DivL IGH BUILDERS' LEADERS FLOUT UNION DEMOCRACY basic principles of democracy in the labour movement, the Executive of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians is refusing to vote against the Healey deal on 16 June -sion of its biennial conference last week.
George Smith declared that the Executive would not carry out the decisions of the conference - which had been clearly carried by 112 votes bers would be held, and as the result of this would not be known until mid-July, the union's delegation to the special TUC conference would not vote. Yet last year the union against the pay deal. UCATT delegates show what they think of Murray's histrionics-the hands go up The fists that flew in Parliament last week were just one more sign of the impotence of the Labour left. After absurd posturings, singing of the Red Flag and offers to 'meet the Tories outside', the following Monday saw them meekly standing by while the Government shelved the nationalisation of the aircraft and shipbuilding industry - perhaps for the life of this The fiasco over this Bill reveals the real dilemma of the Labour lefts.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has just negotiated a huge loan to back the ailing pound. Despite Healey's statements that no cuts are neces sary at the present time every Labour MP knows that such loans are not given out of charity or as a reward for getting the pay policy past the They contain 'sleeper clauses' which are liable to wake up with the next round of pressure against the pound. All the blustering of the Left MPs Bidwell, Flannery and Thorne cannot disguise the fact that they will limit their opposition to the cuts to Parliament and then not to the extent of defeating the Government.
Instead of posturing they should be out building e campaign against the cuts, touring the colleges under occupation building support for the fight of the student teachers against redundancies. Instead of playing he-men with the Tories in the House of Commons after one too many in the bar, they should be touring the shipyards and aircraft factories building mass action in support of nationalisation The steam roller of the trade union bureaucracy will move into action at the Special TUC Congress this week. It will flatten the hopes that millions of workers had for the defence of their basic living standards under the Labour Government they put into power.
The Lefts could mobilise thousands of workers against the deal: the 47 per cent of miners who voted against the policy; the building workers, whose leader rejected the decision of their conference against the 4% per cent. as 'unacceptable'; the engineers gagged by Scanlon and the right wing at the AUEW conference a fortnight ago. The list is endless. But so is the Lefts' series of vacillations and capitulations.
Only through starting to build rank and file opposition to the Govern ment's polices on cuts, unemployment and wages starting from the 16 June lobby will the links be made between the militant minorities in the labour movement who are opposed to this Government's policies.
voted against the £6 deal when no mandate at all existed In a further attack on workers democracy Smith warned that if comerence persiste in passing Im proper resolutions there would have to be serious consideration of wheth er this delegate conference was capable of representing the members.
The vote of the 281,000 strong union, the first manual workers' union to oppose the pay deal, was a snub not only to Smith but to the right-wing leaders of the TUC -including Len Murray, whose impassioned plea for acceptance of the 4½ per cent deal had no effect on Paper delegates but landed him in hospital.
Conference also instructed the Executive to submit a claim for £2 an hour for craftsmen to the buildHealey. rnoto. vews LIn ing employers and for a 35-hour week. With unemployment in the building trade running at over 200,000 in the building industry, even according to official figures some delegates put the real figure at over 300,000 - the fight for 35 hours is an essential part of the struggle for jobs.
Delegates also called for an increase in capital expenditure for construction work. But to wage a fight against cuts in building spend ing means linking up with hospital social and education workers in a common fight against Healey's White Building workers must now organise to force the leaders of UCATT to carry out the decisions of the conference. In recent weeks the right wing in the unions - starting with Hugh Scanlon, who used the Engineering Section block vote to clobber the other three sections of the AUEW at the union's national conference, supposedly its supreme decision-making body - have pulled every trick in the book to get blanket endorsement of their deal with The UCATT conference struck one blow against this. Building workers can strike another by turning out in tre for une loopy or the TUC on 16 June to demand that their leaders implement union policy and vote against the deal.
4 NALGO/TUC The annual conference of the National and Local Government Officers Association, Britain's fourth largest union, is taking place this week - one of the last big dramas in the build up to the special TUC conference on 16 June.
The NALGO leadership first sold their members the social contract as a way of protecting jobs in public services. The £6 limit was likewise packaged by the bureaucrats as if NALGO's acceptance was conditional upon the Government protecting jobs and services.
But before 'giving a year for Britain' was even six months oldi Denis Healey's public expenditure White Paper of February cut public services tor a rurtner rour years until 1980. And at this moment, as NALGO's leaders are rallying the right wing to force through the National Executive Council's emergency motion accepting the 4½ per cent deal, further f2 bn. cuts are being prepared by Healey which must lead to public sector sackings if implemented.
NONSENSE nis ace alone makes nonsense of the NEC's motion, which once again couples NALGO's acceptance of wage cuts with demands that any agreement between the trade unions and the Government must be related to policies to reduce unemployment and maintain public services.
Economic Committee chairman Glyn Phillips virtually admitted this when moving the resolution at the NEC, stating that it did not mean that NALGO support for the pay deal was conditional on these conditions being carried out.
There is a reason for this leftish hypocrisy by NALGO's right-wing leaders. They cannot yet be sure LONDON COLLEGES ir 7.30pm at Sidney Webb College, Barrett St, W.1.
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JACK LEWIS that further cuts and possible sackings will not galvanise public sector workers into the kind of mass action that brought down the Tory Government.
Despite the fact that last year's strike figures were the lowest for seven years, there are still enormous reserves of opposition to Labour's Tory policies in the labour movement today. There have been strikes, demonstrations and conferences against cuts and unemployment. But the oppositionist sentiment ranges far wider than simply the participants in these limited actions so far, and is potentially expiosive.
