If further arguments were needed to Conference called by Leyland shop stewards on wage control the events in the car industry in the past few weeks have provided them in abundance. The attacks on the toolroom workers by the Labour Government and the endorsement of those attacks by the union bureaucracy have revealed the crying need for this rank and file TUC', as the organisers are calling it. More than ever, rank and file action is needed to force national strike action against the Social Contract.
Proposals for action by the Leyland stewards' leadership will be placed firmly in the framework of the Communist Party's strategy, the dominant political force amongst the organisers of the Conference. The CP seeks to limit campaign to restoring 'free collective bargaining in August through influencing negotiations over Phase 3.
BACKING It will be on this basis that the organisers are likely to Photo: LAURENCE SPARHAM (IFL| propose backing the call made by the Liason Committee in Defence of Trade Unions for national strike action when Parliament reassembles, probably 19 April.
The call for strike action is welcome and must be supported, but steps must be taken to challenge the conception of 19 April held by the Communist Party.
A simple demand for a return TO free collective bargaining gaining is insuficient; working class militants need alternative policies around which they can fight and organise. An example is contamnea in une resolution which the East Birmingham branch of health Photo: JOHN STURROCK (Report) workers' union, COHSE, is submitting to Conference.
These COHSE delegates will be calling for making 19 April a day of national strike action Contract; for the restoration of all wage losses under Phases 1 and 2; and for automatic protection of wages and public service budgets against inflation by a sliding scale of wages and spending.
SIMILAR Delegates from Manchester East AUEW/TASS will be fighting for similar policies.
The political dominance the CP will have at the Conference will make it highly probable that the delegates will never even hear the case for such a fighting strategy for 19 April. But an important way to help ensure that these policies are put forward on may happen on 3 whatever April, is to take up the call made by the LCDTU for building local committees.
These committees should be turned into fighting bodies -not merely pressure groups arguing against Phase 3. The best way to ensure Phase 3 never arrives is to smash Phase 2 and to encourage and build support for struggles that are fighting the Social Contract: not just the wages aspect of the contrick, but every aspect of it, be it the cuts, the attacks on women's rights, or whatever.
But the opportunity to unite all those forces already willing to fight for such policies comes next Sunday, in Birmingham when the Campaign for Demmocracy in the Labour Movement, holds a recall conference on wages.
This Conference provides an excellent opportunity for welding together the unity of those in the trade unions who are willing to fight for anti-capitalist policies, against the attempts of the Communist Party to reduce the struggle against the Social Contract to one of pressure on the union leaders — the policy which leads to their opposition to toolmakers' strike and all struggles which seriously threaten Unfortunately the dominant political current in the organising comminee for Conference, the Workers Socialist League, extend their correct hostility to the political objectives of the Communist Party into hostility against all actions called by the Liason Committee Tor Defence of Trade Unions.
March edition of their paper Socialist Press condemns the Socialist Teachers' Alliance for supporting the initatives called by the Liason Committee. The logical conclusion of such a position is to inflate the significance of the CDLM to the according to Alan Thornett, the forces supporting the recall Conference are in a situation where they could lead the mass movement against Phase 2.
This sort of phrasemongering owes much to the sort of tactics pursued by the Workers" Revolutionary Party in building their All Trade Union Alliance - a wholesale rejection of the tactic of the united front in the trade unions.
Instead of denouncing the latest STA Conference's call of support for the LCDTU initiatives the comrades of the Socialist Press should issue the call themselves and seek to collaborate with these militants - even though they may not yet have seen the need to adopt all the demands which the CDLM Conference is proposing.
BUILDING It will only be by building rank and file tendencies such as the STA and the Engineering Voice in the AUEW, by mobilising support for 3 April and the day of proposed strikes on 19 April along the policies outlined above that more and more workers will be won over to the programme offered by the CDLM Conference.
The militants who attend the CDLM Conference can start the process of building on the programme towards a class struggle opposition in the labOUE THOYCHICHL. The first step that the Conference could take towards that goal is to support the call of Red Weekly for a united intervention into the Leyland stewards 3 April ConSCICHCC