GENERAL STRIKE BANISHED FROM CONGRESS FOUR DAYS TO

demands from the working class f Tories' state pay laws—turning their tion to their piecemeal policies.

At a brief, morning ished from the agenda gress all discussion of a refused calls for the ( national stoppage. Th betraying the pay fight Like the March 18. outlawed strikes over the Industrial Relations Act, March 5 now threatens to however, the threat is far, far greater because the issues are far, far deeper.

As our interviews with hospital workers, gasmen, teachers and civil servants today show, vast numbers of those in struggle against the pay laws are up in arms at their leaders' policies.

They know that the government cannot be defeated by work-to-rules, sectional one-day, three-day or week-long strikes, or even by the 'one-day General Strike' which • yesterday's 'Morning Star' claimed 'the minimum the workers expect of the TUC'.

Heath has laid it on the line. It is either fight, or submit. And by threatening trade union militants with the same treatment as the Republican movement in Ulster, his crony, William Whitelaw, has made clear there is to be no quarter in this fight.

The future of crisis-torn capitalism is at stake. All policies which do not face up to that hard, central fact are policies of betrayal and defeat.

The Tories chiefs, welcome the union piecemeal strikes policy. For the government's strategists, they serve the double purpose of dissipating workers' energies • and enraging sections of the middle class who will form the shock troops opposition to a General Strike.

The union leaders are fully aware of the alternatives facing the labour movement, as the right wing of the TUC General Council has already made clear.

First Tom Jackson, of the Post Office workers, then miners' leader Toe Gormley said unequivocally that either a General Strike must be called or the pay laws must be accepted.

The 'lefts' and who these statem ents were designed to fright en, know it too.

But clearest blueprint meeting the union chiefs banof next Monday's special ConGeneral Strike (see p.12). They Congress to discuss a one-day ey prepared the ground for section by section. 1971. special Congress, which a gigantic This time, of the dangers facing the working class is to be seen at Ford's, where yesterday it was the turn of Dagenham workers •to asked to accept 'a new policy.

This so-called policy 1s what Sid Harraway, Communist Party secretary of the Ford national convenors' committee, calls 'an industrial campaign'.

By this he means a series of selective strikes, some of three days, and other sanctions stretching indefinitely into the future.

Decided by a convenors' meeting last week. on the strength of a few right-wing inspired revolts against all-out strike, this policy has only two possible outcomes.

The first is that Ford's, unable to carry on its usual high rate continuous exploitation, will lock the strikers out under conditions where they are left without a policy and prey to demoralization.

The second is that lack of a decisive policy will split factory against factory, sending the Ford workers back to work with the company's derisory £2.40 pay offer and the principle of state control of wages - fully accepted.

So it is hardly surprising that yesterday paint, trim and assembly plant and body plant meetings rejected a three-day strike call.

Harraway and his Stalinist and left' friends laid the groundwork for this no-strike vote with their consistent refusal to place the policy of General Strike to force the Tories to resign before Ford workers.

It is in opposition to this betrayal, and those activities that the All Trades Unions Alliance has called for a mass lobby of the TUC next Monday, on the policy of General Strike to force the Tories to resign and replace them with a Labour government pledged to socialist policies. emp e ar Hospital strikers NUPE cont or decisiv ition against the backs on mounting opposiWant all-out action Hospital ancillary workers demonstrating for a rise last October-before th state pay laws. They never got that rise and haven't had one since, eve though prices have continued to zoom upwards. HOSPITAL workers who will be on strike from today against the Tory pay laws are not frightened by Joe Gormley's challenge to the working class: either General Strike or nothing.

Feeling is running high amongst the 16,000 due to come out that all-out action is the only way they will win their f4 claim.

Henry Burton, who with 400 trade unionists in the Paddington, London, group of hospitals will be out for five days from 6 a.m. today, thinks that what miners' leader Gormley said is right-even though he said it for all the wrong reasons.

'Eventually we'll have to come our on total strike, he told me.

This policy of one major hospital striking in each of the ten main group areas is rubbish-it just doesn't reflect the feeling amongst hospital workers at all.' The selective strikes policy, Henry pointed out, can't pretend to be aimed at decisively winning the DAVID MAUDE UR LABOUR RRESPONDENT HOSPITAL HOSPITAL HOSPIT PAY MAKES US ANCILL MAKES US NUM WORT ICK OUR INDUSTRIAL STAFF claim. Action with other sections the working class is vital.

"The TUC must come in here', he told me, at the St Mary's, Praed Street, hospital he will picket today. 'We can't win on our own. But the situation in the hospitals is the concern of everyone in the land. Everyone relies on them sooner or later —whether you've broken a leg or you're having a baby. We've got to have more decisive action.' A porters' shop steward, in the National Union of Public Employees, Henry points to the fact that married men with several children are taking home less than £20 in a situation of rocketing prices and rents, because of the pay laws.

THE catering staff Tom Charles represents at St Mary's feel the same way. They took the government's £1.84 pay offer as 'a grave insult' Even to survive, rather than live,

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March Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London, SW4 7UG WHIIII these days Tom's members have to work excessive hours of overtime, and every Sunday.

"This has got to stop. But what the union leaders are doing is inadequate to win our claim. The members, nowever, are not trightened to take stronger measures if the five-day stoppage doesn't do the trick.' A LEAD in the pay struggle must come from the TUC on March 5, believes Jim Warner, NUPE branch secretary at London's Royal Free Hospital.

The TUC should call a General Strike-that's the only way to deal with this dictatorial government, which seems to think it can make its own laws when it likes.

• Ancillary workers at four hospitals in Birmingham jumped the gun today and went on strike-a day early. The walk-out hit catering, laundry and cleaning services at the big Queen Elizabeth and East Birmingham hospitals, and at two psychiatric hospitals.

Press,