Labour's low-profile' treachery

THE Industrial Relations Act and the state wages Bill now before parliament are both corporatist-style pieces of legislation.

They bring the threat of courts, unlimited fines and jail sentences for trade unionists who try to fight for their basic rights or for the preservation of their standard of living.

Yet in the face of these historic legal assaults on the trade unions, the Labour Party leadership is seen its most craven posture.

First of all in relation to the Industrial Relations On Monday night on BBC I's 'Panorama', , Harold Wilson advised trade union leaders to obey the Act. in force,' Wilson said, it 'So long as the law is should be obeyed. There have been a number of suggestions by trade union leaders — not members of the TUC General Council that they feel the law should not be think it should, Obeyed. I Now let us see what the same leadership is doing about the state wages Bill ...

During the third reading stage of the Bill on Monday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony_ Barber congratulated the Labourites on the 'low profile' opposition they had given There had been a • certain amount of shadowboxing, he said, but no real opposition.

'One of the significant aspects of the passage of this Bill-and the public will have noted it-is that there has been no steam in the Opposition from the Labour benches.

'There have been one or to lurid phrases, and ALEX MITCHELL there has been a certain amount of shadow-boxing by the Opposition Front Bench, but there has been no real opposition throughout all our proceedings.' Both these examples spell one thing —a secret coalition of interest between the Tories and the Wilson leadership. We have warned persistently of this conspiracy against the labour and trade union movement, particularly in relation to Common Market entry.

During the passage of the European Communities Bill, Wilson led a phoney war of words while, all along, the necessary majorities were being achieved through the votes and abstentions of the Jenkinsites.

The same coalition exists over Ulster: there is not a whit of difference between the two parties on the policies of brutal repression being carried out against the working class.

What is the meaning of Wilson's advice to the labour and trade union movément to accept the Tory government's corporatist measures?

The laws that he says workers must obey deprive them of the right to a decent wage, the right to build strong, independent trade unions and the right to defend their unions by strike action, picketing and blacking.

These are the very rights and strengths on which the entire trade union movement and the Labour Party and its finances were built.

With all the arrogance of a Labour bureaucrat Wilson is asking the working class to abandon 200 years of struggle and bow down to Tory dictatorship. Wilson and the Tories have another think coming— the undefeated, determined, working class.