SEES SESS Some Thou ghts on the T U Cesnsesescsnssenscenn

7HEN I last attended the Trades Union Congress at " Blackpool the general council had as their headquarters the use of the Imperial Hotel, one of the biggest, if not the dearest, joints in the town.

I was told that it cost up to seven guineas a day to rest your -weary bones in this place. My general secretary, fearful of ‘wild tales of corruption being spread by younger members of the delegations, hastened to assure us that the council had only paid fifty bob a skull, the cheap rate for block bookings.

He spoke with disgust of one trade union M.P. (no names no pack drill) who went a la carte at dinner. He paid 14 ‘shillings for a piece of steak, and we were left to imagine the total cost of going the lot on the me and you.

A rumour went round the delegation that Lady Williamson, -wife of the chairman that year, was kipping in the very suite -graced by Her Majesty.

That particular. TUC was described by Peter Kerrigan, the National Industrial organizer Of the Communist Party, as a ‘victory for the left’, ‘the right wing, being unable to resist the forces of the left, had to give way gracefully’, so he implied.

Vv Undoubtedly at that TUC amid wind and thunder some resolutions were passed on wages, hours and conditions. Not a single one of these resolutions has been implemented by either the left or the right.

Since that TUC the rate of wage increases has been driven -down from five to three per cent., this in spite of the fact that ,output per man has risen by four per cent.

The profits of the employing class have swollen enormously ‘to a position where the Financial Times of August 22nd reports an increase of trading profits by 10 per cent., of earnings by 11 per cent. and, best of all, dividends leaping forward “by 33 per cent.

More workers are jobless than there were then and this very. = ~week the government announced that there are no jobs for 38,000 young people.

At the same time the employers, owing to the absolute failure -of the leadership to do anything, press forward with their plans -members of the trade unions and the Labour Party.

Many of them—like the printers—will have experience of struggle for the first time in the future. They will have sharp .experience of the nature of the trade union right wing and ‘thus feel a greater sympathy for dockers who have been fighting bitterly against trade union bureaucrats for years.

There are more, a great deal more, friends of the blue union .among printing workers in Liverpool after the assistance blue union dockers gave in collections for their strike.

It is among militants in the trade unions and militant socialists generally that the only real sympathy and assistance for the coming year.

They announce on the one hand the projected sacking of quarter of a million workers in mining and aircraft. On the other the Bow Group of Tory intellectuals in their journal Crossbow call for action against trade unions who support the closed shop or inter-union disputes.

Kerrigan’s ‘victory’ was followed by the revelation of Palme Dutt in Labour Monthly that the ‘majority of the trade union leadership were decent, honest, respectable men anxious to do a job on behalf of their members.’ Faced with the treachery of these same ‘honest’ men in the bus and print dispute the line has wavered a little. Both Pollitt and Mahon now feel that there are ‘certain trade union leaders’ who are obstructing the wishes of the rank and file for united struggle.

Vv The hard fact that all militant workers have to face is that neither the right nor the fake left will lead.

Despite the war of words between the TUC and the Electrica} Trades Union, in practice their efforts on behalf of the working class are pretty much the same. For example on wages last year the communist-led electricians in the building industry got the same penny an hour as the building workers led by Sir Richard Coppock. — In the fight against sackings it is Foulkes in the Confederation who sends the Broughton De Havilland men back to work in a stoppage against sackings which the capitalist Press had to openly admit was absolutely 100 per cent. solid.

In the mines Paynter joins with the rest of the Executive committee of the National Union of Mineworkers in declaring that his lips are sealed on the union’s reaction to the latest sackings.

The construction of an alternative leadership began with the calling of the National Industrial Conference by The Newsletter last year. It will be carried forward in an extremely critical period at the National Assembly of Labour on November 15th next. It will be the alternative parliament of the rank and file trade unionist, Labour Party member and all those who want to end capitalism.

addressed building workers at the Token Constructional Site, Southwark and the Shell Mex Site, Waterloo. Sixty-five Newsletters were sold at the Shell Mex meeting and the men contributed 35s. towards the costs of the Campaign for the National Assembly.

Busman members of the League on Friday sold over 40 Newsletters and 20 copies of the pamphlet ‘Busmen in Battle’ outside Stockwell garage. Sales were also held at Holloway and Hendon garages.