Teachers' leaders let off the hook

WEDNESDAY's decision by a mass meeting of teachers at London's Conway Hall to set up an ad hoc committee entirely separate from the structure of the National Union of Teachers will lead to isolation and demoralization for all those who support it.

It leaves the right wingers and Stalinists who dominate the union executive completely free to go their own way.

Indeed it has already done so. Despite all the angry shouting and the passing of militant-sounding resolutions at Westminster Central Hall on March 1 the message from the executive is. The campaign has ended'. As NUT president-elect and Communist Party member Max Morris said contemptuously after the meeting, "They can shout as much as they want'.

The same political tendencies which led the Central Hall rebellion were in the van of the move at Conway Hall to set up an ad hoc teachers' ginger group. International Socialism' Wandsworth headmaster group supporter Eric Porter, one of the three men threatened White Paper an 'advance'-SDLP ULSTER'S social democratic and Labour Party is prepared to collaborate in carrying out the Tory plan for Ulster outlined in the White Paper.

After a line-by-line examination of the document at a two-day session in a remote County Tyrone hotel, party leaders declared: 'We recognize clearly that the proposals represented in some areas an advance on , our previous position, while in others we ments. and our disappoint- must express both our reservThey expressed support for suadripate alks between buth and Britain and indicated that it would take part in elections to the new Assembly.

This Assembly will have no control over the armed forces or foreign policy and is no more than a cloak for the continued control of Northern Ireland by British imperialism.

The position of the SDLP evades all the main issues, strengthens the right wing and gives no lead to the Irish working class.

Its comment on the Loyalist response of opposition is once again to try to find some common ground. We cannot help feeling that their reaction has been governed by a basic spirit of self-determination which very similar to the spirit which governs our own reservations', its statement says.

It goes on to express the hope finding some common ground 13th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF YOUNG SOCIALISTS BLACKPOOL APRIL 14/15 1973 SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, APRIL 14 & 15, WINTER GARDENS, I CHER with expulsion from the union, claimed the only way to fight the executive was to set up a grass-roots organization. Once they succeeded in 'making the executive jump' and think twice about its policies the committee could, if necessary, fade into the background, he said.

The Hackney Teachers' Association, which sponsored the meeting, counter-posed the demand that the Inner London Teachers' Association set up a salaries' action committee to continue the campaign for a rise in the special London allowance.

IS consciously duck the absoonce the question of differences about the basic loyalties can be resolved. 'We have already started discussions on this basis,' says the SDLP, 'and are prepared to continue them.' Loyalist leaders came out forthrightly against the White Paper after a four-hour meeting at Stormont and have entered into a new united front which includes the Rev lan Paisley, Capt _Lawrence Orr, Leader of the Unionist Party at Westminister and the Vanguard leader, William Craig.

Paisley and Orr said that they would exhaust every parliamentary device in opposition to the White Paper and Craig pledged backing up action in 1 Northern This means a complete rejecMARCH FUND STANDS AT £708.43ONLY NINE DAYS LEFT!

IT IS STILL much too slow. If we do not step up the fight now we will not reach our £1,750 target in time. We have nine days left to completely turn the situation around. We urge you all to go into action immediately and raise all you can.

We know you will not let us down, but we are concerned that the fight is not left to the 1LAC INIM E/5e IS NOT ENOLGH Sll ACHE lutely unavoidable fight with the Stalinists and the right wing by suggesting the setting up of rank-and-file committees quite outside the union. And both concepts sidetrack the fact that in the present atmosphere of economic crisis the Stalinists and the right wing are acting concertedly and consciously as a counter-revolutionary force.

The NUT executive knew they could not defeat the Tory anti-inflation plans when they called for protest action aimed at winning a rise in the London allowance. They never intended industrial action to bring them tion by the main Loyali: st forces former Prime Minis ster and Unionist Party leader Brian Faulkner, in favour of a hardline policy.

Paisley has returned to the limelight to join forces with the paramilitary Vanguard movement. An advocate in the past of the integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, he shows signs of moving closer to Craig's position which accepts the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI).

The SDLP leaders leave the way open for these reactionaries as well as offering their services in enabling British capitalism to continue its exploitation and oppression of the Irish working class.

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March Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG. into open conflict with Phase Two of the Tory pay laws. They have said they will not back the day of action called yesterday by the TUC against the laws. They are witch-hunting those who at the Central Hall meeting stood up to fight against those craven betrayals. And if the new ad hoc committee presents them with occasion they will witch-hunt, discipline and expel in that direction too.

Witch-hunting by the executive has already had its effect. Teachers at the Conway Hall said they were proud not to be Trotskyites, communists or anything else. But whether they like it or not the teachers are locked in a political battle against their own executive and against the Tory government.

The role of the Stalinists and the right wing on the executive must be recognized and fought. This can only be done by recognizing, too, the role of the revisionists in the IS and the International Marxist Group.

Far from showing signs that they are preparing to step up the fight on teachers pay the NUT executive is lashing out at all those trying to push it forward. And far from showing signs that bigger doses of militancy will force concessions the Tories are preparing to fight the working FOUR HUNDRED ancillary workers at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, have come out on strike for the second time.

Initially they will five days, but this tended.

Don Steadman, NUPE secretary. said yesterda came out again because the wage increase and v DE EPF Police harass hospital picket stay out for may be exbranch y. We ve want ve were FOR TAII TEL IONI 01- 7029 class, including the teachers, with every weapon at their disposal. They will use their class law, the police and if necessary the army to defend their interests.

The IMG called on the NUT executive to organize a national strike on the teachers' national claim and to sponsor indefinite strikes on the London allowance. They called for unity with other sections of workers fighting the 'pay freeze' and for the NUT to seek TUC support.

Such a resolution falls far short of the central issue. The Tories are not engaged in a 'pay freeze'. They are engaged in imposing permanent state pay laws. There are to be no special cases and no concessions. The only way to defend the living standards of teachers and all other sections of the working class lies in forcing the TUC to call a General Strike to make the Tory government resign.

Rank-and-fileism lets the NUT executive off the hook. They must be forced to reverse their decision not to back the TUC's day of action and to campaign for the General Strike. The only way forward lies in building an alternative Marxist revolutionary leadership based on the policies of the All Trades Unions Alliance.

GOODS FI unhappy at the way management was treating us.

'After the first strike at the beginning of the month they changed the system of working and adopted a very aggressive ttitude towards us. I would like to see all hospitals out and a more positive union executive lead from the A determined force of pickets went to the hospital gate yesterday (above) but they were harassed by police. Immigrant workers were apparently threatened with arrest.

The pickets called on dedivery drivers not to cross their lines. • Workers at Esso and British Oxygen have decided not to deliver goods to the strike-hit Basingstoke District Hospital.

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