruling classes, and a threat to imperialist interests. Before the Western powers could step up their intervention in the Third World they had to make sure that their investments would be protected by reliable local allies. Their model was 'strong and stable' Iran under the Shah. George former president of Trans World Agriculture, a leading US agribusiness company expressed the importance of the confidence created by a sympathetic dictator: *You could sit down in other countries and figure out more profit with a pencil and paper, but they don't have the stability that Iran does.'

During the 'sixties and the early "seventies a succession of military takeovers backed by the West formed the political structures that now characterise the 18 the next step, November 1983 Workers of the Third World Newly imperialist the to the NICs. The most important of these were the coup d'etat in Brazil in 1964, the military seizure of power in Indonesia in 1965, and the overthrow of the Allende regime in Chile in 1973. The objective of military takeovers was to destroy working class organisations, NICs it is crush popular resistance, and thus create economic stability Indonesia was the most successful example of the transformation climate to the advantage of imperialism The which

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Sukarno unleashed a massacre of historic proportions. The Indonesian Communist Party was virtually wiped out. Altogether more than half a million people bloody achievements Suharto were highly respected by the economic West. President Suharto on his 'Adventure in Progress'.

The Queen later awarded Suharto the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.

The Indonesian holocaust was followed by a massive inflow of Western capital.

Repression created the foreign in vestment. Bank official remarked after the coup: *Indonesia is the best happened to Uncle Sam since the war.

The economic miracles More than half a million lives was a small price to pay for new investment opportunities. In the Indonesia •developing countries'. imperialist periodical Economic Review - held up Indonesia as an example of how to tackle 'development problems: longer in command. illustration that developing systems must resolve political contradictions and con- Wilson, flicts into some form of modus vivendi before development meaningfully tackled'. problems were 'meaningfully tackled' in other parts of the Third World as well.

The coup in Brazil unleashed a wave of terror against the working class.

Chile General Pinochet emulated President Suharto on a somewhat smaller scale after the overthrow of Allende The policy of brutal class domination pursued by the governments of the NICS has a clear purpose.

BIRTAD HEY

Confrontation with the military: Chile today, any of the N/Cs tomorrow labour stays 'cheap'. for foreign capital. of a political labourers. President membership of the The

NICS.

were liquidated. President of Nixon congratulated by more than 30 percent. conditions for As one US World thing that has "tight wage policy'. NICs. poverishment and class coercion early 'seventies emerged as the model for In 1972 one - the Far East work. 'Politics in Indonesia are no sustained growth. Indonesia is a classic increasing problems can be Development These regimes. popular discontent. And in popular base. security services. unrest and protest. Capitalist social forces. relations in backward capitalist economies can be maintained only through coercion.

Class violence is essential to maximise the military rate of exploitation of the proletariat.

For foreign investors cheap labour' is one of the most attractive features of the NICs thạn - and the military regimes make sure that Hong Kong, one of the most successful of the NICs, provides danger. a vivid illustration of the position of wage In 1968 at the height of Hong Kong's prosperity, 58 per cent of workers had a seven-day working week, and 52 per cent worked 10 hours or more a day.

A high rate of exploitation provided the foundation of the economic miracle of Brazil, now the most powerful of the The first priority of the Brazilian military junta in 1964 was to destroy the power of the organised working class Between 1964 and 1966 the cost of living more than doubled while real wages fell During the years from 1964 to 1972 the real minimum wage fell by 35 per cent. Industrial expansion was made possible by the high rate of surplus value that the bosses were able to extract from the proletariat. The Financial Times was impressed by Brazil's space. There is an intimate connection between the exploitation of the working class and the economic miracles of the by There is nothing miraculous about achieving high profits through mass im- To crisis For a while the NIC model seemed to However, even the systematic exploitation of the working class on an unprecedented scale could not guarantee As the world recession imperialism. began to bite, it became clear that economic growth could only continue by the NICs already intolerable burden of debt. But economic stagnation imperialists. is not the only problem facing military pro-imperialist regimes are increasingly being confronted by the revival of organised working class and tion. The regimes that run the NICs lack a Their survival depends almost entirely on the armed forces and Even a highly militarised society like South Korea faces social our jobs. Until now repression has been effective. Thus in 1980 President Chan succeeded in crushing a rebellion in the southern town of Hwang-Ju. He despatched a special force of paratroopers to the town which restored order by indis criminately shooting down several hundred people. But repression alone is no longer sufficient to check the growth of recent months lass novellents violent demonstrations on the streets of Manila, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo reveal the growing polarisation of these societies. The mass movements of the 'eighties are not the same as those crushed by today's dictators in the past: their social character has changed dramatically.

The growth of industry in the NICs has led to the emergence of substantial working class This transformation of the class structure is exemplified by South Korea In recent years more than half a million new workers have entered the factories every year. Seoul, which had a population of 750 000 in 1977, is now bursting with more than nine million people.

A similar • process of proletarianisation can be seen in all the important NICs.

The emergence of labour as a leading social force limits the options of the juntas. The industrial working class. concentrated in strategic areas, has considerably more social weight heterogeneous opposition 'fifties and movements of the 'sixties. The military regimes are sensitive to this One reason why the Brazilian Government is reluctant to introduce the IMF-sponsored austerity measures is its fear of provoking working class resistance.

The same fear has led the Government to allow more space for trade union activity The growth of the working class is also a direct threat to Western imperialism The advanced capitalist countries need their local allies more than ever before The survival of capitalism depends strengthening imperialist domination over the Third World. But the military regimes cannot offer the guarantees they were able to give ten years ago.

The changing balance of class forces has pushed imperialist strategists to rethink their policy.

The Western powers are not sentimental. They are prepared to sacrifice their loyal allies if it gives them a breathing Thus unpopular dictators like President Marcos, General Pinochet or President Figueiredo may soon be deserted Washington and their friends in London, Paris and Bonn. But whatever happens a confrontation between the proletariat of the Third World and imperialism cannot be postponed indefinitely. Western imperialism desperately needs spheres of influence and investment.

The working class must pay the price.

Workers in the NICs are in the front line of the imperialist offensive.

History has cast them as the grave-diggers of They have the power not only to defeat their own ruling class but also to inflict a severe blow against the They must not fight alone The proletariat of the West has every interest in supporting their struggles and fighting all forms of imperialist interven- The official labour movement in Britain looks upon the proletariat of the Third World as cheap labourers' who are responsible for British unemployment But the workers of South East Asia and Latin America are not competitors for They are our class allies in the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system Frank Richards

'Slumps and depressions', Keynes 'are the mere conseonce wrote, quence of upsetting the delicate balance of spontaneous optimism'.

The directors of the International Monetary Fund, an institution designed by Keynes as the cornerstone of the post-war financial order, no doubt recalled his words as they ended their annual conference last month in an atmosphere of despondency. Their role in the months and ahead years be to preside over the break-up of imperialist cooperation in exploiting the backward capitalist countries.

THE MASSIVE EXPANSION of credit over the past two decades is at an end.

Last year saw the collapse of Penn Square Bank in the USA and God's own Banco Now a Hong Kong Ambrosiano in Italy. bank has gone the same way, the Israeli banks are in crisis, and the head of the Argentine central bank has been clapped in jail. Since Mexico's revelation last year that it could no longer continue to service its $80 billion debt, 19 more Latin American and Caribbean countries have been involved in negotiations to reschedule their debts. When the IMF was set up in 1946, it was never intended that it should act as central banker to the world's commercial Under the 1944 Bretton Woods banks. agreement the value of the dollar was tied to gold. All the imperialist countries undertook to maintain their currency exchange rates in a fixed relation to the dollar. The role of the IMF was to provide funds to enable member countries to adjust their trade balances without resort to protectionism and devaluation.

country could draw on the Fund up to the quota originally subscribed. At its inception the IMF's resources were equivalent to 16 per cent of annual world trade.

More than a fifth of the cash was supplied by the USA. Changing roles The system began to break down in 1967.

