steadily deepening attack •sion rights, which opened the door for employers and others to bring legal cases to the existing courts.
Action which had for years been lawful was to lead to unions and trade mionists being sued in the civil courts. I gave anti-working class forces the opportunity to sue the unions.
depends on the balance of forces. Mass memployment is intended to tip the in favour of the Even if many of the provisions of the 1930 and 1982 Acts have not yet been used by employers, the situation will be different under a Tory with a fresh mandate.
The 1980 Prior Las These attacked secondary Wacking and sympathy action and the dosed shop. Under the Prior Laws only acketing at your place of work was Car workers picketing icketing unregistered ports, or Cowley workers picketing Longbridge to win apport for a dispute became unlawful.
addition, éffective even within the of the became more difficult. The Code Practice produced with gested 'six-picket limit', dely used by the police in attacking rickets.
The Prior Laws also made it easier Socialist Action 27 May 1983 on trade aim is for the unions to nember.
disobey. second cent 'yes' ty of up Government refusing to join, The Tory manifesto picketing, strikes compulsory.
collective picketing, of government and media. the Act up to f250,000 if they did not take immediate steps to prevent their members taking 'unlawful' industrial action. The police their It also makes it easier for employers to get injunctions from the courts to — caving acurvists labie to imprisonment for contempt if they main target was the established closed shop. While Prior insisted on ballots for new shops the Act provides for periodic ballots requiring 80 per cent of the workforce or 85 per 'vote to reaffirm the shop.
In addition, the Act offered a boun£20,000 to malcontents if they were dimissed for For leaving a union. place. This money is to be paid by the union.
The new proposals take this a stage further. Under cover of concern about Tories will make secret ballots before This is designed to undermine the role of mass meetings in expressing the worker make industrial action an individual in the face of a hostile Taken together the Tory changes in the law prepare the way for a major assault on the power of organised Labour in HANDS UP For Democracy is the TUC's reply to the Tory strategy for breaking trade power in the workBut it should retitled Hands Up Bureaucracy.
This pamphlet does not defend working class organisation against the Tories. It detends the trade union ol ficials ... their power, their practices, their privileges.
A flavour of the depths to which such an argument needs to sink is giver by the following quote: 'Even the cost of finding out information on com panies, which most people think should be freely available, has been increased from Sp a time to fl.
This 'defence' of democracy in the mass organisations of the working class takes as its point of reference comparison with the capitalist companies, the banks, the pension funds, the press, the Conservative party, and - heaven help us - the House of Lords.
The argument runs that these institutions are undemocratic. The trade unions are much more democratic But you cannot win the argument with such a starting point. be tions which are designed to exploit and For repress the working class are by their nature undemocratic. They have to be Price Trade unions, however, need the greatest possible concentrated employers and their state means struggling also for the involvemen members. privilege nor a luxury. It is a necessity.
The lack of it retards the political development of the working class, and exacts a heavy price. In 1964, 73 per cent of trade unionists voted Labour; in 1979, 51 per cent; a recent dicated that 43 per unionists intend to vote Labour in this OrganisaFighting cent power the political levy.
greatest unity and of the is neither voluntarv poll in cent of election. In the same poll, only 17 per of trade unionists support the Clearly all is not well in the unions When the trade union bosses send rail strikers back to work, when they fail to fight effectively for the health workers, when they make deals which impose incomes policy • on thei members, they open the door for the employers and their parties to weaken and divide the working class.
The Tory proposals on the unions play on this. For the fact of the matter
This is who the Tories serve: The Stock Exchange, The Bank of England, the Nat West and the guy who owns the Rolls tributing to the Party dropped from 3.2 million to 2.6 million despite an 80 per cent increase in trade union membership.
This experience shows that the Tories and Alliance are less concerned about the liberties of individual trade unionists than they are about financially crippling the Labour Norman Tebbit is generous enough to claim: 'I believe there is a place for a left of centre opposition party in Britain which enjoys popular support.
'If Labour were forced to develop a mass membership as the Conservative have done to preserve its financial position it would automatically the bedsitter brigade and militant leftists and Bennites which have all but destroyed the Labour Party of old.' out me mass menderson onoca associations contribute less to Tory funds than individual members of the Labour Party: 28.6 per 1969/70 and 17.1 per cent in 1979/80less than a sixth of the total.
The Tory Party is increasingly and overwhelmingly financed through contributions from the biggest capitalist corporations in Britain, providing up to 75 per cent ot total tunds.
As their £12.5 million Saatchi and Saatchi election campaign shows, the lories understand perfectly that the wheels of parliamentary democracy are gucasca by vulgar pouna nores. ple Labour employing class as a whole hes, courts and stale ty in action is necessary.
liberty. politically divide the unions. force out calls for for cent in have caused the decline.
defends their be defended and maintained.
they intend TOS. the company's terms.
tain's trade Just as trade unions must levy dues to defend their members against individual employers, equally money is necessary to defend them against the - its parI nis is une pur pose of the political levy. In political struggle, as in trade union struggle, uniNo union can survive and allow blacklegging in the name of personal So too the unions can't maintain a political party independent of the capitalist parties without united action in the payment of political funds.
The Tories argue that Labour's vote amongst trade unionists has declined in recent years. Their aim is to use this to They are helped by leaders like Chapple when he • a vote for an SDP candidate and Duttv when he motivates the need Labour/Alliance coalition The decline in Labour's vote among trade unionists is not an argument Ior contracting-in and abandoning the present method of collecting the political levy, which is favoured by people like Chapple. It is an argument for abandoning the policies and leaders which ly party in which trade unionists can organise a fight for a government that interests against the callarsis, mm me pontical levy must It because the Tories understand this that financially cripple Labour and break its links with the. ing on the company, Terry Dutty and Moss Evans sent them back to work on The pamphlet's claim that 'in Briunions it is the members who decide' does not accord with the experience of millions of workers. Royce. They are also the source of all that money Saatchi and Saatchi are spending.
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This was the key to the new, Tory strategy. Whether the unions are sued