FRIGHTENED NALGO members have been part of this opposition. Thousands of gas industry workers took strike action against British Gas management's attempt to impose new work conditions without agreement. This attempt and the accompanying victimisations could not have been made without the specific knowledge of Government Ministers. Social service staff have acted against frozen posts. Thousands of members have supported NALGO's Save Your Services campaign by attending rallies and marches.
Seen by NALGO leaders as a propaganda effort in the aftermath of last year's poor wage settlement and conditional acceptance of the £6 limit, the support attracted by the campaign soon frightened NALGO's right-wing leaders more than the cuts it was meant to combat.
They have since managed effectively to end mass involvement in the campaign by turning it into a long term' project.
But while this potential for struggle in NALGO was making itself felt, and the right wing was organising al a national lever to -WHATS ONfilm "Viva Portugal: followed by discussion. 8.30pn disco. Admission 20p ROADGANG, touring socialist theatre group based in he North.East need actor musician from Augus -ouity rates. Apply in writing to: 5 vashington te. ce, North Shields, Tyne & Wea COME TO the Summer School for MG members: 2% ua- 1 Sept. About £20 all in, including room an oard in comfortable surroundings, Meading mists dv able soon. Book now as places limited! Will be held ir Indiane countle Further deals ran NING Nat SAVE THE E.G.A. Campaign open meeting-all we come. Mon 14 June, 7pm, Goodwill Centre, Ossulstor *St, NW1 (just off Euston Rd between Euston and St FIGHT UNEMPLOYMENT! Stop the Cuts! Marct Through Newham Sat 12 June, assemble 2pm Red Weekly 10 June 1976 based on?
I stood on a specific platform against cutbacks in the public sector. Only two of the other nine candidates said any thing at all about fighting the cuts. My election as delegate to the TUC shows that members are willing to respond to the policies i nave deen butting How do you see the cutbacks affecting your members?
The recent five-year plan for health in Wales gives specitic examples of cuts in hospitals and staff. NALGO members will certainly suffer from redeployment", as it is called. vacancies has increased considerably. On 1 May 1976 there were 167 unfilled posts in Mid-Glamorgan. Most seriously case workers are already overstretched and new cuts are being planned. it's also worsening the quality of the service that can be provided.
ment-TUC pay deal?
A very fierce debate raged in my own branch of 2,500 members. The NEC head it off, what has the left been whatsoever nationally - indeed, they haven't even tried to. oration Posthese attacks ERICA BARNETT, a Red Weekly supporter and member of Cardiff West Labour Party, will be representing 24,000 members of the National and Local Government Officers Association as a South Wales District delegate to next week's special TUC conference. We asked her how she saw the fight back against the Government's policies developing.
What was your election programme the day. living.
In local government, non-filling of cuts?
hit are the social services, where field and for example It's not just that staff are being cut;
What do you think of the Govern- cuts.
doing? The 17 out of 64 NEC members who voted against the new deal with Healey have made no impact SOCVCL emergency motion to accept the pay policy was only passed by two votes. Although / would like to see the Tuc special conference reject the pay deal. it is clear that the rhetoric of Jones Murray and Co. has temporarily won But as the feelings voiced in my own branch show, there is the basis for an independent camparon acains, inese aracks It is obvious that people are confused to see a Labour government carrving out these policies - they all know that the Government's measures have resulted in a lowering of their standard of What sort of measures do you think are necessary to stop the A programme or bunding works council houses, schools and hospitals, would soak to unemproy ment not only for building workers but for NALGO members in administration.
we should demano to see the acc ounts of local authorities who are proposing cuts. A demand like that is a vital part of any campaign against the yve should arso stoo the continum increase in the non-filling of vacancies, and black any posts that are not filled They have been content to relate to their own areas and make a few left speeches at the NEC and other committees. No national lead to step up the Save Your Services campaign, no national call for supp ort and extension of existing struggles against cuts, no fighting lead to NALGO as a whole even in defence of existing union policy against health service cuts and private prac tice has been given.
This is a sharp reminder that politically they represent a bureaucratic accommodation to the mass struggles that sections of NALGO's membership have launched over the last seven years. Only a revival of such struggles can drag these lett leaders out of their local hideouts. No wonder that the right wing made significant gains in the recent NEC election, and that NALGO has made no national impact on the cuts whatREFUSAL Despite the potential for mobilisation by sections of NALGO members, the International Socialistdominated Nalgo Action Group has mean while entered a stage of near paralysis as a national force in the union. Simple opposition to a pay deal with the Government has proved impossible to campaign for. But the alternative workers' policy, a sliding scale of wages to keep up with price rises, was rejected at NAG's national conference last October.
Likewise a refusal to campaign for generalised workers solutions to the crisis, such as the inflation proofing of all social services, a workers enquiry into the public services, including opening the books and files of management, has left the NAG insapable even of generating basic national or regional solidarity with existing local struggles The decline of the NAG has allowed the left social democrats greater freedom of inaction than before. The Communist Party has also been revising its system of alliances, supporting the lefts in their passivity (the CP was instrumental in calling off a half day strike against cuts in Islington, on the same day as NEC and CP member Jean Geldart addressed social workers prior to the November unemploy ment demonstration .... on the cuts), and distancing themselves from their erstwhile IS allies in the NAG.
Only a struggle to unite the left around a programme of workers action to meet the crisis can provide a national challenge to the policies of the right wing. Only with the elements of such a programme can the left link up with the actual and potential struggles of the rank and file on a countrywide basis.
This is the fight to build a broad united class struggle opposition in NALGO which can join with workers in all industries to challenge the policies and positions of the present labour leaders. We cannot afford nanother wasted year.
naigo CAMAN D
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INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION BRANCH