LIBERAL PARTY SETS TRAP FOR

When the chairman and the secretary of the Merseyside National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers (the ‘blue union’) issue a joint statement with local Liberals it is time to sound a danger warning.

The statement declares that recent claims of the Transport and General Workers’ Union officials that dock employers have agreed not to engage non-TGWU labour are the ‘culmination of a long series of discriminations against the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers.’

(Manchester Guardian, August 22).

That is true, absolutely true, Transport and General officials have tried by all means to drive the ‘blue union’ out of the northern ports, including attempting to deprive its members of their livelihood.

But how can it help militant dockers if the impression is given that the blue union on Merseyside is tied to the corpse of the Liberal Party in the fight against discrimination?

We went into the blue union because we wanted a militant democratic portworkers’ union to defend the docker and advance his standards in the struggle against the employers.

But the Liberals certainly do not denounce the TGWU fficialdom with the aim of building a militant instrument of struggle.

In one issue of their monthly trade union paper United (June 1959) you will find Arthur Deakin, Lord Geddes and Sir Tom “Yates teferred to as being among the ‘best trade unionists of all ages.’

‘They oppose closed shop Since last February United has given a great deal of publicity to the blue union. But although we have had few allies since 1955 there is no reason to grasp at anyone who-says a good word about us.

What these Liberals call the tyranny in the trade unions includes not only some of the worst acts of the TGWU bureaucrats but also the ‘tyranny’ of shop stewards and the traditional methods by which workers protect themselves—the ostracizing of scabs.

They are opposed to the closed shop and the sending of blacklegs to Coventry because they believe in the freedom to scab it.. No blue docker agrees with that.

United, like Moral Rearmament, stands for class collaboration and wants to create the illusion that there is a chance for every worker to rise to the top in the present system.

It is opposed to nationalization. It declares its childish propositions for ‘co-ownership’ of employer and worker will defeat militants.

Grimond the Liberal leader writes that ‘co-ownership’ would ‘undermine the troublemakers and the so-called leadrs who can think of an industry only in the terms of class warfare or the maintenance of a union closed shop’. (United, May 1959.)

One argument I have heard is: ‘Why shouldn’t we use the Liberals? The Labour Party is reactionary. We'll get no assistance from the Bessie Braddocks or the Simon Mahons. They’re tied up with the O’Hares and other TGWU leaders.’

But we aren’t using the Liberals by issuing joint statements or bolstering up a little prestige for them. They’re using us, angling for a few votes on the cve of an election.

And it isn’t a question of the Mahons and the Braddocks. It’s a question of hundreds of thousands of rank and file