OUR FÓC." WHAT EXACTLY was Rupert Murdoch offering the unions in the negotiations which took place before Xmas last year? What would a no-strike deal legally binding on not - really mean? We reprint below a summary of the Murdoch contract given in the special issue of the SOGAT journal, January 1986:
THE draft agreement presented management on 21 November (1986), which we were asked to sign, included the following points:
• No recognition of chapels or branches, and no negotiations with them. • No strikes 'or other industrial action for any reason whatever. union must promptly repudiate any industrial action taken by members print • Anyone taking part in a strike or industrial action will be subject to immediate dismissal with no right of appeal.
• Union officials 'have a special duto enforce this agreement!
• No closed shoo. molovees who are a member of the union can leave it by at any time.
• Union representatives in the company will be elected by the members Wul call be immedialtely from office by management it the! are given a written warning for any disciplinary offence The • No union recognition at all for • supervisors and management grades. section' of the to manage. people reclassify' removed quired. • Complete flexibility of working with no demarcation lines. • New technology may be adopted at any time followed by job cuts.
• No minimum staffing levels either by agreement or understanding. The employer will decide the number of people required for any job, and fir their starting and finishing times. • The employer has 'exclusive right Management will select jobs 'classify people, 'hire promote. demote and transfer employees as reThey will also 'suspend. discipline, dismiss, lay off employees from work' as they see fit.
• All this will be legally bindiag ou the union and the members.
WITH THE Tories in open crisis, Neil Kinnock's witch hunt is still scoring own goals for Labour.
Tribune reached grotesque heights in its last issue when it devoted more than three pages to witch hunting Militant and other socialists and half a page to dealing with the Tory crisis!
But the witch hunters aren't having everything their own way. Witch Hunt News has been widely circulated. And opposition to the witch hunt comes from those who are not known opponents of Kinnock within the party.
On Tuesday 21 January a public meeting in London brought together those fighting against Socialists expelled from the party, or threatened with expulsion — Amir Khan, Kevin Scally, and supporters of Devon Labour Briefing - with Joan Maynard, Diane Abbott and Ken Livingstone.
We print what KEN LIVINGSTONE and JOAN MAYNARD said It dates GLC Labour group. tribution to Table will I don't waiv dow me ones discipline within group.
If they basically their elected representatives.
push through committee who occause ward can do.
leil Kinnock I HAD NO trouble deciding to come on this platform because I have a record of opposition to all expulsions.
back to the GLC group in 1976 when the leadership of the Labour group wanted to expel two members because they were too right wing even lor ine leadersmp or lnc At that stage the position that the left took on the GLC Labour group was that we were opposed to all expulsions, whether of the right or the left.
The Labour Party should be basically a broad parliament of the left, and anyone who teels they've got a conMake should be acceptake the view that individual left wingers bring disrepute on the party. My problem on the GLC is not that individual groups of left wingers bring disrepute on the party, but that we actually have a consistent bloc of four of five Labour members voting with the Tories, who don't just bring disrepute on the party, they acto we votes Now the Labour group here has taken a very clear position that those comrades are answerable to their GMCS, local internal structure of the GLC "I have to say very clearly for anybody who may be in doubt, I am ready to do everything to oppose expulsions, to make it difficult for any comrade in the Labour Party whether it's the leader of the Labour Party or a local GMC, to carry these expulsions out."
can carry their GMC they've got a right to put the position that they do to council. If they can't carry their GMC, their political career is finished. The discipline that we should be arguing for, is the discipline of the rank and file Ovel There are several things that we can do to actually make it more ditficult for the leadership of the party to Many expulsions The first and most easy example is in the case of the comrade on general has been assoclalcu SUllIC members of his local party with MiliWere are several legs WICH Sheffield district party and his local The witch-hunt will work if no one makes it difficult for the leadership to carry it out. If if becomes difficult for the leadership to carry it out - if it means they have to close down whole parties, if they have to intervene into the workings of labour councils - it will become a nightmare for them.
