temporary WUIN.
later. On each of these issues 'hard left' led unions such fentre right' unions such as the GMB.
For example on the issue or no strike deals une Oly member of the general council to vote with Arthur cargill against putting off a decision for a year was Joyce winsett oI NUrt The EETPU and AEU have GMB, NUPE who are trying to bring hundreds thousands of new women and black temporary and part time workers into the unions.
But when it came to the crucial VOTOC and NUPE lined up with wielru AEU round the fraud of putting off voting on no strike deals for a year. It was the same .cit ir T "uIC SANUC Labour's proposed innion laws betore the election. These were originally opposed by NUPE and the TGWU who then , under the pressure of Neil Kinnock and Norman Willis, backed down and voted for them.
more undamenta issue.
eas Boral cas playıng around with the idea of splitting the TUC. It is also prepared to col-.
aborate with forces outside the employing as an officer, for example the head of the SDP's organisation John Grant. The AEU right wing, while not so openly disloyal to the Labour Party and TUC, is This week's TUC Congress shows clearly how wrong are the alliances which have been constructed in the trade union movement. The most immediate key issues facing this year's TUC were the light against no strike deals and how to organise five million part time and Behind that lay fundamental issues of political strategy - which we will look at as the NUM, and in a different way the CPSA, found themselves formally in alliance with the broad left' led anions such as the TGWU and NUPE. Even, in a different way, on the issue of organising part time and temporary workers, there was some agreement with prepared to aid and abet the BHSe T. threatened to split the TUC Lwo vcar azu This raises the clearest issues for members of the IOWU.
Why are their unions being allowed to line up, in practice, with the right wing inSedo o wene naen unions. Why, furthermore, is that policy being pursued not only in the TUC but in the Labour Party?
The reason for that lies the alliances put together by Neil Kinnock and Norman Willis inside the trade unions. Kinnock and Willis have concentrated energy o tassle down the left movement while compromising with the right. Indeed, the labour movement loaay Is led by a 'soft left'/right wing bloc symbolised by Kinnock/Hattersley in the Labour Party and the bloc with the AEU/EETPU inside the TUC. policy disastrous not simply for the Labour but for At the election meant Labour playing down even policies such as opposition nuclear power, policies on women, or for a national minimum wage Witch Wolle trave been electorally popular.
In the trade unions it has Hammond anther year to prepare for a possible split from the Meanwhile neither the EETPU, LUE ILS right wing allies, will cease making the no strike deals which threaten unionism whole allus sections of workers.
What, instead members of: broad lett lec unions should be considerlatioril 10E uniting not with the right but with the 'hard left' side the unions. Because the reality is that way I01ward for the trade novenenl exsis aove all the question of recrue emoco wuch. rightly, was a central issue al luis ycal s luc.
Here the movement faces clear choices. Among the 'core' workers the number of skilled workers, the base Stur auel of the EETPU and AEU is one of the reasons why these right wing unions are trying to break out of this sector and start recruiting among white collar workers on one side organising un e meskeo via sweetheart deals with malaschcll.
These unisons need to be hit from two sides First Via the amalgamation of ASTMS and TASS. This will create •the largest wille Cola trade union in the world. It is nol d nara mcll oll broad left led union. But it is a clear alternative to the no-strike business unionism of the EETPU/AEU.
Second is among the uisKicd part time, workers. Here the EETPU. model negotlating a sweetheart deal with the emolover tc deliver captive membership: For the employer this shuts out a more militant union. For Tine denvers subscriptions. The deals Rupert Murdoch WIlD and earlier with Shah at Today, are the tir of that iceberg. Here the entire left has got to give full support to the drive by the TGWU GMB, NUPE, and other unions to organise temporary part time workers. This is the alternative, in this sec. nor. o une sweeten cens of the EETPU.
Where does this leave the hard left? Simple. The hard left has got its own battles to fight where, at present, it is . s0 atec• above all on the need to reverse the TUC'S attitude to the law, to the Labour -DTO posals, and to delivering practica solidarity workers in struggle. But secondly, the broad left led unions are today forced by the needs of the situation to proclaim pro gressive goals which they CaniOL fight for bv their canno. be faughl tor , thẹy cannot be fought alliance with the right. The hard left has to make clear it supports and takes up these goals — in particular the recruitment drive by the the struggle against no strike deals, and the fight for closer links with the Labour Party.
It is the unions the hard left leads, above all the NUM, and the left wing in other unions, that have the ASOSI issues as the organisation policy ot women ir the labour movement, the fight against business unionism, and which are most clearly tied to Labour. The hard must . oul Jorwara a strategy for the entire Move n not just the parts it directly leads.
In this way the hard left will pursue not narrow sectarian interests forge the alliances that will AKe In fi entTe movement forward. And it is, rightly, only by doing this that the hard left can expand its own influence