The imperialist pecking order had changed dramatically over 20 years. Productivity had increased much more rapidly in some countries (notably Germany and Japan) than in others (USA, Britain). This change had been disguised by the fixed exchange rate system, but could no longer be con- The IMF in conference The pack breaks up cealed. In 1971 the USA finally broke from the Gold Standard, and with a 10 per cent devaluation of the dollar in 1973, the system collapsed. In the chaotic recession, the IMF was forced to take on a new role for which it had never been designed. banks were involved mostly in financing domestic industry, and lent only a small proportion of their governments. and industrial bankruptcies of 1974 led to large losses for many banks. A number of major banks - among them Franklin will National and I D Herstatt- collapsed, and many banks withdrew altogether from international lending. private international lending dropped 20 per cent in two years. The crisis in the imperialist countries opened a certain space into which the more dynamic of the backward capitalist economies Countries - could expand accelerating domestic capitalaccumulation was funded at first by windfall gains from the large increases in prices of raw material exports in the early seventies; then the banks took over. whose price increased most spectacularly was oil, but the economies of most of the oil-producing countries were too backward to absorb more than a small share of the increased oil revenues. large part of the channelled through the imperialist banks to other backward capitalist Petrodollars flowed in into Latin America and Asia.

the nominal dollar volume of lending through the international capital markets had reached five times the 1973 level.

The Western bankers' new business in the Third World proved very lucrative.

enabled them to avoid the financial crash Each which threatened in the mid seventies.

Hundreds of banks scrambled over one come comers tor customers nune Third World, often with little regard for how and when the money would be repaid.

This rapid and chaotic expansion of international credit required central coordination and backing. Forced to step in international lender of last resort, the IMF adopted on the world stage the role played by central banks in national expansion. In 1974 and again in 1975 it introduced programmes to recycle funds from the OPEC and imperialist countries.

The IMF established a pattern in which it gave its stamp countries by making a loan - which then Standing loose at Williamsburg: how much longer can they stand the strain of Third World debt?

for a piece of the action.

early years of the debt repayments. Ten years ago commercial funds to foreign investment crisis honoured, the banks The volume of consequent loss of their assets.

- the Newly Industrialising *interbank The NICs' the to expand The commodity When it sses. banks started asking back. loan put together by Consequently a OPEC surplus was Reserve aná the Settlements saved the day.

countries. large quantities By 1980, national division factures are controls. less austerity quence. of approval to certain encouraged all the other banks to rush in The lending spree lasted only six years before problems began to set in.

The alarm bells started to ring as early as 1978 when Peru was forced to reschedule its Jamaica and Turkey followed in 1979, Nicaragua and Zaire in 1980, and Sudan, Bolivia and Poland in 1981. The annual increase in net bank lending began to fall - from 25 per cent between 1974 and 1980, to 21 per cent in 1981, 7 per cent last year, and around 3 per cent this year. So long as debts are can continue to make a fat living out of the exploitation of workers all over the world. What they dread is default by their creditors, and the The system came close to disaster last autumn when Mexico announced that it could no longer service its debt. Over the last few years the bankers have built up a TesCue vast and highly mobile pool of funds on market. These circulate among banks to enable business fast as possible. Some Mexican banks had borrowed short-term don't pay funds from these sources, and then made medium-term loans to domestic busine- Mexico appeared that might default, confidence flagged and for their money Only an emergency $1.85 billion the US Federal Bank for International throw Mounting debts The current financial crisis is the result of the continued subordination of the backward capitalist countries within the inter- Reduced of labour. demand for their exports has led to a drastic decline in prices. World trade declined by two and a half per cent last year.

Today most agricultural goods and raw materials and about a quarter of manusubject to protectionist Under pressure from the banks, Third World governments have introduced ruth- In 1982 measures. the current account deficit of these countries They was cut by $ 21 billion. This was achieved by slashing imports. In one year, the real value of imports by Latin American countries fell by 22 per cent. Widespread looting and riots in the cities are the conse- The total outstanding debt of the nonoil-producing backward capitalist countries is now more than $660 billion, and towards debt goverments Brazilian imperialist into that more 62 per cent of long term debt is to private banks. All the imperialist powers fear the consequences of banking defaults and are working hard to dissuade banks from This explains cutting back their loans.

why Reagan was instantly converted into a champion of the IMF when the Mexican crisis broke last year, and why in February of this year he agreed a 50 per cent increase in IMF quotas. More active IMF involvement in Mexico has worked - for the time being. But how much longer can the IMF sustain a debt mountain which the backward capitalist countries have no prospect of repaying? After Mexico, Brazil. Earlier this year Brazil negotiated with the IMF to reschedule payments on its $90 billion debt, but failed to meet the conditions the IMF imposed. A new $11 billion package, which the requires Brazilian Congress to legislate a 20 per cent wage cut across the board, is now being put together. Without this condition But if they the banks will not pay •up. up default will be inevitable Lone wolves The IMF conference provoked a conflict within the US camp. The US Congress, threatened not to ratify Reagan's agree the IMF to in crease cuolds American business is concerned that the Government is encouraging banks good money after bad. The US banks foreign assets are greater than the combined foreign assets of France, Britair and West Germany. They also have a much greater proportion of their assets in non-oil-exporting Third World countries - 22 per cent compared with 16 per cent for the three main European nations.

They have also responded much faster to the danger of default: the US banks share of total Euromarket loans to the Third World has declined from 53 per cent in 1975 to around 35 per cent today.

Right-wing congressmen backed up by business interests to the tune of $1 million have launched a 'Free the Eagle' campaign to cut back US subsidies to the IMF claim that Reagan is recklessly doling out money to the loan lushes' of the Third World. Worse still, they accuse the IMF of helping to fund the USA's communist enemies - Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and China. All this masks their real concern, that the USA is losing out to its imperialist rivals in the backward At the moment the capitalist countries. administration is holding out against the "isolationists'. the all are Trenes weakening international imperialist institutions. The IMF won't collapse this side of Christmas, and no doubt Reagan will get his bill through Congress in November with Democratic support. But imperialist negotiations with Third World will increasingly become bilateral, with the object of crowding out the opposition. This is already clear in the negotiations in which Britain and Japan are taking no part, even though Japan is now challenging US domination of the Brazilian economy.

'Isolationism' doesn't mean that the USA and other powers are retreating back their domestic markets. It means and more they hunt alone rather than in packs. And if they fail to get what they want through negotiation, they have their rapid deployment forces standing ready. Gareth Evans the next step, November 1983 19

mackney estate: do-coogers eve view Slumming it Paul Harrison, Inside the inner city: life under the cutting edge, Penguin Books 1983, pp444, pbk £3.95 LIKE AN INTREPID Victorian explorer, Paul Harrison left the safety of his Hampstead home and made the four-mile journey to Hackney.

Armed only with his tape recorder, he conducted more than 500 interviews with the inhabitants of the 'strange world' he found there.

This book is the result. Its main strength is the way in which Harrison uses individual experence to breathe lite into the ofticial statistics of deprivation. Unemployment, poverty, bad housing, disease, domestic and social violence and despair are graphically conveyed in the accounts of those who suffer them day in and day out. The most awful place in Britain According to the government's own criteria, Hackney is a leading contender for the title 'most awful place in Britain'. From the mid 'seventies to 1981 Hackney lost more than 40 cent of its jobs in manufacturing. From per 1979 to 1981 the council, one of the borough's largest employers, shed 300 jobs in its Direct Labour Organisation and cut overtime payments to its manual workers by f20 a week, In 1981, the average male wage in Hackney was £7 a week lower than the national average, and more than £30 lower than the London average.

