DRAWN DEEPER INTO PAY BOARD NET TUC CHIEFS OUT TO SMASH PAY FIGHT

BY REFUSING to take action in defence of those workers striking against the Tory government's pay laws, trade union leaders are consciously opening the door for acceptance of Phase Two and the Pay Board. By such default and by wearing out workers' in piecemeal limited struggles and useless protests the leaders are in fact seeking to build up the authority of the Pay Board as the alternative to strike action.

This Pay Board is the machinery of the corporate state for dealing with the working class. Once the trade unions accept it, they will be trapped inside the corporatist legislation of state wage controls.

These mean the government decides how much workers shall be paid and how to punish workers agitating to fix their own wage levels.

But to defeat this legislation requires a political fight to force the government's resignation. Rather than do this, the trade union leaders, almost to a man, are going to help sell the Pay Board idea to workers and do everything to break the growing strike movement.

TUC secretary Victor Feather is trying to get the 'national day of protest and stoppage' called by the TUC special Congress to be held on May Day to reduce its impact, while the government will possibly make May I a public holiday to reduce the impact still further.

Frank Chapple, electricians, and Sir Sidney Greene, railwaymen, are already saying they will not take part in the one-day protest anyway.

David Basnett, G&MWU, has imposed a ballot on the gasworkers which loads the question in favour of accepting the pay offer rather than continuing industrial action.

Union leaders representing hospital workers, civil servants, train drivers, and teachers are all resisting action, as did the G&MWU from the gasmen.

In cases where the trade union leaders cannot control the militancy of their members, the government will resort to bullying tactics, such as the fines against Jack Jones' transport workers union and Hugh ScanIon's engineering union, which both these lefts' tolerated.

Or else they will resort to threats of lock-out, such as that just used to persuade the train drivers' leaders to call off their industrial action. (See page 12.)

And behind all of this Tory government is preparing state machinery, 'bodies of armed men' , to physically crush the strike movement if the union leaders are unable to betray it completely.

The full-scale emergency powers operation planned to coincide with the publication of the Ulster White Paper this week is nothing but a dress rehearsal for dealing with the General Strike when it comes.

By their servile crawling before the employers and the Tories, the union leaders hope to be able to avoid the class confrontation and lead a quiet life.

But the objective disintegration of the capitalist system makes this impossible.

The struggle will go on, The union leaders' weakness and unwillingness to fight will only disarm the working class and make the struggle more bitter.

Their political cowardice will give a hesitant government more determination to carry out attacks on the unions and working-class living standards which the economic crisis, and the extreme right wing of the bourgeoisie, both demand.

Once emboldened by successful inroads into working-class rights, the Tories will launch an outright onslaught to impose a corporate state.

The TUC, the 'lefts', , and the Stalinists are pursuing time-wasting one-day stoppages, token strikes, overtime bans and other forms of pressure politics.

With half-hearted stoppages, the Ford workers, gasworkers, hospital workers, train drivers, civil servants and teachers are all fighting with one hand tied behind their backs against a ruthless ruling-class determined to pass the burdens of uncontrollable capitalist inflation onto the workers.

Once wages are effectively cut for all workers by tying them to a low government-imposed ceiling-while food and other prices rocket— the Tories will then begin to ruthlessly drive wages down.

This is the process the government is persuading union leaders to embark upon by first getting their acceptance for Phase and the Pay Board.

Only by building a new leadership and by clearing out the Tory agents from the ranks of the labour movement can the working class prepare for a successful defence of their rights by defeating the Tory governTrade unionists must insist on recall conferences of their unions to reject any dealings with the Pay Board and Phase Two and to demand a General Strike to force the Tories to resign. Mass picket planned at hospital LONDON building workers will stage a mass picket outside the St Thomas's l Hospital site in Lambeth this morning. This follows the moves last week to native labour onto police-type coaches When pay strike tried to prevent coach going througi they were manhan large contingent specially trained duties. Tenants in rally against bailiffs TENANTS Bolton on fence of s families wł furniture bailiffs.

The six LAING contractors bring alterthe site in (above). electricians a Laings' i the gates, dled by a of police anti-picket FROM STEPHEN all over demonstrated in Saturday in ¡ix council house 10 have had their seized by local All viertora era tor ro They chanted Tories Out' and other anti-government slugans. At one stage police wielding sticks moved in on the demonstrators - when they attempted to sit down on Bolton High Street.

At a rally after the march Neil Dufheld, a carpenter and one of the six tenants who have had their furniture confiscated, said that he would never pay the £1.04 rent increase imposed by the Labour-controlled council.

'There are only five of us left now. One family has paid because of intimidation. But I will not paythey can take all my furniture, he said.

His wife Eileen said: 'We need industrial support. Workers should realize that a rent rise is a wage-cut.

'The Tories are freezing wages in the "national interest" • but we know which section of the population benefits from the freeze-. it's not the working class.' Tony Boyle from Kirkby told the meeting that the police had used brutal taconce-powerful rents strike Lancashire town.

Last Tuesday Bolton bailifis, acting on the instructions of the borough treasurer, entered their homes and seized goods to compensate for their £22.88 rent arears.

Tenants from Oldham, Hattersley, Manchester and a 50-strong delegation from Towerhill Tenants' Association, Kirkby, Liverpool, turned out for the march through Bolton town centre.

in and pregnant get rid of the Labour villains in ho want to the 1930s.'