PLAN TO BEAT THE TORIES By Gerry Healy

is now facing the most serious threat to. its wages and working conditions since the defeat of the 1926 general strike. As each day goes by the Tory government cynically casts aside its election promises and stands openly revealed as the executive of big business and monopoly capitalism.

The wage pause has been a success, because the right-wing trade union leaders are running away from a fight with the government. Such cowardice on the part of the Trades Union Congress, if not checked, could lead to a similar defeat as that in 1926. Never in history has so much responsibility fallen upon the shoulders of the rank and file of the British labour movement. We face several years, of intense struggle against the Tories and monopoly capitalists.

If the working class is to win, it requires a policy, a strategy and a new leadership which will fight for a socialist Britain. There is absolutely no room for compromise with capitalism.

Monopolies and the Common Market It is not difficult to understand the background to the present economic crisis. International markets are becoming more competitive and harder to capture. The forces of production in Britain are outdated in comparison to their capitalist rivals. of the United States, Japan and Western Europe.

As a result there is a tendency for the profits of the British capitalists to decline, something which the Tory government want to halt at all costs.

To bolster up the financiers and rich idlers who have never done a day's work in their lives, they propose to slash real wages and step up production by increasing the rate of exploitation of the working class.

By manipulating the bank rate and restricting investment, they hope to increase unemployment. Already the number of insured unemployed has risen to over half a million. Demonstrations have taken place in such towns as Jarrow; notorious for its unemployment in the years between the wars. "This restriction of investment and increase in the bank rate greatly assists the growth of monopoly. The tendency is for the weaker capitalists, who rely öi bank loans to run their business, toxibe driven to the wall, making it easier for the monopolies to take over: Behind these monopolies stand the most reactionary political forces in the country. It is from these forces that the threat of dictatorship and fascism directly arises.

The increase of monopoly in Britain today is alarming. The decision to enter the Common Market was in fact taken by the monopolists and not so much by the Tory government. There are divisions in the government over this issue which can be traced to the business interests of those concerned.

The policy of the big monopolies, however, has triumphed. So far as they are concerned, Secretary of the Socialist Labour Secretary of the Socialist Labour their future source of profit is to be derived by entering into cut-throat competition with their continental rivals. This conflict will not, of course, stop them from obtaining agreements to assist one another in a common onslaught upon the working class, but it does mean that the old rat race for markets is off to a flying start.

The present Tory offensive is in fact a prelude to entry into the Common Market.

The Line-up Forces The Tory plan is clear. First, they proceed to frighten the right-wing trade union leaders and force them to retreat under conditions where the working class will be split and defeated section by section. This has already happened in the civil service and postal workers' unions.

But the Tories are not fooled by such relatively easy victories. They know from bitter experience that the big battalions of labour like the miners, engineers and railwaymen are a much tougher proposition. So they are prepared to adjust their policy accordingly and agree to certain wage increases which will be entirely inadequate so far as the demands of the unions are concerned.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has said that during 1962 wage increases may rise to 4.8 per cent. In the case of the railwaymen, the government has started with Dr. Beeching's promise of 3 per cent, whilst an arbitration tribunal has granted the leatherworkers 4 per cent.

There is another and very important reason why the Tories pursue such a flexible policy. They are keenly aware that the working class is in a militant mood. They realise that although the Rootes Motor Company defeated the BLSP strike, it took many long weeks and a severe loss in trade. The stubborn retaliation of the Jaguar strikers against non-unionism is a warning sign of offensive action which the Tories cannot afford to ignore.

The policy of limited wage increases is an interim one. They rely on the possibility of representing the railwaymen, accepting say between 3 and 4½ per cent whilst the engineers and busmen force their leaders to take strike action. In this way the Tories hope to split the trade unions, and prepare the ground for wage cutting.

The application of this policy depends very much upon the acquiescence of the right-wing trade union leaders.

If the Tories are allowed to get away with it they will gradually wear down the resistance of the working class and encourage unemployment, just as they did in the early 1920s.

