After several months of sporadic actions and forced retreat; the working class will be given a golden opportunity on 26 May to express its disgust with the unemployment policies being pursued by the Government. This is the date named by the 3,000 strong National Assembly on Unemployment. for a day of action against unemployment.
In itself, this is a reflection of the growing mobilisation of working people against Labour's Tory policies, highlighted by the unofficial rail strikes, the new wave of struggles in the car industry, and the mushrooming fight against the cuts which reached its high point with the general strike in Dundee on 5 March. It shows that the working class is beginning to recover from the betrayals of last summer, when the trade union bureaucracy foisted the £6 limit upon their members and the TUC and the Labour Party conferences accepted these positions. More than that, 26 May will provide the opportunity for co-ordinated national action, helping to tie together all the struggles that are developing, at least in the fight against unemployment.
But to achieve this, militants in the movement will have to strain every muscle to take 26 May beyond the token protest action desired by its major sponsors, the Communist Party and sections of the Labour lefts. It must become the first step towards building a fighting, organised class struggle opposition throughout the labour movement. This will also mean taking up a whole number of issues — opposition to any incomes policy, against the cuts, for the rights of women workers and racial minorities -that were ignored by the Assembly organisers. So what needs to be done? 1. Build Action Committees The first step is to create in every town the action committees to which the Assembly resolution gave its verbal blessing. At present the forces prepared to fight the Government's policies are scattered in particular factories and sites or individual campaigns. Only nationally at the Assembly were they able to meet together and measure their strength. The forces at the Assembly, consolidated into a network of local action committees through report-back meetings to every sponsoring body, will be able to organise really effective action for 26 May and the ongoing struggle against cuts and unemAll eyes in the labour movement, and those of the employers and the Government, will be turned on this day to see just what the bureaucracy will or will not be able to get away with in the next round of wage controls. Every single leader in the labour movement supporting the Assembly -especially Buckton of the rail drivers ASLEF and Ernie Roberts from the Engineering Union — must be forced to campaign for national strike action by their members. A lobby of the TUC Special Conference of Executives in June must also be called for. Action committees themselves should build massive public meetings and leaflet every factory in their area.
Those workers actually in struggle should be brought to the forefront of the campaign for action. A first chance will be the unofficial strikes planned by Southern Region train drivers against the implementation of new cuts on 20 April. Where will 'left' talker Buckton stand on this one?