Wing the position of the TUC on the Thatcher government's anti-union aws.
This policy is now being completeTUCTer Duty on Monday penly Terry Duffy on Monday openly welcomed the government's new laws ballots. There has response to any of the massive legal attacks now taking place - including not only those on the NGA and NUM but £200,000 fine on the TGWU.
The centre and right of the TUC are well aware that the miners' strike, and the support for it, are the main face in swinging the TUC decisively to the right. They are therefore attempting to reverse the pledge of "total support' given to the NUM at Congress. Predictably, extreme right is leading the way.
John Lyons, of the Engineers and Managers Association has written to Willis to place the issue of support for the miners on the agenda general council meeting on the 28th November. His letter states that the 'general council, with Its responsibilities ne race movement as a whole must establish clearly whether it has a view of its own in this protracted, bitter more damaging dispute'. In other words, the TUC must state publicly that it does not support the NUM and reverse the Congress decisions.
been June now the the of the wider and evel Basnett is well Can you tell stork from butter? chances non-political road can after EETPU The about action, I he ment, organised codifies sent defeats.
Loyal 1982, jority, bankrupt.
But if the ballots on the political funds result in major unions breaking the ties with the Labour Party then it senous weaker of forming a government, and be a big step towards the kind of business unionism Hammond et al desire. Just how far Hammond is prepared to go on this be seen by his statement the Inal would like to join the CBI. and that he would 'be looking at the CBl's articles to see if there was a wa! to get round the point of our being a union and I will certainly be deing of leaders seem to have got round ine point of being a union at all!
most fundamental poir. the attacks on ile unions is that the weakening of the =:. fective strength of trade unions. ari their freedom to engage in poura undermines the most basa democratic right of the working class.
military style policing of the miners' strike, the use of the courts er an unprecedented scale in industna disputes, the attack on local governand the undermining of the Labour Party are all part of this same attack on democratic rights — on the strength of the labour New realism is not new. It merely and extends the policy retreat and betrayal that the unior leaders have followed for the past five years. And this line has led to the preThe Tories have taken advantage of every retreat to launch a fresh attack. Starting with the isolation of the steel workers in 1980, and the sell-out of ASLEF and the Health workers in , though June 1983 to the NGA and GCHQ, the present leadership of the labour movement has, in its maitself to be utter!!
The Tories have turned to attack the NUM because it thought that the labour movement was sufficient! softened up for a decisive blow against a key section of the organised workig Class The Tories miscalculated on what struggle would COSI them, because it found a leadership that was within the British trade a leadership that was thrown up by the strikes of 1969, 1974 was, Scargill's words, 'prepared to stand and fight'. The NUM leadership has refused to use the TUC bureaucracy to get itself off the hook. It has refus. ed to allow the TUC to step in and sell out its struggle. That Scargill leadership of the NUM remains firmly committed to victory It is the NUM's stand that needs to be taken through the whole labour The present leadership has to be replaced The struggle in the labour move ment, to use Scargill's words, is for a TUC as loyal to the miners as the CBI is to Thatcher and the NCB