The one thing the Tories fear most is the united action of all those unions which have wage demands.

In this they are relying on men like William Carron, rightwing president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, who strongly opposes such action.

White PaperDeclaration of War So. confident are the Tories that the right wing will help them defeat. the working class -now as in 1926-that they have rushed into print the White Paper boldly outlining their intentions in the next stage of the wages war.

The real purpose of this White Paper is to offer a guide to industrialists and government arbitrators over the next period. Briefly this is what it says:

(a) Basic wages and salaries must rise more slowly than production output per head.

Wage increases must not be pegged to increases in the cost of living, since such increases will be mainly due to the rise in wages secured the previous year. •There is no case at all,' it says, 'for making this rise self-perpetuating The case for more wages cannot be justified on the the grounds that profits in the industry concerned have increased. Such increases in profit are necessary in order that more capital is available for reinvestment.

If this is not a declaration of war on the working class, we would like to know what is.

There is first of all an awareness by the authors that in some industries directly connected with the export drive, production will expand. The danger they see arising in these industries is that the strength of the local shop stewards' movement may force increases far in excess of national agreements. So an attack is planned against militant shop stewards.

The cost of living can rise but wages must remain virtually frozen.

Profits may increase but not wages. In other words, by exploiting the working class more intensely on the basis of keeping down wages, the rich who do no work will become richer and the poor, who do all the work, poorer.

Every active trade unionist knows that the recent witchhunt against the militants in the Electrical Trades Union was designed to discredit trade unionism, but unfortunately not every trade unionist knows or appreciates the reasons for this attack.

In his address to the Annual General Meeting of stockholders of Barclays Bank, the chairman, Mr. A. W. Tuke, congratulated the government on 'a more courageous line' and went on to sympathise with its retreat before 'the irresponsible settlement of the ETU wage claim' (obviously referring to the recent victory of the power workers).

It is such bankers and businessmen who have oiled the propaganda machine in the Fleet Street and television lie factories in their utterly disgraceful campaign against the ETU.

Mr. Tuke knows very well that the fiddling of ballots has not only taken place in some of the most 'respectable' trade union circles, but has been known on occasions to take place in even the most respectable businesses.

He is not concerned with that. What concerns him is that the ETU negotiating team under the leadership of Frank Foulkes secured a victory against the government's pay pause.

Another device which is now coming into full play in Fleet Street is the argument that in Natalia Trotsky i ON Saturday, February 10, the Socialist Labour League held a memorial meeting to the late Natalia Trotsky, widow of Leon Trotsky, at the Caxton Hall, London.

Over a hundred people attended and heard Tony Banda give the memorial speech.

He had come, ho said. not to mourn, but to remember — to remember the contribution made by Natalia Trotsky to the battle for Marxism.

He described the Trotskys' long fight against Stalinism and how, despite their expulsion from the USSR, their hounding by the GPU across several continents and uniens will lose their investments and surplus funds. This is designed to scare and frighten the fight-wing trade union puppets who look upon their unions as some kind of business.

Of course the trade unions have not the financial resources to pay out strike money over a long strike, but history records that trade unionism emerged not through such payments but through the militant determination of the working class to fight under conditions where many of our forefathers starved for months on end in order to win a strike.

Strikes will be won on the basis of policy and militancy and not on the basis of the financial resources of a particular union.

It follows that if the Tories have a strategy for defeating the working class, then the Labour movement must have a strategy for defeating the Tories. If the basis of the Tory strategy is to split the working class then the basis of Labour strategy must be to unite the working class irrespective of trade union. Concretely this means that all unions which have wage claims should work together in the common struggle against the Tories.

The right wing who compromise with the Tories will not allow this. So an essential part of Labour strategy must be devoted to removing such rightwing trade union leaders from office.

It is necessary, therefore, to adopt a policy which establishes the maximum unity among the rank and file of all trade unions in a way that will expose the right wing and be prepared, if necessary, to appoint new leaders who will guide the struggle to victory.

