BUSMEN FACE A SERIOUS STRUGGLE

A special delegate conference of London busmen’s representatives with powers to call for strike action, has been called for next Monday. Mr. A. J. Townsend, national passenger group secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, gave this information in an interview with a Newsletter reporter. The strike call would be subject to the sanction of the union’s executive committee. Mr. Townsend declared that any strike of London busmen would be extended throughout the country because both the company services and the municipal authorities have so fai refused an increase ‘to their transport workers. However, Mr. Townsend did not think that any other sections of the giant transport union, such as power and docks, would be involved in a strike.

The obvious strategy of the Tories is to isolate and crush the busmen as a warning to the rest of the working class. Busmen are bitter at being the cdd ones out. The London Transport Executive says it has no money to pay far a wage increase, but trade unionists claim that the £2 million needed could be found out of compensation paid to the British Transport Commission each year.

The TGWU demanded trade union control of London’s transport as long ago as 1933. Jt is time that the union campaigned for its declared aim of workers’ control.

Published by The Newsletter, 106 Clapham High St.. London, SW4 Registered at the GPO as a newspaper By our Industrial Correspondent Strike action will be necessary to win the £1 increase. The busmen cannot win alone—that was clearly shown in 1958— and a further defeat could have serious consequences for the whole working class. An approach from the Central Bus Committee to the railwaymen for joint action to win the £1 and secure the implementation of the Guillebaud report should be made at once.

TUC must support busmen’s claim A demand should be made for the Trades Union Congress to declare now where it stands on the busmen’s claim. A call for a national levy in the trade union movement would break down the isolation suffered in 1958 Most important is for the vower of the whole of the transport union to be used to back the busmen. Dockers, power workers and oil men are in a position to decide the issue of the strike in favour of the bus workers.

Such a campaign could turn back the employers’ offensive and would raise the question of the removal of the Tory RPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPIPPPPPPPPPPPA WHAT IS MARXIST THEORY FOR?

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