. Over thirty workers have been murdered by n Joven Revolucionario, LCR youth paper) Commissions national secretariat have had such striking success in operating outside this framework. Solidarity Finally, comrade Montes stressed the need for international solidarity with the Spanish workina class. The first element in this is simply information about Spanish workers' struggles. He said that specific links should be encouraged between British anG Danish WorKers MOST DOViously in the multinationals, but also within different sectors of industry. He particularly mentioned engineering workers, building workers and dockers.
Montes explained the particular importance of financial support for He told of how, without strike pay, many struggles are broken by lack of funds. He saw visit partly as a way to gain financial support for the impoverished Workers Commissions.
His point is emphasised by the announcement that the UGT has received £350,000 from European trade including British! The UGT, all the forces of European social democracy and specifically Spanish Government, has only 25,000 memestimated the formal membership of the Workers CommiSsIOns amounts to more than a *The principle object of our visit is to explain the realities of the Spanish situation, so that people will understand that in the Soanish trade union the Golden Lion Hotel in Stirling for the first national conference of the Scottish Labour Party. Delegates will have travelled to the Hotel not only from very different areas of Scotland, but more importantly from very diff•erent political backgrounds.
The leadership of the SLP, Jim Sillars MP and Alex Neil who formed the nucleus of the party early this year, the Labour Party decisively enough, but, unfortunately, have brought most of the baggage of social democratic politics with them. Other sections of the SLP have been attracted from the nationalists, but the vast majority of the delegates who turn up will be socialists. They joined the SLP in the hope that it could be a new force in Scottish left-wing politics, a genuinely socialist party, free from the clectoralism of the old Labour Party or the reformist syndicalism of the Communist Party. The results of the first conference will go a long way to deciding whether these hopes can be realised.
Spectacular The very fact that a new political party with some 2,000 members could be formed at all is of some importance. The spectacular advance of the SP in the last two years has found no coherent reply from the old leaders of the labour movement in Committed to support for the social contract, despite their bleating about its "worst aspects', the so-called lefts can only watch in impotent despair the real possibility of an electoral disaster. In the absence of a systematic fight against the Government's policies from inside the party, Sillars was the first to crack - by walking out and setting up a new party.
In the nine months since the formation of the SLP, nothing basic has changed in the situation. The Scottish TUC has alternatively "regretted" or "deplored" the continual rise in Scottish unemployment without organising any industrial action against it. The Labour lefts have continued to troop through the lobbies in support of the cuts, ensuring that their opposition" to the Government is safely contained at the level of resolution passing. Possibility But the possibility of a fight back is there. The existence of the SLP could be an important factor in its success. While our left leaders have been sitting at conferences wrestling with their consciences over the "morality" of opposing the Government, many workers have been in the front line in defence of their jobs and living standards. At Redpath Dorman Long rig yard at Methil in Fife, 300 workers have just been driven to the dole after a four week strike over safety conditions. In the Highland region, a seven week strike by school cleaners called against wage cuts arising from a chop in the education budget, has also just finished. These two struggles are only the first of many still to come. Two of Glasgow area's best organised light engineering factories, Personna and Standard Telephone and Cables (ITT) are due to shut down around Christmas. With the experience of a successredundancies all the way.
All this demonstrates that the will to fight is there; what is necessary is the ability to generalise and extend it. At Cumbernauld the local SLP did just that, when they threw the resources of their branch into support for the striking dust cart drivers in the summer. The leadership of the SLP, by their actions in breaking from the Labour whip over the cuts and by voting against the Government, made their own limited but important contribution to the same end. It was the clear opposition of the SLP and its two Sillars and Robertson, cuts and to the social contract which led Red Weekly UIEC Scottish workers to demonstrate their disgust with the policies of the Government by voting for the SLP candidates Darnley, Clydebank and Irvine.
Indication The success of the SLP in attracting around 10 per cent of the vote in these elections is an indication that there is a conscious minority of workers who LTD
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SUPPORTS R. O. L