In all the main industrial centres, rank -and- file Committees of Action must be established between the trade unions which have wage claims pending.

These committees could start at local factory, pit, site and depot level and be extended where possible to include the local district and area bodies of the trade unions concerned. When these committees firmly established locally, they can be linked on a regional and later on a national basis.

Such rank-and-file action must under no circumstances be taken outside the trade unions. The strength of the trade• unions resides not in the right-wing leadership but in the militancy of the rank and file.

These committees which draw the rank and file into action are eeting of Tribute the death and murder of many of their close friends and relations at the hands of Stalin, they had :ilways unreservedly stood for the defence of the Soviet Union against the threat of world imperialism.

It must never be forgotten that without the support, help and endurance of Natalia throughout years of persecution, sorrow and illness, Trotsky might never have produced many of the works which now form the basis of the worid Trotskyist movement and which provide a link with the old generation of Bolsheviks who fought for, achieved and defended the firsi workers' state.

1926: The General Strike was sold out by right-wing leaders. A new leadership is needed to a means of strengthening trade unions in a way that transform them into figh instruments of the working ( in the struggle against Tories.

Remember the great role played by the Councils of Action during the 1926 strike. Due to their alternative leadership, the strike was gaining momentum when the right wing sold it out. Had these councils risen to the occasion and supplied a national alternative leadership to that right wing then the results of 1926 might have been very different.

The 1926 defeat will not happen again if this lesson is learned.

Since the rank-and-file committees form the backbone of the campaign against the government, those who lead them must clearly understand the political nature of their task.

Industrial action cannot by itself defeat the government. It must be combined with action on the political field in a way that will lead to the establishment of a Labour government pledged to a policy of socialism There are many trade unionists who still mistakenly believe that the struggle for wages has got nothing to do with politics. How can they maintain such a mistaken position when they see the role of the present Tory government?

the will ting :lass the and the election of a Labou government pledged to carry out measures which will speedily introduce socialism in Britain.

Such a Labour government cannot function under the leadership of Gaitskell. As a right winger he is basically no different from Woodcock and his fellow right wingers on the TUC.

Right at the moment when monopoly is rapidly increasing, Mr. Gaitskell fought to get rid of Clause Four in the Labour Party constitution which pledges the party to the nationalization of the basic means of production.

The fight against the right wing in the trade unions is inseparable from the fight against the right wing in the Labour party. The struggle in the trade unions must be linked to fight inside the Labour Party in order to get rid of the present leadership. The Tories will only be really defeated when the right wing are defeated.

These tasks can only be seriously undertaken through the building of a Marxist leadership. Such a leadership is provided only by the Socialist Labour League and is based upon the fact that we believe the class struggle in Britain can only be resolved through the triumph of the working class and the establishment of socialism.

Our answer to the Common Market and the growth of monopolies is the nationalization of all the basic industries in this country and the introduction of a system of workers' control.

Our answer to the government's White Paper is that wages must rise in accordance with the real increase in the cost of living; such increases to be ascertained by committees of the trade unions who will have access to the weekly budgets of their members covering all basic esentials and not just some of them as the present government cost of living index does.

We say no to all sackings and unemployment. Such measures must be resisted union organizatio industry where t posed. We repeat solution rests only nationalization of ries.

The Socialist Labour League The Socialist Labour League is the only Marxist organization which today fights simultaneously inside the Labour Party and the trade unions for a policy which will unite all sections of the working class industrially and politically against the Tories.

The policies of the Socialist stop further defeats. by the trade Ds in every ley are prothat the final in the speedy these industLabour League are based upon the same principles which made possible the successful revolution in Russia in 1917.

The programme of action which we have outlined to defeat the Tories can only be carried out by a consistent effort to increase the membership of the Socialist Labour League, by building branches of the League in every part of the country and in all the major industries.

We appeal to all trade unionists who want to prepare politically and industrially to fight and defeat the Tories, to join the Socialist Labour League and help build the Marxist revolutionary leadership which alone can do this job.