From 1979 to 1981 the cost of living in Hackney Rents have -na ve risen by almost 250 percent and heating bills by 159 per cent. The consequences can as easily be read in the number of people who had their electricity disconnected - 38 000 in 1980 - or faces of local housewives the desperate scrambling to get the numerous local IntO umole sales Housing is another indicator of the nightmare of urban poverty. In 1981 there were 15 000 people on the council house waiting list. The council owned 2500 empty houses and it started building a further 55. More than 10 per cent of council houses in Hackney are officially classified as unfit for human habitation. Tenants have even set fire to their homes in the hope of being offered a bigger or slightly better Victorian values Harrison himself draws the parallel between his work and that of Victorian social explorers such as nares boom whose massive survey or poverty Life and Labour of the People of London shocked its middle class readers when it was published in 1903. The comparison is a good one. First, the language of both writers conveys contempt people.

BOE

working class Harrison describes Hackney as a 'sump' into which human detritus sinks. Booth described the London poor as the 'residuum", literally human waste matter. Like Booth, Harrison sees the devastation as symptomatic of a sickness throughout society.

Indeed of disease are scattered metaphors throughout his book, The poor are like the bubo that indicates a body riddled with plague, that reveals recurrent sudden lever malaria. The "inner-city phenomenon, we are told, "spread like a cancer during the 'seventies.

Its inhabitants are 'at each other's throats like rats in an overcrowded cage.

Like Booth, Harrison's project is to shake his readers into a realisation that things cannot 20 the next step, November 1983 reviews continue as they are He is concerned no with the effects of the crisis on the working class, but with the consequences of the degrad- Victorian England was gripped by the fear that the mass of starving and homeless people in the capital would upset the whole social order.

During the 1880s, riots shook the centre Donion Angry protests by the Ease fed mob panic the middle classes. The social exploration which protests peaked in Booth's survey. Tales of the African missions were set aside and the middle class read the working books about the conditions of class at home. In response to Booth's shocking revelations a generation of upper class parasites descended on the East End. Through philanthropic foundations like Toynbee Hall and other 'settlements' they tried to expiate their guilty bourgeois consciences by bringing the values of thrift and industry, virtue and temperance to the savage sub-proletariat. By campaigning against the worst excesses of the immiseration of the poor, these social reformers helped to contain the threat to the British establishment. A century later East London provides an eloquent testimony to the value of philanthropy and innercity do-gooders - for the capitalist system. As Harrison documents, 'eighty odd years of the twentieth century, two world wars, massive efforts in public housing, a decade and a half of government programmes to help the inner citv — al these have made essentialv no The, slums and the difference to Hackney. sweatshops seem to go on for ever - and so do the do-gooders. The recession of the 'eighties is recreating in a new form the inner-city lumpen proletariat of Victorian times. A new generation of middle class parasites now afflicts Hackney and areas like it. Harrison is their spokesman. Now they are organised by the borough council, especially by its social services department, its associated and the Party. Harrison quangos, •Labour welcomes the influx of middle class professionals into gentrified Stoke Newington, credits them as the only progressive force in the borough and acknowledges their individual contributions to his book. Together they feed off the suffering of the oppressed people of mackey. vicarousv enovne me suocuture: while helping to stabilise the system that condemns them to a life of misery and a future of despair. For Harrison, all the problems of Hackney are emote extend sorces - une cocume of monetarism, the evil force of Thatcherism, the malice of the multinationals. The Labour council, which has presided over the impoverishment of the local people for most of the last half century, is a blameless victim of circumstances beyond its control. Harrison echoes the combination of fatalism and pragmatism that has led his friends on the left-wing Labour council to give in to government pressures and pass off cuts in jobs and services under the guise of 'progressive' initiatives like 'decentralisation' and community self-help groups. The police who patrol Hackney like an occupying army, especially terrorising the area's substantial black community, are - - according to Harrison - only doing a hard job with the best of intentions.

After a few days touring in a squad car, Harrison police as a tervent apologist tor brutality. He blames young blacks' liking for oua music and icit urugs. and tel nosunt to the police, for racial tensions in Hackney; the victims of racial oppression are turned into its culprits. n a borough where several vouns blacks have died in police custody, Harrison concentrates on the problem of violence against the police inside local police stations.

During the 'seventies Harrison was a writer and commentator on the Third World. The riots showed him that 'you didn't have to travel half way across the globe to find poverty or grasp its destabilising impact on social order.

reviewing the MP Gerald Kautman. Sa DOLL book in The Guardian, points out the threat to social stability inherent in the conditions exposed by Harrison. He sees the spectre of nomodel becoming go areas on the irish common feature of the landscape of the British mainland. Harrison remarks that the inner city is a very good place to learn about the destructive forces inherent in (this) society.

While Harrison's diagnosis of Hackney's problems mirrors that of the Labour left, his prescriptions are more in line with those of the

SDP.

He appeals for a new consensus of values and for a more caring government. He earnestly wants an end to the 'unspoken class warfare that exists in British society. Harrison warns the British establishment that if something is not done about Hackney and similar areas they will explode on a scale much greater than the riots of 1981. In case the Labour left council in Hackney fails to contain this threat, Harrison endorses Metropolitan Police commander Kenneth Newman's methods of intensive repression to deal with the problem. A century after Booth, it's high time the labour movement repudiated the petit-bourgeois voyeurs from Fleet Street to Mare Street who prey on the miseries of the working class.

Tony Powell The Resistance: flying the flag Reconstructing capitalism Richard F Kuisel, Capitalism and the state in modern France, Cambridge Paperback Library 1983, pp 344, £8.50 THIS IS A USEFUL BOOK, particularly for those who still harbour illusions in the 'socialist' character of state intervention in the capitalist economy. Richard Kuisel's study traces the development of state intervention in twentieth century France. It shows that the relative decline of French capitalism compelled the bourgeoisie to seek new methods of state management and control. The parallels with Britain are striking.

In 1945, while the British Attlee Government set about nationalising transport and energy industries and creating the NHS, French Socialist Party Prime Minister Felix Gouin presided over the nationalisation of the credit system, the electricity, gas and coal industries and insurance services. In both countries the upheaval of the world depression in the 'thirties and the Second World War exposed the fragility of capitalist relations. To compensate for low productivity and industrial stagnation the state had to step in on a large scale. French capital was in particularly dire straits.

Militarily defeated by Nazi Germany in June 1940, the French state had lost its national sovereignty. The French economy was subordinated to the German war effort. After the liberation of France by the Allied forces in 1944 the bourgeoisie faced a major task, It had to rebuild its economv and restore the credib ility of the French nation state.

The moves towards nationalisation, increased social services and involvement of the trade unions in discussions of state economic policy were not motivated simply by a desire for By greater economic efficiency.

promoting social and economic reforms which appeared to curb the power of private capital, the French bourgeoisie - like its British counterpart succeeded in winning popular support for its objectives. Nazis and Stalinists Kuisel's study confirms this point. The chapters on the economic strategy of the wartime Vichy Government under Marshal Petain on the one hand, the policy perspectives of the and Resistance under de Gaulle on the other, are of In the bourgeois and particular heress reformist interpretation of the 1940s, Petain occupies a similar place to that of Chamberlain in British history: he is the arch-reactionary traitor, the man who sold out to the Nazi occupiers. The anti-fascist Resistance leaders are regarded within the official French labour movement as the true representatives of the working class. Kuisel shows that in their broad perspectives for the future of French society the Vichy Nazi collaborators and the anti-Vichy Resistance leadership were remarkably similar.

Both were concerned to rebuild French capitalism and both realised that this required major changes in the organisation of French society.

Indeed it was Petain who coined the phrase 'National Revolution' to describe his strategy of state controls, social reform and national economic planning designed to restore France to its former grandeur. Much of Petain's rhetoric as well as his administration's practical policies were taken over by the Resistance after liberation. Kuisel points out that: 'Vichy and the Resistance articulated reforms that, despite obvious differences, had much in common. Both sought a nationalist revival, social reconciliation, moral rehabilitation, a planned and more just economy, and a dynamic state...the men of Vichy and the Resistance combined to uproot old habits and attitudes and design a new economic order.

