On the same day that Callaghan was National Committee of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (Engineering Section) was voting to back the Healey/TUC wage deal by 29 votes to 22, with one abstention.
The two were not unconnected. Underneath all the flannel about "halting inflation', the wage deal is designed to boost the rate of profit on mvestment at une expense or workers' living standards. Indeed. many Broad Left delegates at the National Committee were only too anxious to point this out. The problem is that fine words alone will do nothing to stop the rightwing bureaucrats collaboration with Labour's Tory policies issue of the AUEW Journal: "Our Government is doing its best to grapple with unemployment and - inflation .... let us continue our partnership until victory is secured.
It is only by organising and mobilising against all aspects of the Government's anti-working class policies in the centres of the AUEW like Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham that the present class collaboration can be broken up. But such an approach is completely foreign to the bureaucratic wheeler-dealers of the Broad Left leadership.
Accepted For instance, every single leading light meekly accepted Scanlon's attacks on the British Leyland toolmakers strikes. No attempt was made to campaign for mass support for these first indications of rank-and-file opposition to incomes policy.
CP convenor Len Brindle warned the National Committee that the pay deal would not work, as in practice the membership would throw it out and launch struggles to defend their living standards. This is true - but will the CP now openly advocate such a line of action?
Will they lead such struggles STELLOTE. needed.
campaign is being built. On Friday 19 March, 80 Right to Work marchers arrived in London. They had come 300 miles from Manchester, winning support by sending flying pickets into factories on the route, holding public meetings, and joining the picket lines of workers in struggle. Yet on the last day of their march, the marchers were set about by the police. Forty three were arrested, including eight local trade unionists who had come to greet the march, and 68 were injured. The attack - how convenient! - took place outside Hendon police Now 43 marchers face charges, most of police assault, some more serious. Defence lawyers have warned that there could be prison sentences on some of the marchers if they are convicted. Committal proceedings began on 21 May when the 43 appeared at Hendon magistrates court. But the trial is likely to drag on for months and a continuing solidarity campaign will be Red Weekly spoke to JOHN DEASON, secretary of the National Right to Work Campaign, about the attack on the marchers and how the defence JOHN DEASON
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defending the right of private ind- ustry to make unlimited profits, the