DEFEND THE ETU AGAINST FLEET ST AND KING ST!

Tiss: capitalist Press attack on the Electrical Trades Union is pari of the general offensive by the employing class and its Tory government against the workers’ living standards, conditions and organizations. The employers hope to divide the workers, smash their will to fight, hamstring their organizations. quench their militancy, push down the purchasing power of wages, create a reserve army of unemployed and so rule the rocst in industry for years to come.

There is nothing the capitalist class would like better at this time than to be able to draw the teeth of a very important and powerful trade union, so that it can attack with impunity the standards of that union’s members in a series of key industries.

And the efforts to discredit and weaken one particular union would, if successful, be merely a prelude to attacks on other unions. This was made clear by The Times on December 4:

‘Statutory regulation of public companies is considerable and there are aiso public powers of supervision and investigation into their affairs. One of the possible results of the present controversy might well be a suggestion that the State should acquire similar rights in respect of trade unions.’

While the Government may consider it inexpedient at the moment to appoint a tribunal—Macmillan told the Commons on December 5 that other methods should be tried ‘before more drastic action is considered—there is no doubt that Mr. F. W. Farey-Jones, Tory M.P. for Watford, was expressing the secret hopes of many of his colleagues when he demanded it.

No one in the Labour movement will be naive enough to suppose that the capitalist Press or the Tory M-P.s are any friends of democracy in the ETU. The Press Lords and Fleet