THE COUNTDOWN TO BETRAYAL

Workers Press no. 1011, 2 March 1973 · scan page 2

Topics: Car industry, Tory government, Trade union leaders and the TUC, Health and welfare

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the situation facing the union movement. • This confusion is compounded when they see their so-called leaders openly declaring to the capitalist Press that they have no intention of leading an all-out fight.

Without a policy for answering the Tory attack on living standards and democratic rights, there can be no basis for unity and each section will go down to individual defeat.

The Tories have their plans. The working class needs policy for action which embrace al. can those trade unionists.

Demand

This is why the demand of next Monday's mass lobby of the TUC must be: General Strike to force the Tories to resign, and elect a Labour government pledged to socialist policies. (See Policy for the Crisis, page 4.)

Ford's offers proof that neither the Stalinists, their *Liaison Committee for Defence of Trades Unions' nor the revisionists who support it want or are capable of fighting for such a policy. THIS IS precisely what happened at Fords in the countdown to betrayal: SEPTEMBER 6, 1972: The TUC discusses Heath's Mark One state pay plan-the {2 limit on all increases. This Is rejected in words, but every single left' and Stalinist at the conference unite with the right wing in backing further talks with the Tories and the CBI. DECEMBER 10: Dagenham stewards vote to press the £10 Ford claim regardless of the Tory pay laws, ope rative from March 1. Similar resolutions are carried in other plants.

JANUARY 26, 1973: Despite several meetings with company representatives, union officials and convenors have still not forced Ford's to make an offer. FEBRUARY 1: Walk-out at Halewood over the €2.40 ofier made that day. Feeling runs high for a strike, and Dagenham votes come out on March 1 If there is no Improvement. Swansea stages a token strike the following Monday.

FEBRUARY 13: Dagenham stewards demand & recalled ÇOHSE IEMANDS GHER PAY 'These women have to handle clothes covered in flesh muck and blood. I'd like to see Heath come down and do it'. This was the reaction of hospital ancillary workers' steward Denis Kempson on picket duty (above) at Tooting Bec hospital south London, yesterday-one of 250 hospitals affected by action in support of a pay rise. See fuller reports on page 2 and back page. TUC to co-ordinate struggle against Phase of the pay laws.

FEBRUARY 14: A special TUC Is called, but Heath tells the General Council there will be no retreat by the government. The union chiefs begin planning how to castrate their own Congress.

Next day. right-wing miners' leader Gormiey whips the 'lefts' and Into line with his 'General Strike or nothing' speech.

FEBRUARY 18: The Ford stewards meet, together with some hospital, mine and other carworkers, on the same day that the General Council report to the special Congress Is published.

Nothing in the report pledges backing for workers struggling against the pay laws. Harraway and the chairman of the Ford meeting, Bernard Passingham, refuse to put a General Strike demand to the vote.

This brief history demonstrates that the setback at Ford's goes hand in hand with the threat of betrayal of all workers fighting the Tory attacks.

Would Heath work in these conditions?