Anti-fascism provided the Resistance leaders with the radical appeal they needed to win working class cooperation in rebuilding French capitalism. The Stalinist PCF which was the main force within the Resistance, and which by 1942 controlled the main trade union federation, the Confederation Generale de Travail (CGT), played the central role in promoting class collaboration, Immediately after the liberation the PCF called for a 'battle for production' and demanded that workers do voluntary overtime to rebuild the French nation, While de Gaulle was still waiting in the wings and the state was still in disarray the PCF cleared the parn tor captanst reconstrucuon The PCF has not changed much since. It has lost much of its former base in the working class and today has to content itself with a subordinate role in Mitterand's austerity Government. However, its radical nationalism still has a resonance among many French workers and enos underme tesstance to me reactoran Mitterand administration.

Kuisel's book is essential reading for those who want to know more about the background to the class struggle in France today. Sabena Norton The nature of man Norman Geras, Marx and human nature: refutation of a legend, Verso 1983, pp126, pbk £2.95 IT IS UNFORTUNATE that Norman Geras does not make clear why he wrote this book His justification for writing a refutation of the bourgeois prejudice that Marx was hostile to human nature seems rather arbitrary: it was my attendance al a certam semar one evening in early 1979 that led me to want to confront it' For readers who were not privileged to attend this seminar it is necessary to reconstruct the motives behind Geras work and the consequences of his arguments.

'It's human nature, isn't it?'

The question of human nature has long preoccu Vir pied philosophers and social investigators.

tually all religions and ideologies claim respond to the needs of man's essence, his 'nature' or his 'soul". in contrast. Marxisn rejects the concept of a fixed human nature.

Marx argued that everything that is human is the result of social forces, and not a product of Marx summed up his approach in the nature. sixth of his famous Theses on Feuerbach: Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single In its reality it is the ensemble of individual. the social relations." In other words, it is useless to look for general definitions - the attitudes, values and goals of men are determined by the 'ensemble of the social relations. Geras develops an extensive critique of this thesis. Geras' aim is to convince the reader that Marx was in fact firmly committed to the concept of human nature and that the sixth thesis did not contradict this commitment. He begins by unearthing a considerable number of quotations in which Marx uses the term 'human nature. This approach shows the author's familiarity with Marx's texts but by itself scarcely amounts to an argument.

Then Geras proceeds to fall back on the methods of formal logic. Thus he notes correctly that Marx writes From of the transformation of human needs.

this proposition he concludes 'that to declare of anything that it changes does not commit one to the view that everything about it changes or that it has no enduring factors. In other words

changes in man do not necessarily imply that nothing is permanent. Geras' argument is coherent and consistent.

As long as he sticks to textual criticisms and formal logic he manages to sustain his thesis that the concept of human nature is compatible But once we move from textual in- WITA VaT terpretations and look at Marx's method Geras' argument breaks down. Marx did not reject the concept of a fixed human nature out of a desire to be antihumanist. Marx rejected the concept of a fixed essence not only in man but also in nature.

Nature provides the basis for the emergence of human culture. precondition It is the -10] human development and social interaction. But man is not simply a product of nature - man is also a social force which transforms nature.

Man's nature is shaped by his interaction with nature and with other men. In a book recently published in English, the Soviet philospher E.

V. Ilyenkov cogently summarises the Marxist ve w dr tene rel consu berween mlan dnd Ha ture 'Nature as such creates absolutely nothing "human". Man with all his specifically human features is from beginning to end the result and Even walking product of his own labour.

straight, which appears at first sight man's is in actual natural anatomicaty innure tran, fact a result of educating the child within an established society. 'TE.V.Ilyenkov, The dialectics of the abstract and the concrete in Marx's Capital) What we recognise as 'human' is the product of Thus as one form of social labour labour. evolves into another, so human nature itself Marx began, not with a univeris transformed. sal definition of man's essence, but from human practice through which the nature of man is Geras' argument that human change revealed. does not mean that everything must change evolution of the relamisses the polt. site tionship between man and nature leads not to 'changes' but to transformations - in both man The major land masses, the oceans, ane naLuc. mountain ranges, tropical forests and deserts endure _ but thev become less and less relevant In the past, the to understanding society elementary need to eat led to mass migrations and social upheavals.

In the imperialist world today, man's basic physical need is more likely to generate a demand for low-fat foods and aerobics. The new moralism Geras argument does not rest entirely on nis reinterpretation of Marx. He concludes by projecting a new morality based on 'human needs": Where human needs conceris Dase whether for adequate nourishment and other physical provision, for love, respect and friendship, or for freedom and breadth of intellectual and physical self-expression. this is surely a central part of any socialist politics worth the name: the fight against what is inimical to human happiness. And could not one -dc not say the only - motivation for doing so be a conception, an elementary conception, of the vital needs of any healthy human being, in virtue oj numan nature. Geras' ethical posturing indicates that he has the makings of a great humanist. But his worthy are of little use in defining moral principles human nature. Geras is firmly in the camp of academic Marxism. Cut off from the social experience of the working class this school remains essentially contemplative. Hence Geras can discover in his strongly-held principles all that there is to know about human nature. No doubt in that certain one evening in early 1979' it was seminar possible to acknowledge the 'breadth of intellectual and physical self-expression'. Unfortunately for most individuals, human happiness depenas on more mundane matters. In the abstract Geras' ethical principles are all very fine.

In reality they are meaningless phrases that can justify oppression and exploitation just as easily as they can inspire rebellion.

Geras' attempt to refute the view that Marx denied human nature leads to a general nonclass, moralistic outlook.

3510 onan na! ne situates his concept of human nature in 'conformity with the usage of much socialist, and other radical anarchist, COTE Wu asal thought'. In common with radical thought, Geras' rejection of capitalism is moralistic.

Moralism is but one of the ideological under- It is the outlook of a pinnings of reformism. Labour lent that despite its nonror or une arils poverty ana degradation recons al the facc. thought of class violence.

There are good Revolutions tend to demonreasons ior this. strate a lack of concern for the physical safety and survival of the exploiters and to be callous in disregarding their happiness and self-expres- Anybody with the slightest acquaintance sion. with the history of the class struggle knows that class interests come before every principle of humanism. Geras' essay on human nature is a onesided elaboration of the nature of Oxfam-man.

Even his lofty principles are the product of society, not the highest expression of the Frank Richards essence of man. Banking on Europe in Latin America The European challenge: Europe's new role in Latin American Bureau 1982, Latin America, pp 243, pbk £3.95 Latin American Chile the Pinochet decade.

Bureau 1983, pp 118, pbk £2.95 The poverty brokers: the IMF and Latin Amer- Latin American Bureau 1983, pp 138, pbk ica, £3.25 THESE ARE HARD TIMES for liberals. The Latin American Bureau wishes the world was a different place but cannot suggest any way of changing it. These books have in common the fact that they are all well-researched and clearly presented. All three can be recommended for this alone. But the clarity with which factual information is presented is matched by an inability to explain the forces at work in Latin America. The European challenge is a collection of essays on the involvement ol ue buropean powers in the region. The LAB recognises that the role of Europe in Latin America is no different from that of the United States, France, West Germany and Britain are as concerned as the US that the region remains a secure source of minerals and agricultural produce, a sate place for profitable investment, and a ready market for their manufactured goods. Yet most of the contributions detect progressive content in the growing interest in Latin America on the part of the European powers and in their conflict with the United States.

In his contribution on the arms trade, Simon Barrow shows how the increase in European supplies of weapons to countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile offsets the decline in more conventional trade. Arms deals make sure that copper, coffee and beef continue to flow into Europe from Latin America. They also establish the political influence of the selling countries. Arms deals are one way in which the imperialist powers can divide the region into spheres of influence. Barrow laments the 'wastefulness' of the arms trade. He imagines that the militarisation of their relations with the Third World is a shortsighted policy option for the imperialist powers. He appeals to the European powers to be more judicious in their trade with Latin America and to try to avoid the mistakes of the US. The militarisation of competition between the imperialist powers in the region has not yet developed into a coherent system of military blocs. But as the struggle for survival becomes more bitter such a division will be essential to the survival of each imperialist power. All the articles are more or less united in their view that the European powers have a progressive role to play in Latin America. In their overview, Jacqueline Roddick and Philip O Brien welcome the growing conflict within the Western alliance. They welcome the anti- American stamp of the European peace movements and only wish it could be translated into note with approval government policy. They *the willingness of the European media to publicise unsavoury of American The in El Salvador and Guatamala, policy French recognition of the Salvadorean liberation movement. They realise that these tensions have nothing to do with European concern for the welfare of the people of the region but see them as better than nothing.

