The urgent task of the working class today is the fight for united action to smash the ay laws. Every tendency in the working class must be judged by how it matches up to this task.
The General Council of the TUC has so far completely failed to take a single step towards united working class action and has thus opened up the chance for the Government to divide the movement and pick off isolated sections as they go into struggle against the laws. The fight must therefore be waged for those unions currently engaged in wages disputes to unify their claims and actions around the central demand for an end to the pay laws. At the same time militants must support the demand for the TUC to be recalled to prepare all out action to smash the pay lans.
The Co mist Party has set in motion a call for a conference of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of the Trade Unions, open to representatives of trade union branches d shop-stewards committees. This conmust be supported but a fight must ed to transform it from a talk shop a really democratic conference within ich a fighting policy can be thrashed out for action independent of the trades union araucracies" manoeuvrings. So far the Communist Party leadership has blocked such efforts rendering the LCDTU useless as a means of unifying the activity of militants nationally along a common line.
Already initiatives have been taken against the freeze locally and within rank and file organisations such as the hospital workers and teachers rank and file groupings. Such activity must be generalised through local activities and demonstrations and through the setting up of local action committees to coordinate the fight against the pay laws and generalise solidarity with those sections already in struggle.
But within this struggle to build united action against the pay laws, socialist militants must fight for a programme that can form the basis for drawing all sections of the mass of people into a united struggle to overthrow the Tory Government. Such a programme must offer a real solution to the problems of rising prices and declining living standards of the mass of people. Central to such a programme should be the following: * Direct working class action to fight companies putting up prices which affect working class living standards. * A National minimum income and the fight for that income for all who currently fall below it. *Equal pay for women. * The fight for social benefits which cannot