TUC A COMFORT TO THE TORIES

THE TUC starts its 104th Congress Brighton with the gravest crisis in the history the trade It has been a year of unprecedented turmoil. Sc passed without one major political confrontation of organized labour and the T This bitter class struggle will go on and get worse. Tory ministers do not make decisions in a vacuum. The economic crisis drives them forward-and as the latest unemployment figures have revealed business activity is slipping rapidly into the trough of depression.

The Tories have attacked on two fronts.

With the Industrial Relations Act they are destroying the independence of the trade unions and trying to make these powerful organizations slaves of the capitalist state.

By driving up unemployment they are draining the very strength on which the trade unions depend-the militancy of the working class.

Already serious inroads have been made. Five trade unionists have been jailed, the TUC has abandoned its line of total nonco-operation with the Act and big unions like the transport workers have paid over thousands of pounds of their members' money.

Meanwhile the dole queues stretch almost as long as they did in the late 1930s. The last unemployment figures were the highest since 1939 and an astounding 164,000 workers have been without a job for over a year.

Now the fascists and the extreme right wing are at work, spreading their poison and blaming unemployment on the coloured This is a beginning. Tuesday is new Govan deadline GOVAN Shipbuilders yesterday gave the Boilermakers' Society until Tuesday to sign a labour agreement which will establish the company on the Upper Clyde.

This is a four-day extention of the 'final deadline' laid down last week by company chairman Lord Strathalmond. The big climbdown came after a shock decision by the 1,200 rank-and-file boilermakers to reject the deal for the third time (see The Tories intend to make the next 12 months the year they will smash the working class by dismantling every right won in two centuries of struggle.

Those whò say this is exaggerated or alarmist' are the same complacent idiots who said talk of jailing trade unionists was a 'little extreme'. They were proved wrong.

The performance of the official trade union leadership in this life-and-death battle has been abysmal.

Steadily they have abandoned their positions opposition to Tory policy.

They collapsed when the Transport and General Workers' Union was faced with sequestration of its funds. The Croydon policy of complete non-co-operation with the Act and the Industrial Relations Court was flagranly and undemocratically overthrown.

When trade union leaders representing 3.2 million members voted for a special Congress to discuss this historic retreat the right wing minority of 3m stopped the TUC general council from acting.

Democracy in the TUC is a facade in no. way reflecting the aspiration of the millions of workers who make up its members.

Now the TUC are talking about joint initiatives with the Tories and the big monopolies. The first one began yesterday when the TUC-CBI panel, designed to stop strikes, stepped in on the government industrial workers' dispute at Deptford, London (see picture this page).

filler story on p. 12)

The Il other unions signed the agreement yesterday in the company's new headquarters at the Linthouse division of the old UCS consortium.

Only the boilermakers are resisting. Their opposition to the deal continues despite pleas from union officials and the entire Stalinist led shop stewards' co-ordinating committee.

Yesterday morning the met for the second time in Uk has ranks This cringing around before Heath and his Cabinet is in glaring contrast to the courageous defiance of the working class.

The dockers, the railwaymen, the miners and now the builders have all thrown themselves into battle, dragging a frightened and reluctant leadership behind them.

The big clashes proved one thing. The Tory government could be brought down, but for one factor, the reformist bureaucracy at the top of the movement which devoted itself to holding back the working class and protecting their Tory masters.

Delegates at the Brighton Congress must accept the responsibility that it is their very own organization, the TUC which has kept the Tories in power.

What is at stake in the whole fate of the TUC and the working class. If the Tories are allowed another 12 months to follow their policies in conditions of mass unemployment the movement will suffer a defeat which willdwart that of 1926.

The big battle is on and there is no middle road. The leadership is embarking on road of total destruction.

Every delegate must ask himself or herself if they going to tread this road under the facade of loyalty or are they going to break the ranks and speak out?

The key question in this struggle to save the right of the working class is leadership.

TURN TO p. 12 days to hear local officials and convenor Sammy Barr warn that further delay would mean collapse of the company.

The boilermakers want immediate pay talks to start for a wage increase which will be backdated. Behind this demand is a desire to start work for the £l an hour paid to craftsmen at Marathon Manufacturing in the Clydebank yard.

Lord Strathalmond told press conference: 'We have Rough reception for conciliation at Deptford dockyard-see p. 3 ROYAL NAVAL YARD THE TUC-CBI conciliation and arbitration service got off to a bad start yesterday. These striking dockyard workers from Deptford gave an icy reception to the idea, mooted by their employers, that the service might be called into the governboard meeting on Tuesday, which is the final board meeting before the starting-up date. At that board meeting, I will have to tell the other board members the position, and if the boilermakers have not signed by that time, then I cannot' recommend that we start up on September 11 ...

I think that if we do not sign on Tuesday, we will have to go to the liquidator and . say we will have to put this whole thing back for a week or two.' ment industrial workers' pay dispute (full story page 3). And after a meeting of the Jaguar's strike committee at Coventry, works convenor Mick Richards told TUC-CBI service at the moment.' CAMDEN direct building workers yesterday refused to call off their four-day-old strike, despite a plea by union officials at a meeting convened by manageThe men decided instead to go ahead with their own meeting, previously arranged for next Wednesday. Camden workers joined the strike last Tuesday by a unanimous vote of 600 men. UCATT member Ron Wildego told Workers Press: 'It was a blatant and disgusting attempt to break up, divide and then conquer us.'

Saturday Soptember 1972