The they book's horizons are limited oy us autnors inability to point the way to an anti-imperialist strategy in Latin America and Europe, It ends choosing between ecuall) Teac onay options. More of the same For the people of Chile, and by implication the rest of the continent, all the LAB has to offer is a repeat of the past. The compromises of the Allende Government, its concessions to the military, and its savage repression of the working class which prepared the ground for Pinochet's accession to power are passed over almost in embarrassment. The authors are fixated with the "broadness' of Allende's Government and of the present opposition movement. The 'attachment of the Chilean masses to pluralist democracy' is expected to end the nightmare of Pinochet's 'interregnum' in much the same way as it was supposed to sustain the Allende Government. They propose that the broad masses should - give their support to the narrow interest of the Chilean bourgeoisie. To maximise support they denominators which look lor the common unite all classes in Chile. But in a crisis tnere are no common denominators. The emergence of the Christian Democrat opposition - which they find encouraging - merey ex oreses uit realisation by Chile's middle classes that Pinofailed and that working chet s poncies nave class hostility to Pinochet is now an obstacle to the pursuit of their interests. The popular front offered by the Chilean Communist

SERLCE

Party, the far left, and by the LAB seeks to unite the working class with those who backed the 1973 coup. The new opposition is far to the night of th Allende Government. Its rejection of Comm unist Party involvement in the coalition and it selective support for actions against the militar shows renewed confidence of bourgeois opposition forces. They do not need formal support from the left because they know it will be given anyway. Privately, they welcome antigovernment riots organised by Chilean workers they strengthen their hand against becau se Pinochet. In public they condemn the use of violence because they want to see the working class crushed just as much as Pinochet does.

The endorsement of the new opposition by th left in Britain and in Chile proposes a solution which has already failed with disastrous consequences for the working class.

The debt trap By far the best of these books is The poverty brokers. It provides a clear account of the international financial sy stem. Its glossary and statistical tables are excellent. The book shows the relationship between the various institutions of the international financia svstem and how the whole system now hinges on the role of the International Monetary Fund. Most Third World debt is contracted through private banks or groups of banks. This is complicated by the of interbank loans which transfer sy stem money between different banks and banking groups. The threat posed by the current crisis is that any default by one borrowing country will affect not one bank or group of banks but will sreae Tabe roueoul ue caue systc This domino effect would destabilise the banking system of the capitalist world. The world's banks rely on the IMF to do what they cannot do themselves: police the financial system.

The book's case study of Peru which rejected the IMF in the 'seventies shows what the imperialist powers fear most. Instead of going to the IMF the Peruvian government contracted loans directly from the Western banks. In the mid 'seventies when its loans fell due it was unable to pay. For almost two years the battle to subordinate the country to the world banking system was fought in the streets. The working class resisted the austerity measures proposed by the individual banks. By the end of the 'seventies Peru had returned to the fold. But had experienced a the bankine comme nasty shock. Fear of a repetition dominates their thinking now as the battles are fought in other Latin American countries. Riots in Brazil and Mexico, two of the largest debtors, put governments under impossible pressure. They are caught between the opposition of the masses anc the demanes or mier creators. ume recen arrest of Argentina's Central Bank chief ordered by a nationalist judge reveals the strain on the The poverty brokers maps out the sy stem. features of that strain but does not point to any way of resolving it. John Johnson Art and revolution Royal Academy, Art of the avante-garde in Russia: selections from the George Costakis collection IN. 1930 THE RUSSIAN POET and propagandist Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide by shooting himself. His death symbolised the end of an unrivalled period of revolutionary artistic creation. The George Costakis collection of revolutionary arl on ex molton lta Royal Academy in London until 13 November - gives us a glimpse of the creative energy that was crushed by Stalinism From 1900 Russia was a centre for the various art movements - especially Cubism and Futurism - that were sweeping Europe. Braque, who with Picasso pioneered Cubist representation, explained that he had abandoned trad itional perspectives because they too WeLt mechanical to allow one to take full possession of things'. The First World War shattered the avante-garde movement in Western Europe. In Russia it intensified it.

Constructivism Although Constructivism only emerged after the Bolshevik revolution, its principles were laid out in the pre-revolutionary period. The Constructivists were concerned with the engineering underlying and mathematical principles the construction natural form, structural forces causing it and in the to take the particular shape it does. Their work expressed hostility to nature as an oppressive force. For the Constructivists machines were a means of liberation, helping man to seize the world from the hands of nature to build a new one belonging to himself' (K Malevich, The new system of art). Gustav Klucis' anti-imperialist poster, 1931 The Constructivists welcomed the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 because it gave a direction to their activities. They rejected those Western Constructivists who defended art as aesthetic and fought to build a communist activity, The revolution gave them the opporculture. tunity to abandon "idle picture painting' and create 'a living factory of the human spirit in the streets, in the tramways, in the factories, workshops and workers' homes'.

period immediately after October In the 1917 the Constructivists concentrated on prop- Their agitprop trains travelled aganda work. the country bringing news and images of the revolution. They organised plays to explain the revolution, pageants and festivals to celebrate it. Their posters were invaluable in the propaganda war. The Constructivists turned from propaganda work to producing objects of use.

They used their artistic and engineering skills to design every thing from clothes to heat-efficient stoves, from furniture to swimming pools.

They planned cities and built new monuments. Many of their projects - such as Tatlin's famous monument to the Third International - were never realised. Many of them were utopian and impractical. In part, this reflected their belief that technology itself was a force for liberation. But they provided a vision of a possible future.

Those few years after 1917 showed how art could become useful in building a new world.

As the Stalinist bureaucracy became entrenched from the mid 'twenties, it began to sap the lifeblood of the Constructivists. To a regime that needed to proscribe workers' aspirations if it was to survive, the innovation and energy of the Constructivists were a threat. The bureaucracy adopted the most conservative formulae.

In the pictorial field it took the Wonderers' a group of Russian artists from the 1860s - as its model. In architecture it advocated a return to the classical style. In 1932 'Socialist Realism' became the official artistic dogma of the Soviet Union. The avante-garde movement had fragmented long before. Some artists, like Lissitsky, emigrated to the West. Utners, ик коасленко. simply gave up art. A few, including Drevin and Klucis, died in Stalin's concentration camps.

Their works were ignored and forgotten.

In 1946, a minor official at the Greek Embassy in Moscow, George Costakis, began collecting revolutionary art. He soon amassed a huge collection. The Royal Academy exhibition comprises 300 works from his collection.

It would be difficult to find a less apt place than Burlington House, with its stultifying atmosphere, crystal chandeliers and gold friezes, the work of the Constructivists.

to display Mayakovsky once wrote, We do not need a dead mausoleum of art where dead works are worshipped". Yet even within this dead mausoleum, the vitality and vision of the Constructivists is staggering. Most of the major artists are represented - Lissitsky, Kandinsky, Malevitch and Klucis, Ender, Rozanava Koccnenk. Popova. Their versatility is astonishing. None expresses this better than the work of Popova.

Her drawings, textile designs, theatre sets and propaganda speak a different language to bourgeols art But it is here - in communicating the effect of the revolution on creativity - that the exhibition fails dismally. You could walk through the exhibition without realising that there had been a revolution in 1917. The impact of the revolution on art was immense. It was the revolution which unleashed the Constructivists' creative energies and turned them from purveyors of hope into creators of reality. Of this there is not the slightest hint at the Royal Academy.

