THE HOUR OF DECISION

EVER SINCE the Tory government came to power in June 1970 its main objective has been to destroy the power of the trade unions.

Not a minute has been wasted in an almost indecent haste to provoke a head-on conflict. In doing this the Tories have been obliged to disrupt the class compromise relations through which they have ruled almost since the Chartists petition to parliament in 1848.

The showdown with the railwaymen has long since passed beyond the stage of normal wage negotiation.

For well over a week the Cabinet has been engaged in mobilizing the administrative and repressive force of the capitalist state to bring the rail unions— and through them the entire working class-to its knees.

This is a political confrontation from which there can only be one victor. Every ounce of the industrial and political strength the working class must be mobilized behind the railwaymen at once.

Any attempts at bluff would be disastrous. The Tories mean business because they have no choice.

Such is the objective development of class forces in Britain as the result of the international economic crisis that even if a temporary settlement were arrived at, it could only at best postpone the all-out conflict for a short time.

This is the irresistible logic of the class struggle in the crisis-ridden conditions of today. Relations between the classes are no longer governed by the subjective desires of men, but by the objective intensity of the class struggle itself.

The arrogance of the Tory government and the determinaTIOn of the working class to fight can only be understood within this context.

Trade unions in Britain are inseparable from the working class. All their hard-won democratic rights, wage standards and working conditions are the result of over 200 years of increasing campaigns behind the banner of trade unionism.

Trade unions are in fact the working class.

For the Tory government to embark on a course of destroying them through the Industrial Relations Act is to undertake the virtual destruction of all the basic rights of the working class.

There are revisionist and Stalinist idiots who deny the existence of the economic crisis. But how can they explain the enormity of a crisis which drives the Tory government forward on such a lifé-and-death conflict?

All the main props of so-called capitalist democratic government are being ripped asunder. The reformist illusions which in the past served to confuse the working class by obscuring the real issues have been transformed into their opposite.

Every trade unionist can now see that the Tories are taking away our basic wigats.

The entire history of the working class is punctuated with incidents in which they have fought back with the greatest determination when thesé basic rights are threatened.

But that is, by itself, entirely Sheffield engineers to act?

involved in the Davy FROM PHILIP WADE SHEFFIELD engineers are out to join those in the greater Manchester area and move into battle against local employers on their pay claim.

Stewards in leading factories had talks with management yesterday. They knew beforehand that the Employers' Association was offering a meagre. €1.50 rise, tied to productivity deals. HEALY inadequate. If the Tories have destroyed the forms of government based upon class compromise, they can only proceed to think in terms of the most ruthless political dictatorship.

A defeat for the railwaymen would have the most serious implications in this respect.

The miners, if they were given the leadership, could have brought down the Tory government. But their leaders, Daly and Gormley, wrase reformists ..ho believe in class compromise. they settled for wages.

Here lies the danger once again. The TUC and the railmen's leaders are also reformists and cannot be politically trusted to lead the kind of political fight Procedure is now considered to be exhausted and in the next few days mass meetings will be arranged at each factory.

They are expected to decide on the various forms of action including a ban on piece work and overtime and strikes' to back up their claim.

Already 900 workers at Davy United are sitting in. They took the action after management had made substantial offer. which tive.

Only the class determination of millions of trade unionists guided by a leadership steeped in the revolutionary principles of Marxism can accomplish such a task.

The Tories have provoked the nght. Now is the time to create the industrial and political conditions to make the Heath government resign.

A General Election is vital. The alternative to Heath is not a reformist Labour government such as Wilson led between 1964It IS Labour government pledged to socialist policies which have as their cornerstone the expropriation of the capitalist class through nationalization without compensation of all the basic industries.

Stewards came back from talks to find sitting-in find the men already sitting in break down.

The employers' reply is essentially the same as that made at the time of breakdown national negotiations.

The document, which has fallen into the hands of union, takes the usual hard line on hours and holidays. • SEE PAGE 12 THE WIDGERY report into the_army killings of 13 people in Londonderry on January 30 this year will be published tomorrow and on sale at Her Majesty's Stationary offices. See tomorrow's WORKERS PRESS for our own reconstruction of the killings compiled on the spot. We were unable to publish this account after the Tory government gave the Widgery tribunal the status of a High Court and invoked the laws of contempt.