Three years ago when the first expulsions of Militant took place, half a dozen of us on the Labour group discussed the possibility that three or four of us might join Militant quite prominently, thus present NEC with the prospect that if they expelled us they would actually reduce the Labour majority on the GLC to the point where they no longer had Labour control. But that issue disappeared when the mood wasn't there to widen the expulsions.
But what's quite clear now is that individual right wing constituencies, the 20 per cent that voted for Denis Healey 1981, are being allowed to carry out their own expulsions. Not something imposed from the centre, but waiting for some local reactionary party to actually expel the people that are alleged to have brought the party into disrepute.
I can't give you a better way of describing that, or answering that, than the way in which Eric Heffer answered it at a recent meeting of the government committee of the NEC. There was a discussion going on about how Militant in Liverpool had brought the disrepute, and there needed to be an Eric Heffer said that he recalled ine lime wnen leadlg Labour coulcillors brought the Labour Party into disrepute because they had corruptly embezzled hundreds of thousands of pounds of ratepayers money into their own pockets. At that time the Labour Party never felt the need to have an enquiry.
The truth is that up and down the length of Labour MPs and Labour councillors this count y. individual bring the Labour Party into the most squalid disrepute. You just walk about two miles to the east of this building to Tower Hamlets counWate councillors get up, when they are discussing the question of housing Bengalis, and say we shouldn't be housing Bengalis, we should be housing our own people first. Purges I have one or two exceptions to my opposition expulsions. prepared to expel someone stands against an officially-endorsed Labour candidate. I'm also prepared to expel people who are openly racist, because they have no place Labour Party.
The Labour Party has never tackied the issue of Tower Hamlets. It's a nest of racist bigotry.
Labour Party hasn't tackled it because we've left it to the local party. They've tackled it by deselecting those councillors, and so basically 8 May will bring to an end an appalling period in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party. But the national party never intervened.
I ney ve Dees prepared to ignore racism and corruption by Labour Party members, and yet they suddenly turn on a few Militant supporters.
I'm not in Militant! I have major points of difference about the issue of positive action to end discrimination against women and black people, and on the issue of our role in Ireland. But we didn't resolve that in the London Labour Party by expelling Militant.
We resolved those issues by debating • them at the regional executive, by voting on them at the regional annual conference. We resolved those issues the into need to in a political way and that is the way we tackle these problems.
down the route of looking for purges and expulsions, they will reunite a lett that has been torn apart during this last year, and in reuniting that left they will open the way to their own defeat. I don't believe that the expulI'm sions will actually deliver what the leadership want. the London Labour Party, result will be a shift to the left, in OI London politics. I'm sure there are points of difference between those who support Militant and those of us on the regional executive who take a different position on the other issues I've referred to. The leadership might be rather disappointed to wake up and find that having member of Militant, their problems were actually regional executive of the Labour Party.
is happening. pulsions of the spreading turther. A been expelled from the Labour Party because he believes in the reunification of Ireland, and the withdrawal of British troops. Now how can you exIf the leadership of the party go DO I If you expel every Militant from comrades rights?
every accentuated on the London We've also got to look at what else Having started the ex- in Militant, it is now comrade has pel him and not expel Ken Liv ingstone? How can you expel him for arguing for troops out of Ireland, and expel Ken Livingstone brought representatives of Sinn Fein into this building so that they could involve themselves in dialogue with Londoners? It seems that expulsion depend very much what position you hold. If you're an MP, whether you subscribe to Militant or not, you're not expelled. But you are if you're an ordinary rank and file party member. How can you expel a comrade who supports Troops Out?
We also need to look at what can be done in those areas where comrades have already been How can we defend their democratic The Sheffield councillor who has been expelled is still a councillor, but the NEC has decided to uphold his expulsion. What response can Sheffield party make? It's not good enough just to have David Blunkett voting in minority of 13 to 14 on the NEC. There are things that can be organised Sheffield. His constituency district parties can vote not to put a candidate up at the election in May, and leave the way open for that comrade to stand an Labour candidate with the support of the local party and the local council
attacks witch hunt leadership. If they do that I shall go and speak on his election platforms and canvass for him. Socialist Action 31 January 1986
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HARRIS HU1:104a
"My disagreements with the Militant pale into insignificance compared with my disagreements with the principle of expulsions."