On Friday 21 May one of the biggest political trials ever to take place in Britain opens in North West London. The 44 Right-to-Work supporters arrested when the police launched a vicious assault on their march from Manchester to London come up in court.
Three separate assaults took place in the space of a few hundred yards when the marchers came off the Hendon flyover site at Staples Corner. An independent trade union enquiry into the police assault has since been set up by Barnet Trades Council.
John Phillips, president of the Trades Council, reports that the enquiry has won widespread support from the local trade union move. ment, including from the shop stewards committee on the Staples Corner site and that at Smith's Industries, where another of the assaults took place. Forty three statements from independent witnesses have now been obtained, as well as those from the marchers The enquiry members include Syd Bidwell MP, Brian Stanley (Labour Party NEC member and general secretary of the Post Office Engineering Union), Vincent Flynn (ex-general secretary of the printing union, SOGAT), Jack Morrish (general secretary, Customs and Excise Union), Jack Collins (National Union of Mineworkers CAV Simms), and Dolly Seeley (convenor, Patent Die Castings, Park Royal).
enquiry into what happened at London N4.
picket starts at 9.30 am. Executive), Mike Quinn (convenor, Supporters of Red Weekly should why this is so. pass resolutions through their trade union and Labour Party branches calling for support for the workers Staples Corner, and donating funds to: Defence Fund, Right to Work Campaign, 265a Seven Sisters Road, Trade union banners should be taken along to the picket of Hendon Magistrates Court, The Hyde, London NW9 on Friday 21 May. The unemployment. specific actions against the policies The Day of Action on 26 May, should be launched without waiting Left, but a systematic effort should be made to win Broad Left supportOrganisational barriers, like that sufficient, militants should attempt Broad Left to fight for their positions.
In this way moves like the setting up of the Engineering Voice Group in Birmingham, which involves milibegin to lay the basis for developing Parliament. defence of jobs, wages and living standards. With only two weeks left till the 26 May day of action on unemployment, the central proposal coming from the 27 March National Assembly on Unemployment, the CP is not making any sustained campaign for strikes or other centralised action in the Morning Star. And with isolated exceptions, such as the decision of London building workers to strike on the day, there are no major signs of a campaign on the ground.
Where are they now?
In areas like Sheffield, the Communist Party has attempted to block resolutions to set up action committees to campagin for 26 May - a prop osal formally passed by the Assembly Every militant who wants to fight Labour's attacks and the class collaboration of the TUC must ask themselves sections of the left trade union bureaucracy.
Backing the pay deal, for the most part.
In addition, those militants who are prepared to take action are increas ingly reluctant to take part in one day strikes which have no political direc tion other than to provide background crowd scenes for the antics of these self-same useless lefts. In such a situation the Communist Party has a clear choice: to scurry further to the right in pursuit of the "lefts', or to join in action with the revolutionary left into at the Scottish TUC when Jack Jones, spoiling for a fight on incomes policy, chose as his target the resolution from Stirling Trades Council, which clearly outlined a class struggle alternative to collaboration with Callaghan and Healey. The CP voted for the resolution - having been put on the spot by the right!
On 26 May the CP leadership has made an obvious choice. off the odd strike to keep its credibility with its supporters. areas it will strenuously oppose anything not rigidly in its control. It will not challenge the bureaucracy at any level.
But it would be wrong to conclude from the manoeuvrings of the CP and the lefts' that no challenge can be made to incomes policy and mass Civil and Public Services Association, the Technical and Supervisory Section of the AUEW, and the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs - have all rejected the deal. Welsh, Scottish and Yorkshire miners are up in arms over it. Even the traditional non-militant Lancashire region of the NUM voted 104-100 against it. The National Union of Seamen's conference, while accepting incomes policy by 34 to 28, then put in for a 50 per cent pay rise!
Basic demands
It is in this deeply contradictory situation that revolutionary socialists must intervene in an attempt to draw together all the partial and limited movements of opposition to the Government's policy and the TUC's class collaboration. This means turning 26 May from a simple protest against unemployment into part of a continuing campaign against all the Government's policies on jobs, wages and social services. urges its supporters to argue for local public rallies to prepare the fight around four basic demands:
- No to the incomes policy.
- The TUC to break with the Labour Government's policies.
- Restoration of all cuts in social spending. Rejection of the White Paper on public expenditure.
- A programme of nationalisation and public works sufficient to guar antee the right to work and meet social need.
In the build up to 26 May and beyond, militants should be committing all possible district committees, trades councils, trade union and Labour Party branches to organise action committees and support for national lob bies of the TUC special conference on 16 June in London and the TUC's annual congress on 6 September in Brighton.
The summer months will see bitter fights at many union conferences over the policies being pursued by the Government and the TUC. Militants must see to it that they can give a clear line of march to all those break ing with the Government's policies.
Red Weekly urges its supporters to take part in all local actions and meetings organised for 26 May. London and Home Counties supporters should mobilise for the demonstration called by the London Confederation and London Co-op Political Committee, which assembles at Tower Hill at 1pm to march and lobby The CP premised 26 May on the promise of support from But where are these lefts now?
That is something the CP stumbled It will pull But in most The annual conferences of three white collar unions - the Red Weekly
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