'PRINCIPLES' ELECTION

Voting takes place this month in the long awaited contest for the presidency of the Electrical and Plumbing Trades Union.

Since the winner will hold the reins of Britain's fourth largest union, the election has an importance which extends far outside the confines of the EPTU itself.

Witness to the seriousness with which the right-wing clique, currentv dominating the union, regards the result is borne by the extraordinary reluctance to hold it at all; the post has remained vacant since the death of right-winger Sir Les Cannon 18 months ago.

There are six candidates in the field.

Despite the reticence of most of them about their polițics, the election is clearly dominated by political issues. Perhaps chief among these is on the surface the Industrial Relations Act.

But a careful reading of the various candidates' election addresses reveals an even more fundamental issue: what to do about the Tory government?

Topping the pile is the EPTU's. right-wing general secretary, Frank Chapple, who immediately takes the political bull by the horns with this paragraph:

'In the ten years since Jock Byrne and I took the legal action which rid this union of control by the Communist Party we have gone from strength to strength.' The EPTU secretary blames the increasing difficulty of representing the membership on 'successive governments' Himself a member of the Labour : Party executive been says that these 'have trying to solve the country's economic problems by arbitrarily limiting wage increases, encouraging unemployment and finally resorting to an ill-conceived Industrial Relations Act' Chapple's strictures against the Act do not, however, prevent him from going on to advise that the EPTU remains registered under it.

He encompasses this by first citing "the principle' of opposition to the Act, then discovering 'the overriding principle' of "defence of our members' Jim Dormer: call to struggle against Tory Government Even his first 'principle' leads to some bizarre conclusions.

"The movement's policy, the Frank Chapple: advises registration under the Act on grounds of 'defence of our members' union and a socialist Britain'.

Where Chapple wants registration and union judges in the NIRC, Dormer stands for 'a campaign of the trade unions and labour movement to force the Tories to resign and the construction of a revolutionary alternative to reformism and Stalinism'. The Tories, esplaced 0eSt on, must be with a Labour government pledged to socialist policies which include nationalization under workers' control and without compensation of all land, banks and Such government would also end British membership of the Common Market, withdraw the troops from Northern Ireland immediately and Tory attacks on trade unions.' The airport steward also calls for better liaison between full-time officers and union merabers, more local pay agreements and more negotiating authority for shop 'No redundancies in any guise can be tolerated in present circumstances', he Executive member Hammond tries to stand in the middle of the road, advising union members not to read his address if they believe officers should be chosen 'on pro- or anti-communism or whether they abhor or revere the leadership'. Municipal Workers' unions 'until I am convinced that our members' interests are best served by merging'.

Roy Sanderson's candidature also claims to be 'non-partisan' 'I stand without the support of any sectarian group', the former left-winger, who became an EPTU paid official, writes. He claims to offer 'an alternative choice' But, like Chapple, he is opposed to the policy of deregistration under the Industrial Relations Act, although wanting the union to 'work within the TUC to change these decisions • • not act unilaterally in defiance of them'.

Sanderson also