Nevertheless, the exhibition is well worth a visit. It gives a hint of the vitality and hope of the first few years of the revolution. It provides a vision of what might have been Kennon Malik the next step, November 1983 21

Letters in Somerset Somerset County of branch

NALGO,

Wilcu BOaSES

OIE TES

tradition of non-militancy, has 178 residential workers mem bership. They spread arc through 41 homes on a countywide basis. The immediate problem to be overcome, if effective industrial action is to be taken, is the isolation of these mem.

bers. meeting residential workers, called in the summer before the national action ballot was nela, auractea only eignt people. This was at least partly because the meeting was held in Taunton while the majority of residential workers live and work in other towns. Workers employed in other council services were not invited to the opportunity and an HCCLllE to involve them was missed.

The balt approved nationalindustrial action (althorever ugh it is rumoured that Somerset branch The voted analist) branch an Industrial sel up Action Committee. This was not elected by the residential workers but appointea oy the branch executive. It consists of branch officers and as many representatives of the social services department as they can muster.

There is only one residential worker on the action committee.

The residential worker is the only member of the committee prepared to visit the various homes to talk to members. This job is left to the full time official from the district office, who a month after the action started, had done that he a dECeu A narrow escape I must thank you for your kind support in my recent troubles.

Without the help

OI WAR 1

would not have known where to tur. My home was badly damaged when someone pushed a towel soaked in petrol through my letterbox and set it on fire.

The front door was burned down and our curtains and Cal pel ruined. If the noise had not woken us up. me and my husour baby daughter band and would probably have burned to death. To make matters worse the council just ignored me.

FOI

Hackney Labour Party politic- Tans nave been denowneig et French for turning away black day-trippers at Calais.

STEIS

Councilor sam springer even made the journey himself to see whether he would get turned back, What we would like to know is what those same politicians are doing to fight racism in their own backyard. French policies of racial discrimination are disgraceful, but what about the race checks the Department ot Emplovment has admitted it will be introducing in the dole offices? Race checks (or 'ethnic monitoring' as they are politely called) in Hacknev are. in lact.

110 L new at all. The new British Nat-

OAIEY

black the population are carefully monitored and snooped upon wherever they go. Checks hospitals, operate

TOW

housing allocation and 22 the next step, November 1983 nalgo NALGO inaction nothing because of pressure of work! A few union reps contacted some of the homes to find out wial c suport was Of the 34 homes they 'phoned, 12 expressed complete support and 3 retused to support any action. A further nine reported that they were banning overtime but not admissions. Since there is almost no overtime in Somergesture.

SCU SE

Was Their refusal to ban admissions does not indicate that they are willingly scabbing on the strike.

Admissions are the responsibility of the heads of homes. NALGO has refused to instruct its members to take any action against heads who allow admissions. No wonder the workforce is put off taking reprisals. If the residential workers are to win their claim it will be in spite of the lead given by the national and local leadership of

•NALGO.

However there aL C some useful lessons to be drawn from the experience of branches like Somerset. One is the inadequacy or une system or departmental representatives, where a rep may be responsible for several hundred members miles away from his own workplace.

We need a workplace - based So the stewara sy stem. lar executive have opposed this. We aso neco to orig our union under the control of the tartk and file and take it out of the hands of a few officials.

Celia Parker Somerset three weeks I asked them at least to fix our front door. But they never came. Tower Hamlets councillors were keen for black people to vote for the Labour Party but when we go to them for help they just turn away.

When WAR took me to a meeting with Paul Boateng and Ken Livingstone where they wanted again to convince black people they were doing right by them, they had to listen to my story. They had to put me and my family in a new nouse Again, thank you WAR. Amie Jeng East London Race checks in Hackney schools. Soon even the unemploved will be under OB Cal government surveillance. Local Labour councils. like Hackney, have gone along with mus. Housme cet Jomn boom assures black people while I'm Housing Services chair oi the the police wont Committee, allowed access records. The ene mnonty fact is, and Bloom must know this very well, that gathering slausues on race 1s al mirool Lant element in Sir Kenneth Newman's new multi-agency policing scheme for London. Sooner or later, Bloom's records are bound get into the hands oi the police. Sam Springer, John Bloom and their cronies should follow opposition to French up melr racism with a crusade nearer to home. Zaro Costello SA OnCOr I'm sick of reading about how Norman Fowler's latest cuts in NHS manpower can be achieved without affecting patient care its already deteriorating rapidly, and it's really only down to luck that more patients haven't died.

The reason is that, even before the latest redundancies were concived, nurses were being badly aBeCted Jong standug policy of running down staffing levels on the wards. At my hospital, the majority of the nursing staff consists of student nurses, with most wards having only two qualified staff on each shift. In the Intensive Care Unit, we usually have five qualified nurses, but one of these look after each is needed to Often patient on a ventilator. aren't enough qualified there nurses to go round, and sometimes inexperienced students have to be lett in charge of these Sometimes very sick patients. on night shift there can be only two nurses on dutv at a time often they are too busy to take ...so must teachers! Bradford's Tory council has cuts of £2¼ announced just million in this year's education budget and f9 million in next year's. This will mean an immediate cut in jobs for supply teachers, followed by the loss of 500 other jobs over the coming yeaI. Bradford's teachers have had to deal with cuts for each of the past eight years, under both Labour and Tory administrations. These cuts are the worst vet and have provoked a swilt response. On 17 October, 800 teachers attended a mass meeting and voted to take the •first steps to oppose the cuts by balmembership loting action. The problems facing this are great. The NUT struggle National Executive member who spoke at the meeting made it very clear that they would remain in full control of any action taken. But perhaps the Police violence in Bristol On 31 January 1982, polic forced their way into the home of the Royal family in Argyle Road, St Paul's, Bristol. They beat Royal and her up Mrs and dragged her son children, David off for questioning. They held him for two days. They were investigating the inciden where PC Ian Bennett had a slab of concrete dropped on him by 50 black youths. They were trying to pin a charge of attempted murder on David Royal if finger mates. C100 1 SniS As a result of the raid Mrs Royal was charged with actual bodily She was later acquitted HaLEl on appeal and is now suing the police. The Royals are no strangers 1980 police violence. In David Royal was acquitted of charges arising out of the 1980 St Paul's riot. In January this police smashed down the yCal front door of the Royals' home on une pretext cnat uney were for Mr Royal for looking traffic offence. They punched and kicked Mr Royal to the ground. The incident ended with 60 police trying to control an angry crowd of local residents who had gathered to defend the family. Mr Royal, three children Nurses fight for jobs the breaks they are entitled to and this can lead to mistakes being made. Now that the, intake of student nurses is being reduced, we will be under even more pre ssure - and Fowler says that patient care won't be affected The fact is that too many jobs have already been allowed to go, through 'natural wastage", to allow for any further cuts.

The only way patient care is to fight for every job - and to demand more jobs, so that we can provide the kind of service to pa uents Knows meeted means all the unions That and all the hospital workers joining together to oppose all redundancies - even 'voluntary" We intend to revive the

OLCS

Action Group formed during last year's pay dispute to do just that. Estella Downer RO SteWard St George's Hospital Tooting, London biggest problem is that the campaign has already been directed towards combatting redundancies COnDUISOry not lighting for all jobs. Over the past eight years the NUI leadership has won the argument that limiting job losses to voluntary redundancies, early retirement and natural wastage is a victory. This has paved the Way TOr a Steauy Croson 11 00 and conditions of service.

workers must 1o win, the win two arguments. Firstly that the fight is to save all jobs, including those of the supply teachers immediately threatened. Secondly for direct local control over the campaign by local representatives, drawn not just from the NUT but all the teaching and non-teaching unions involved. Rob Knight Bradford RCP au a egou were ee ou-a Trinity Road police station to be charged. his is the sort of thing likely to happen to you if you are black and live in St Paul's.

But the people of St Paul's have shown that they can fight back: the 1980 riots, the attack on PC Bennett, and the defence of the Royals all prove this. Recently refused the police have attena evictions orderea by the council in the area, for fear of provoking a disturbance".

