GIVE AN INCH — THEY TAKE A MILE TORIES ADVANCE AS TUC RETREATS

IN inter- A SERIES of weekend speeches and views top Tories have spelled out their strategy clearly: the more the union leaders retreat, the harder the government will hit at working-class living standards and democratic Robert Carr, the Home Secretary, said at Newcastle: Violent pickets, armed criminals or terrorists are striking at the heart [of society]. The government is determined that they shall not win.

Maurice Macmillan, the Employment Secretary, told a constituency party meeting at Farnham, Surrey, the time had come to end the present system of wage bargaining based on free negotiations between employers and unions.

Lord Carrington, the Defence Secretary and Tory Party chairman, told the Conservative Central Council in Newcastle: 'The next six months are going to be decisive to our political fortunes.

*We are going to be under sustained attack ... it is the period when we shall be told that every case is special. Just as VOu stand firm, so the government will stand firm.' While his henchmen were laying it on saginine in premier Edward Heath was engaging his 'one-nation' fraud. At Swinton, Yorkshire, yesterday he offered 'voluntary' deal on pay—if the union chiefs would give up every right to defend their members' interests and take their place in a corporate state.

But whereas Heath has said TUC secretary Victor Feather and the union leaders about the hospital workers' case this afternoon, he has already said in advance that he won't give them a thing.

For all the trimmings, the hard centre of Tory premier's message here was the same as to the Conservative Central Council at Newcastle on Saturday.

In a 'no surrender' speech, he stressed that there would be no relaxation of either the state pay laws or the Industrial RelaExuding confidence that the TUC is now backing down all along the line, he included a carefully-judged echo of his November 1970 warning to the United Nations that governments must prepare for civil war.

A government climbdown on pay would open the way to social divisiveness and injustice, he told the council. The implication, which will not be lost on Feather, is that the Tories are prepared to meet such a situaFollowing the calling-off of industrial action in the gas industry, Tory Ministers are cock - a - hoop that Feather anc Council are on the run.

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FESERVEDETOR AMBULANCE OUR LABOUR CORRESPONDENT The union chiefs-with their 'left' Labourite and Communist Party hangerson-have already encouraged this mood by severely undermining the pay struggle at Ford's.

With Phase Two of pay laws due to become law at the end of this week, civil servants' leaders talking about an end their industrial action.

In the hospitals the ul ion chiefs are still refusing take decisive action. All running is having to be made by the rank and File.

The Tory reaction to this is predictable:

THEY BELIEVE the May 1 protest being organized by the TUC will prove a damp squib. 'It is not going to change the government's mind, Heath declared on BBC radio on Friday night. THEY PLAN, as Home Secretary Carr stressed, intimidate and victimize THE RESCUE attempt for seven miners trapped in Lofthouse colliery, Yorkshire, entered its fifth day yesterday.

A possible defending their livelihoods with sweeping changes in the law on picketing.

THEY INTEND to go ahead in six days' time with making every struggle to raise living standards a criminal offence. Hence their vicious and spiteful action last Friday against power workers.

The power workers' leaders had already made them victims of the pay laws by concluding a £3 longclaim was e5.50 immediately, when their within hours of Heath's 'freeze' announcement on November 6 last year.

Now the second stage of this settlement, due to have been paid last Monday, has been stopped. An order from Employment Secretary Macmillan forbids payment until Phase Two of the pay laws becomes operative on April 1.

This kind of action is designed to delight the Tory faithful, present a tough image to the wavering middle class and make clear to the disaster area was folled when rescue teams came up against a solid wall of sludge.

There Is a round-theclock vigil (above) at the pithead by close relatives to Feather and the TUC General Council that there are to be no concessions however much they bleat about 'special cases' under the pay laws.

Defence Secretary Carrington, in his speech to the Central Council yesterday, dealt specifically with this point.

Carrington's anxiety about 'six months of sustained attack' is not sparked by any action of the union leaders. With Heath and Carr, he believes the TUC General Council is sewn up.

Challenge

Their fear is that the working class, which is forced to struggle whatever its leaders do, will take up the political challenge thrown down to it and make it impossible for the present government to continue.

Yet it is at precisely this point that the Stalinists of the British Communist Party move in to try and disarm of the trapped men and miners who have volunteered for rescue duties.

Plans to hold an official Inquiry are being stalled until the fate of the men is known.

the working-class movement.

Saturday's 'Morning Star' declared that the gasworkers' industrial action 'has made considerable dent in Heath's fraudulent incomes policy.

It continued: 'If they had continued and stepped 110 their fight, and been given industrial backing, especially by the TUC, they could have smashed Heath's policy to smithereens.' Now the hospital workers should get such support.

Concluded the 'Star': 'Every section of the trade union movement should prepare now to make the day protest and stoppage which the TUC has called •.. a 24-hour General Strike demonstration of working-class power.' This is utter treachery.

In the first instance it is a complete cover-up for the TUC General Council, and for the gas union leaders who split their members BACK