Union chiefs undermine strike

THE MASSIVE propaganda can paign against the hospital workers continues. Tory-controlled Press and television are still trying to stage stunts to whip up middle class anger against the strikes. But the only real danger in all this comes from the spineless leadership of the hospital workers' unions and the TUC.

The hospital workers have already shown by their determined struggle that they can take any amount of provocative rubbish dished out by the Press and television. Their response in situations where managements have been goaded to make victimization attacks has been to step up the industrial action.

But their most vulnerable spot is their own leadership. The 'bad publicity' terrifies the career bureaucrats at the head of the TUC and the individual unions.

These gentlement are out-and-out pillars of respectability and loyal supporters protest politics to put 'pressure' on parliament and the employers. They are bitterly hostile to strikes being organized to have a real effect.

13th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF YOUNG SOCIALISTS BLACKPOOL APRIL 14/15 1973 SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, APRIL 14 & 15, WINTER GARDENS, BL The hospital workers' leaders and the TUC are now conducting a great charade to hoodwink the militant trade unionists on the picket lines. They are pretending to be doing something about organizing 'co-ordinated action' by other unions in support of the hospital workers as agreed by the special congress of the TUC.

In reality, they are doing nothing. And they intend to do nothing.

The TUC have responded to biting criticism of their do-nothing posture with a circular to 50 trades councils asking them to mount demonstrations of support, thus not only passing the buck but making sure it gets lost in the process.

, The hospital union leaders have connived at this by 'welcoming' the move.

Because the attacks on Victor Feather continued to mount, he then came out with another masterly piece of do-nothing activity. He asked Sir Keith Joseph to reconsider making the hospital workers a special case.

The raspberry Feather got heard in every hospital ward And what's more everyone co coming. Feather knew he turned down. He only put in a show of doing something.

could be uld hear it would be the plea as atti tiri * THATCHER T HAN London teachers were in militant mood yesterday-but their leaders ance-an increase of £182 a year-but Tory Education Secretary Mrs Margaret Thatcher has offered them a derisory £15. The demonstrators marched through the West End's crowded streets blowing school whistles and chanting 'We want Thatcher out.

NUT spokesmen warned the public over loud hailers that unless the allowance was increased the education system in the capital would collapse from lack of teachers.

FOR THE third day running 5,000 car workers at British Leyland's Cowley, Oxford, plant walked out yesterday in protest against the management's introduction of a team of industrial engineers to speed up the work.

Production has been at a complete standstill since Monday afternoon and the dispute is now developing into a major trial of But if these reformist leaders are not stopped in their tracks, they will completely demoralize and disrupt the militancy being shown in the hospitals. Condemnation of their leadership is not enough. Workers must begin to replace it with principled fighters for socialism. pledged to carry out their members' wishes.

The current leadership is deliberately playing into the hands of the Tory government and the Press by the half-hearted selective strikes, 24-hour stoppages, temporary sit-ins and so on. Without totally determined all-out industrial action by the hospital workers backed by a bold approach to all workers around them to come out in sympathy, the government pay laws cannot be broken.

newspapers at work this week at St James's, Balham, doing their best to pile on the agony by getting nurses to illus. trate the difficulties being caused, etc., etc.

Instead of answering these provocations in the only way possible, by bringing the hospitals to a complete standstill and launching an all other trade sunionists company with onier trade unionists Deputations went to the heavily-guarded Department of Education and Science at Waterloo to ask for the allowance to be raised. Later teachers went to parliament for a mass lobby of MPs.

From Lambeth Bridge onwards about 800 police lined the demonstrators' route spaced at threefoot intervals and going into double lines outside parliament.

Mounted police were standing by. This is the biggest concentration of police seen in central London for many years.

strength.

Mass meetings have unanimously endorsed the shop stewards' refusal to allow the rate fixers in to oversee the work.

The union say the strike will continue until Leyland drop all idea of squeezing extra productivity out of the MeasuredDay Work scheme in operation OR DETAIl TEL EPHONI 01- 622 7029 against the government, do the opposite.

They raise further false hopes about local managements defying the government and concluding generous local wage settlements.

There is not the remotest chance of the Tories allowing this. They have brought in laws to impose strict state wage controls and dare not allow a single exception. The NUPE leaders are receiving their members with this rubbish-and delibately putting off the real fight yet again.

The hospital workers have near-universal sympathy.

If the unions show their absolute determination to smash this government and its monstrous pay laws, the working class would follow them all the way.

Today's Finance and General Purposes Committee meeting will give the TUC another opportunity to make a show of action while in reality doing nothing.

The present trade union leaderships are incapable of delivering the goods. Their whole compromise mentality makes them nothing but Tory agents in a no-quarter confrontation with the ruling class such as is now developing in Britain. The mass movement must demand their immediate removal from office.

NOONOI IS NOT ENOUGH EX HER NO LONDON TEACHERSLEARNING want to plead with the Tories.

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