At the moment the police are playing cautious and trying to stay out of trouble in the area. In the June riot this year, the police adopted a 'defensive' rather than an 'aggressive' tactic in the hope of calming the situation. But this was mainlv foi public consumption. Out of the headlines, systematic police harassment of the black community goes on unabated. They way

KHOW

-BE E

OTAR

keeping St Paul's under control in ine ruture will de to come down hard. As the experience of the Royal family shows, 'community policing' is already a dead duck in Bristol. Ewan Cameron St Paul's, Bristol Militant: opportunists As a one-time reader of Militant, I was interested to read your article (the next step 40) on their approach to the general election. I have several friends are supporters. WnO vi tonet They scurried around canvassing support for the Labour Party wanted me to join ana taey them! As your article points out, thev sav one thing in and another in public. When I argue with them about the past and prèsent role of the Labour Party, they that it has agree consistentiv betraved the work ing class. They accept that it has auCTO Cu o manase uie Dosses system at the expense of the working class if necessary - and it usually has been necessary.

accepts that the Labour Party's programme is just another promise to keep the Yet when they system afloat. go around getting people out to vote, my Militant friends paint this as the most radical departure in English politics since the Roundheads lopped off Charles They anticipate the I's head. party falling into their hands if ...or grey liberation? Your article on Militant in the last issue of the next step missed out couple of important points. Militant has never really emerged from the 1950s Cocooned inside the Labour Party it has not had to come to terms with new conditions within the

WORKS

radical departures that have occurred Marxist thought. -In Militant are caught in a time lock. Militant supporters do a GusseNce toune working class not only by their uncritical support for the Labour Party but also by their reduction of Marxism and working class politics to a set of dusty formulae. It doesn't help that their catechisms are recited by a set of equally grey individuals.

The rigidness with which they cling their to rece ved notions of what Marxism is about astounds me. Their paper appalling corector turgid articles, each one committed to pumping the 'correct" the next step repues Lenny Pearmain's critique of Militant reveals that he shares the narrow outlook of the British radical left. What he singles out as Militant's weaknesses are, in fact, its only strengths.

First, he objects to the idea of a 'correct' party line, and the notion that it should be trans mitted to the membership and readers or the paper.

•TOT TOS

of its history the British left has shied away from the necessity for theoretical development. It resents any struggle for political clarity and prefers to stum ble along in its inimitable "British' The British left fears -personal consequences of having to develop and pursue a coherent political strategy.

its critique of Militant it attacks the form of presentation of Militant's poltics rather that assessing whether its politics are adequate

UTO:

BeTence working class interests. Pearm ain's second objection - to the 'au thoritarian command structures' of Militant - reflects Tine anything which impinges on Militant they continue to burrow away in the vouth sections. In meantime they are prepared to the party leadership.

DOW TO

They even offered up their leaders for expulsion so that they could get on with the job of 'infiltrating' the future leadership of the Labour Party.

If the record of their 'Marxist' MPs is anything to go by, even a future Militant-dominated Labour Party would not be much different to the one we're Militant are used to now so used to the political environment Labour Party that inside mne they are indistinguishable from it. The only way you can tell a Militant apart from any other Labour Party member is that he will be slightly younger, and maybe a bit more fiery if he's right audience taiking to tne (though Roy Hattersley even knows the difference between talking to a crowd of young blacks and a group of right-wing jourausts). you wont be able to distinguish him by his politics.

Jonathan Davis Liverpool line into the membership. There is little room in the lives of Militant supporters for personal development or for coming to a creative understanding of Marxism. The "Marxism' they are committed to is learned by rote and regurgitated by each member to order. Their sectarian organisation, with its emphasis on authoritaran commane StruCtures. would remind most workers of Cuc SOe WTeHOus group like the Moonies. Their organisation does little to reflect the of ox bericac WOIKeIS themselves. Their gloomy outlook on life and politics can only put workers off revolutionary politics. As your article points out, Militant supporters have been up to their necks in the hierarchical structures of the Labour Party for so long, they have ended up operating in more or tes cae same way.

Lenny Pearmain Oxford It would sacred individuality. rather not confront the harsh reality that we are engaged in a struggle with a ruthless and disciplined enemy. The ruling class will fight tooth and nail to hold on to its power. We need to be equally ruthless and disciplined.

Ine british leit attacks this posttive feature of Militant rather man pointing out what Mintant s directed at discipline not winning working class power, but is designed merely to reconcile workers to the Labour Party and te trade unon bureductacy The left is unable to go beyond narrow organisational To criticisms Militant. Of vary ing degrees, Militant's opporall British tunsu s suaea o left groups both inside and outside the Labour Party. The left has adapted itself to the Labour Party and the trade union every bit as much bureaucracy as Militant. It selects Militant's manner or presentung Its pontici for sharpest criticism, because that is all that dis tinguishes Militant from the rest of the left.

Activities by Workers deportation of any member of either family.

threat to 'bash him' if he appeared.

and Sheila Vythelingum are dropped.

to more people. towns. JOIN US! Newcastle, Brighton, Greater London (Lambeth, Southwark, Ealing). Phone 01-274 3951 for details of times and places.

of your copy every month.

Individual subscription rates (for 12 months) • Britain and Ireland £5 • Europe £8.50 Middle East and North Africa £10 America, Asia and Southern Africa £12 • Australasia £13 stop the Hasbudak ponsatien No moredeportations! On Thursday 20 October 100 primary school children joined a picket organised Against Racism in protest at the threatened deportation of the Hasbudak family and Vythelingum family (see page 6). The children, their parents, teachers and other school staff came from Hackney and Tottenham to let immigration minister David Waddington know that they were determined to fight the The children rushed around giving out leaflets to passers-by and issuing bloodcurdling threats to Waddington. A delegation from the picket went into the Home Office to hand over a petition containing the signatures of the children, their parents, teachers, school staff, and friends. The delegation was received by Waddingt on's personal secretary, who assured us that the cases were 'under consideration'.

David Waddington himself was unavailable for comment. Perhaps he heard the Workers Against Racism is determined that no member of either family will be kicked out of the country. We do not recognise the right of the British state to • dictate the movement of workers. It has no right to tell the Hasbudaks and Vythelingums to get out and take their children with them. We intend to fight until the deportation orders against Polat and Kebire Hasbudak and against Michel What do you do after reading hext step? If you agree that the working class urgently needs the arguments in the next step to resist the bosses' attacks, then help us to get those arguments We sell the next step at street meetings in the following Liverpool, Birkenhead, Manchester, Oldham, Ashton, Doncaster, Barnsley, Rotherham, Hatfield, Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leamington Spa, Coventry, Glasgow, Tower Hamlets, Islington, Camden, Brent, Hammersmith and Fulham, Subscribe to next step the next step is sold on streets, housing estates and in bookshops throughout the country but if you can't get it in your area, use this form to make sure Libraries and institutions please add £5 to the above rates.

RACISM

Ashton Rd Castle St Church St Armthorpe Hatfield Dunscroft Wandsworth, Hackney,

LEEDS

OLDHAM

Tuesday 8 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Ireland: who are the real criminals?

Mare and Foal pub

MANCHESTER

Thursday 17 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Remember the Manchester Martyrs Manchester Polytechnic Student's Union Sidney Building, Oxford Rd

LIVERPOOL

Thursday 27 October 7.30 pm Public Meeting Make the unions fit for women to join Liverpool Polytechnic Students' Union Haigh Buildings Maryland St

NEWCASTLE

Tuesday 15 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Fighting for Irish Freedom Bridge Hotel

DONCASTER

Tuesday 1 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting No British solution Armthorpe Miners' Welfare Friday 11 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Fight for the right to fight!

Speaker Alan Harding Broadway Pub Tuesday 22 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Fight for the right to fight!

The Broadway Pub The Broadway Public Meeting Women in Ireland See Leeds Other Paper for details I want to subscribe to the next step starting with issue I enclose cheque/postal order for .........

