The Communist Party has at last discovered Rule 14 - although it has been mandatory for all trades councils since the beginning or january The occasion: an article in the Morning Star on 5 May by Vic Heath, exec utive member of Camden Trades Council The purpose: to attack the very people who are organising an all-London campaign against Rule 14, the Camden Trades Council Defence Committee.
Maybe Vic Heath has "forgotten' that his own Trades Council was the firsi to be suspended and threatened with exDuision ov ine us. ano tor whate coi standing out in defence of workers dem ocracy in une labour movement Maybe Vic Heath has 'forgotten' that in his eagerness to remove the 'extremists", it was his own trades council secretary and Communist Party member Sid Gregory who suspended Camden Trades Council even before the TUC had decid ec on such action!
It is nardly surorising that the Tues threat to disaffiliate all trades councils that do not adopt Rule 14 has been seized upon by the Communist Party as an excuse to toe the line, chasing ever faster rightwards in pursuit of the left bureaucracy. After all, unlike the original Black Circular, the new Rule 14 does not men tion the CP by name, and could even be used against those forces to its left who want to go beyond token protests against the policies of the Labour Government.
OnS When he did Registered with the Post Office as a newspaper. Published by Relgocrest Ltd for Red Weekly, 9 Vic Heath is, of course, against Rule 14. It's just that the CP doesn't want to fight it. In practice they have motivarea a vote for mule 4 on he crounos that it can then be ignored - but just look at the decline of the Minoritv Move. ment in the late '20s and early '30s after the cr nac useo the same excuse not to fight the TUC's ban on trades council artiliation does not nave une powers to change nure 14", argues Vic Heath - only TUC-affiliated unions can do that through resolutions to the next TUC congress. Red Weekly completely agrees that a mass campaign in trade union branches pass ina motions to natonal executives is vital but this is nor war ine er nas been doing.
Secondly, not to wage a fight in the trades councils themselves is to ignore why Rule 14 was brought in: to smash the potential trades councils have shown in organising demos ana conterences against the cuts and unemployment and providing a focus for struggle in local areas.
Finally, in attacking the Defence Committee the CP is actually attacking the people who have laid the basis for a Hauorial campdien deanst nuiete. cvery trades council should follow that lead - as should CP militants if they're ser ious about fighting Rule 14. who have spread illusions in the intentions of the new Videla regime. He was last seen on 17 April in one of the city's pris It is urgent to mount an international campaion to stoo the Argentinian military from handing Enriquez over to Pinochet's torturers, and demand instead his immediate release. That such campaigns can have an important effect was shown as recently as last month, when Chilean metalworkers' leader Juan Olivares was released by the junta after more than a year in prison. Am ong those organisations which had adopted him was the Birmingham branch of the electricians' union, EEPTU.
ban on 'extremists"
Anyway, 'an individual trades council