wrong. The Scanion-Jones left has moved to the right.
The CP has therefore taught the militants to rely on a section of the bureaucracy rather than to use them. Today, the CP line of getting the TUC to "call a series of 24-hour General Strikes, (and) if such actions fail to compel the Government to drop its incomes policy and The Red Mole was started by the International Marxist Group as a fortnightly paper in March, As Phase 2 becomes law, TUC leaders are planning the next stage of the game. Not to fight Phase 2, not to give concrete aid to the hospital workers, not to extend the one-day strike on May Ist. Not even to have a 'noncooperation' policy towards the Government as was attempted over the Industrial Relations Act. The next stage of the game is to talk to the Government.
Heath has already called for such talks. Now Hugh Scanlon, the last man in the TUC to advocate the old policy of non-cooperation and non-recognition with the Industrial Relations Act, has finally decided that it is time to help the TUC adjust to life under the new regime of Phase 2.
Last week, in a speech to the parliamentary pressigallery, Scanion totally reversed his previous line by suggesting two specific amendments to the Act. In other words, he was proposing not simply to recognise it, but to accept it as a permanent fact of life, at least until some future Labour Government repeals" it. His justification? *If we could get these two essential amendments, then perhaps we could talk about some of the other practicalities. These amendments would provide a temporary period, a breathing space, to work out a voluntary policy on the basis of what was offered at Chequers. I believe that would be the way forward."
GOVERNMENT APPROVAL Scanion's main demand in return for recognigion of the Act is acceptance by the Government that any actions taken against unions through the NIRC must first be approved by a Government Minister! The hope here is that Ministers will see sense and only approve those actions which neither the Ci nor the TUC expect to provoke a working class response.
This would prevent a future repetition of the kind of "Gormley's Choice' faced by Scanion over the Goad case — whether to lead industrial action against the Government or knuckle under. As everybody knows, he is a good constitutional democrat and therefore sacrificed the interests of the working class and his own members. Now he accepts his political impotence and accepts the Act.
Scanion may feel that the acceptance of the Act will make no material difference to the working class. After all, the Government seems to have put it away for the time being. Instead they are using. other laws to attack trade unionists such as the Shrewsbury 24.
But what action has Scanlon proposed against these attacks? Nothing. After all, they do not attack the union as a whole, and so leave the trade union bureaucracy more or less unscathed. Further such attacks will be tolerated, including through the Industrial Relations Act, as long as they don't stand in the way of constructive talks* about how to force the interests of the working class into the framework of capitalism. As for the Morning Star, two days before the LCDTU Conference, it at first chose not to mention the affair. And when it was forced to speak on the Friday it tried to imply that peop le who attacked Scanlon attacked the AUEW, and anyway Scanlon didn't actually say it. That is what happens when a strategy is based on deals with 'left" leaders rather than a clear political fight in the trade unions. Such apologetics can only confuse the working class movement. The only way to develop independent organisations of the working class is to use the trade union leaders by all means but never, ALE IENNING