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Tel. 01-274 3951 Meetings Leeds public debate Ireland - the way forward Speakers Derek Fatchett MP (Labour) Michael Meadowcroft MP (Liberal) Mike Freeman (Irish Freedom Movement) Sunday 11 November 2.00 pm The Grand Theatre New Briggate (back entrance) Meetings

BRADFORD

Thursday 10 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting to discuss trade union delegation to Ireland Textile Hall Westgate

• SHEFFIELD

Thursday 3 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Make the unions fit for women to join Speaker Kate Marshall Tuesday 15 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Which way forward for the working class?

Speaker Frank Richards Both at Sheffield Centre Against Unemployment Bridge St Thursday 10 November IFM activists' group meets in the Brown Cow The Wicker

COVENTRY

Monday 14 November 7.30 pm Public Meeting Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Bill!

Hare and Squirrel Pub New Union St Support Sinn Fein picket of Gartree prison Sunday 6 Novenber Transport leaves Poole Meadow 11.45 am

BIRMINGHAM

IFM activists' group meets fortnightly Monday 31 October, Monday 14 November, Monday 28 November Phone 01-274 3951 for details

GLASGOW

Monday 7 November 1.30 pm Fight the NHS cuts! Picket Greater Glasgow Health Board 225 Bath St

LONDON

British imperialism - senile but vicious The last in a series of meetings on the war drive. Phone 01-274 3951 for details (please state issue number you want your subscription to start from (make cheques/postal orders payable to Junius Publications Ltd)

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the next step, November 1983 23 S th ely ector tues arkin emp Iggle reme lock this nal H Lab ding invo tion War ing stru

Irish Freedom Movement Liverpool conference Stop the showtrials! PATSY AND THERESA MOORE, their daughter-in-law Gabrielle and her three children are a family at war in the Six Counties. On 24 March last year, machine gun-toting RUC men arrested Gabrielle's husband Patrick Pearse Moore at their home in Derry. Police dragged Pearse off to the Castlereagh interrogation centre on the day Gabrielle was due to go into hospital for the birth of their third child.

Baby Michael is now 19 months old and has yet to meet his father, still in British The only evidence custody awaiting trial. the RUC have against Pearse is the testimony of supergrass John Grimley. Pearse's trial was adjourned after Grimley found to have a history of psychopathic While in custody, Pearse has tendencies. been offered bribes to turn supergrass.

His mother, Theresa, has been arrested.

The RUC told her they knew Pearse was innocent, but if she would admit to membership of a proscribed organisation her son could go free. She refused.

Pearse Moore is only one of more than 250 nationalists who have been held by • Speakers from Ireland will introduce the discussions.

10am Morning session 2pm Afternoon workshops • How to stop the Prevention of Terrorism Act • British trade unionists report on their visit to Ireland • Law and disorder in Ireland - Diplock to H-Block 4.30pm Final session • Where do we go from here?

Saturday 26 November 10am - 5.30pm Liverpool Polytechnic Students' Union The Haigh Building Maryland Street Liverpool 1 Transport from Manchester, staying for the Manchester Martyrs Commemoration March.

Movement. Phone 01-274 3951 for details The Moores outside their Bogside home: a family divided on the word of a supergrass • the RUC on supergrass evidence.

convictions have already been handed down in no-jury. nationalist community of the Six Counties is fighting to stop the show trials. Michael English, whose son was killed by a British Army landrover during the hunger-strike protests two years ago, is prominent in the Campaign At a march and rally through Derry's Bogside last month, Michael English described the supergrass strategy as only the latest suffering Britain nationalist community since the movement for civil rights began in the late 'sixties; 'On 5 October 1968 we stood on was this same spot to highlight the denial of Today, 15 years on, we're seeking rights. the same basic rights in our fight against the show trials system. The British state has suffered some embarrassing setbacks attempts to break nationalist resistance through the use of supergrasses.

came the escape of 38 republican prisoners from the Maze prison in September. Then Conference agenda 26 November • Supergrasses and the lie of "British justice': victims' relatives speak out Sunday 27 November Assemble 1pm Manchester Martvrs Commemoration March to Moston Cemetery Called by Sinn Fein Leeds, Sheffield, Glasgow, Bradford, Coventry, Cardiff, Bristol, Sunderland, London. Accommodation available for those £1.50 registration fee (£1.00 unemployed). Make cheques payable to Irish Freedom supergrass system Sixty Diplock courts. The Belfast's Palace from car. being rearrested. Against the Show Trials. Lean. has inflicted on the conference will be of late in its First forced to Name. Address. Birmingham, Telephone. its one (Riverside), Terry jeopardise into the Group. speaking out against the pool. last month, Britain lost its star supergrass when Robert Lean, described by the media cillors as a senior IRA commander, escaped Barracks via and bathroom window and a borrowed police Lean retracted his evidence before inquiry. The RUC was forced to start releasing some of the 28 men held on evidence the police had forced out of The nationalist community's resistance to British legal terror remains undaunted.

The Irish Freedom Movement's Liverpool discussing how to build support for their struggle in Britain.

Gabrielle Moore summed up the nationalists' determination and called for support: Prevention The showtrials are another barbaric attempt to crush resistance to British occupation. Its a tactic which has hit not just at those being held on remand but has caused enormous harassment to the families as well. But we're not going to be intimidated and we appeal for your help in the Britain to put an end to this injustice.'

conference. Yorkshire Irish Freedom Movement If you want to see the reality of war in the Six Counties and meet people who are fight unemployment, oppression, join the Yorkshire IFM delegation The delegation leaves on the evening of Friday 18 November and returns early on Tuesday 22 November. Transport is available from Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford The fee for each delegate is £40 (including transport costs) which can be raised from sponsoring organisations or personal contributions Trade union delegation to Ireland I want to join the Yorkshire Trade Union Delegation to Ireland I/We wish to sponsor the delegation and enclose &.

We wish to receive a report-back from a delegate to Ireland_ Trade union branch/trades council.

Send to Irish Freedom Movement, BM IFM, London WCIN 3XX or phone Phil Murphy on 01-274 3951 for further details.

Smash the PTA! October the humdrum On Tuesday 4 routine of lunchtime Liverpool was broken by 40 supporters of Liverpool Irish Free- Waving banners and dom Movement shouting slogans, the IFM lobbied Mersey.

side County Council as the latest stage of Merseyside campaign to make Prevention of Terrorism Act-free zone.

Local IFM organiser Denise Taylor handed a petition of more than 800 signatures to council leader Keva Coombes.

Coombes of the 14 county councillors supporting the IF campaign for a PTAfree Merseyside Local MPs Bob Parry Eddie Loyden (Garston). Fields (Broadgreen) and Bob Wavering (West Derby) have also given Up to now veteran Livertheir backing. pool left-winger Eric Heffer has refused to support the campaign, fearing that taking a firm stand against the PTA might of becoming his prospects Labour's leader. However, the IFM will be seeking his support again shortly.

The ruling Labour group on Merseyside County Council have baulked at the pro.

posal to oppose publicly any use of the Act on Merseyside and to cut off funds to the Special Branch. The Labour group has shunted the PTA-free zone debate sidings of its Police Working The working group in turn has commissioned one of its members to dig up the history of the PTA's use in Liver- After nine years in which Merseyside has accounted for a quarter of all PTA detentions, the Labour county coun claim they lack adecuate n formation to decide policy. The IFM will be submitting its evidence of dawn arrests exclusions under the PTA to the But IFM supporters will continue to concentrate on practical campaigning against the harassment of Liverpool's Irish community. Merseyside Labour councillors' equivo.

cation over the PTA is typical of the record of the Act's opponents in the Labour Party. Labour critics of the PTA have wavered because they object only to its violation of civil liberties. Labour has always accepted the need for the PTA in Britain's Irish War. As we go to press the Bill is being of Terrorism debated in Parliament. The Bill seeks to make permanent the temporary provisions of the present Act.

Labour MPs' performance in the debate will doubtless provide more good reason why those who want to smash the PTA/B should back IFM and come to the Liverpool British military dire housing conditions and