Toryism-main enemy of the working class

ROBERT PEEL up. Leading party spokesput by members of the 4.25 'Tarzan and the Lost itta St. John. A planeload i and Tarzan goes to help Bill and Jane lives with What's on where. 6.45 L ndon. Life in time 1130n0 idon. Cartoon time. rsity lenge. 11.55 News, weathe Interpol weather. tion campaign will be the Conservative Party's attempt to present itself as the party of 'democracy' and 'freedom", fighting against the power and tyranny of the trade union movement.

Heath and other Tory leaders will, without doubt, try to project an image of themselves as 'men of the people, standing for the interests of the 'whole community' and renouncing any 'sectional interests'.

No class-conscious worker will be fooled for a moment by this cheap hypocrisy. The pages of history show for all to see that the Conservatives, as the dominant party of big business and capital, have always set their face against any democratic rights for the working class.

These gentlemen would like to present a view of the extension of parliamentary democracy as the result of general agreement and compromise.

This is a lie.

The right to vote, which millions of workers will exercise on June 18, has been won by the organized working class only as a result of bitter and protracted struggles against the capitalist class and the Tories.

the Conservatives have yielded ground in the past, it has only been to prevent even more violent social conflict and been a tactic on their part to allow them to hang on to their power and property.

It is necessary to warn all young workers first time in this voting for the election, about the role of the Tories. This will be an important aspect of the campaign to keep the Tories out and secure a Labour victory.

Swept away

Although the 17th century revolution had swept away the old feudal order in a violent manner, for roughly 200 years following the Cromwellian revoLutined Carrot in pare hands ot aristocracy and landed gentry.

But the Industrial Revolution, which rapidly increased wealth and influence of the capitalist class, together with the impact of the French revolution brought greater and greater demands for an extension of the franchise which was in the main confined to the larger land owners.

This campaign was to reach its high point in the fight for the 1832 Reform Act. The Conservatives, led by that arch reactionary, the Duke of Wellington, fought bitterly against this campaign.

lo the very end, this dominant group in the Tory Party remained opposed to any widening of the franchise. even to the urban middle class, let alone the working class.

And even these so-called 'moderates' in the Tory Party, led by the younger Peel, hoped that by paying more attention to

Epilogue. The 1880s saw the unskilled kers organize into unions. In 1888 the match workers at Bi t and May's struck and won the needs of the industrial and commercial capitalist class, they would be able to postpone any parliamentary reform.

Although the middle class were to be the benefactors of the 1832 legislation when it was eventually passed, it was not this class which forced the hand of the ruling class. This role was taken by the working class, increasingly emerging, with the development of the industrial revolution, as a class conscious of its own independent historical role.

was as a result of the tremendous pressure generated in the working class, often amongst the most oppressed and poverty stricken, that the Whig leader, Earl Grey, was forced to introduce a Bill proposing a limited amount of reform. It was thrown out of the House of Lords in October 1831.

This action brought enormous anger from the working class.

Marches, meetings and demonstrations, attended by thousands took place all over the country. Riots occurred in Bristol . where for a time the working class held the city; Nottingham Castle was burned down; Derby jail sacked and angry crowds paraded through London.

Although some sections of the middle class tried to use this great power of the working class for their own, limited ends, the general reaction from the townbased middle class was one fear. They quickly closed ranks behind Grey and supported the 1832 Act which gave property holders in the towns the vote but left the working class out in the cold.

The Chartist movement was to show the vicious hostility of the ruling class to any political rights for the working class.

Chartism represented the first great independent and revolutionary movement of the working class which threatened to break free from the grip of the middle class. Included in its famous six points were demands for universal manhood suffrage, abolition of all property qualifications for both voters and memthe Ise.

bers of parliament as well as secret balloting.

The great landowners and capitalists, with their allies in the middle class who had won the right to vote, put down Chartism with a force and vio lence which should be a warning about the real nature of the British ruling class to every young worker of today.

Under Sir Charles Napier a massive display of armed force was ranged against the Chartists, many of the movement's leaders were jailed and heavily fined and when the trade union movement threatened to merge with the Chartist campaign savage sentences including transportation were meeted out to its leaders.

Under the impact of this show of strength and violence Chartism

and the union movement was, at this stage, smashed. As a mass movement Chartism disappeared after 1850.

Even when the vote was finally granted to the working class (or more strictly those living in the towns) with the Second Reform Act of 1867, it was done so only after a prolonged and bitter fight culminating in the series of London meetings and demonstratians of 1867, notably the great Hyde Park rally in April of that year.

And if Disraeli - the most cunning of all 19th-century Tories-introduced the Act, be did so only with the hope of being able to win the support of the more respectable, skilled layers in the working class who had over the previous 20 years begun to organize themselves in the 'new model' unions.

It was then, with the 1880s, that the unskilled began to organize themselves and turn to the creation of an independent expression for their struggles — the Independent Labour Party, formed in 1893 — that the true character oi the 'moderate' British ruling class was once more revealed.

The ruling class did everything they could to weaken this new movement and destroy the Labour Party.

Losses

Not only was the Taff Vale decision carried in the capitalist courts in 1901 which, by making strikers and their union responemployers through loss of trade as a result of strike action, made trade unionism virtually impossible.

Even then, when this iniquitous decision was reversed by the Liberals in 1906, the courts then ruled, in the infamous Osborne judgement of 1909, that it was illegal for unions to use their

funds for political purposes, that is to finance the Labour Party.

It might be all right for workers to have the vote. But it was quite otherwise when they sought to organize that voting right to support candidates independent of the two capitalist parties-the Tories and the Liberals.

The same line on the part of the ruling class towards political action by the unions was also seen after the defeat of the 1926 General Strike.

The Trades Disputes Act of the following year made illegal any future general strike, made trade unionism illegal amongst civil servants and allowed only those who specifically stated that they wanted to pay the political levy to the Labour Party liable to do so.

These measures were only removed from the statute book in 1946 by the post-war Labour government.

The lessons of history are clear. The Tories and the ruling class have always opposed any democratic rights for the working class. And they have not changed.

Heath's 'law-and-order campaign is designed to strike blows at the unions and the right of workers to organize and demonstrate, just as his plans for the "reform' industrial relations are aimed to curb the power of the unions to give the employers the whip hand in every factory.

The maximum vote against the Tories and the biggest possible Labour majority is the first step on June 18 in defeating these. plans of the employers, as well as striking a powerful blow in the struggle for socialism.