Lynn Walsh: Bosses Plan New Attack on Unions

[Militant No. 429, 27th October 1978, p. 1 and 12]

By Lynn Walsh

The Labour government must drop wage restraint and carry out bold socialist policies to benefit workers.

The Ford workers’ action for better pay and conditions having an effect in unexpected quarters.

Church of England parsons met in London to discuss how to spread the word of trade unionism among the clergy. They are calling for improved pay, working conditions and job security.

Strike action by parsons, while it may well bring angry sermons from the Tory press, is unlikely to paralyse the economy. Nevertheless, such stirrings among the clergy are certainly a sign of the new mood inspired by the Ford strike.

Pay has been held down long enough! A 5% Phase IV is completely unacceptable! This was the clear message of both the TUC in Brighton and Labour Party Conference in Blackpool.

And it is not only the Ford workers who are prepared to act.

Vauxhall workers have voted against strike action, at least for the time being. But this week shop-floor representatives of the power workers and Scottish lorry drivers, both strategically placed groups of workers, voted decisively against 5% pay offers.

At last, after reluctant acceptance of the Labour government’s disastrous pay policies for so long, the trade unions have begun to do their proper job: protect the living standards of their members.

Straight away the bosses and their kept press are screaming for a new armoury of weapons against trade unionists taking action.

In a document drawn up for its forthcoming conference, the Confederation of British Industries calls for the holding up of tax rebates to strikers and the withdrawal of social security payments to strikers’ families. In other words, if workers exercise their right to withdraw their labour, their wives and children will be starved.

The CBI document calls for new laws allowing the bosses to interfere with trade union ballots and curb the rights of pickets. The “right to work” law they also call for is the classic blacklegs’ charter: automatic legal and police backing for scabs.

These proposals are a clear warning of what we can expect from a Tory government.

Unfortunately, by stubbornly refusing to heed the overwhelming decisions of the labour movement, Jim Callaghan, Denis Healey and other right-wing Labour ministers are going the best way to destroy Labour support among working class voters.

In a joint meeting of the cabinet and Labour’s National Executive last Tuesday, Callaghan brusquely rejected the Labour Party’s call to drop the 5% norm. He also refused to promise any increase of public spending to reverse the savage cuts which have shattered the health and welfare services.

Is it any wonder that Mr Heath – ex union-bashing Tory premier – has recently been singing the praises of the Labour government? When an arch enemy of the workers hands bouquets to a Labour government, something has to be very wrong!

If the Labour government is out to be strengthened and a defeat for the Tories made certain, there must be a fundamental change of course. Labour ministers must abandon policies aimed at reviving a diseased capitalism at the workers’ expense and implement the socialist measures demanded by the labour movement.

At the joint cabinet/NEC meeting Callaghan indignantly rejected the idea that Labour’s National Executive was “a co-government or alternative government”. But that is just what it should be!

What is the NEC but the highest elected body of the Party Labour ministers are supposed to represent and whose policies they are in power to implement?

Labour’s NEC, like the TUC, has a clear duty to act as a democratic check on the movement’s ministerial representatives, and should have a decisive say on behalf of the working class in the discussion and decisions of a Labour government.

Tory governments ruthlessly defend the rents, interest and profits of their backers, the handful of big businessmen who dominate the economy.

A Labour government must be equally ruthless in carrying out socialist policies which benefit the working class, the producers and their families who make up the big majority of the population.