Socialist Action No. 81, 7 December 1984
The scan: 081-dec-07-1984-SA-UK.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive)
Uncorrected machine reading of the whole issue. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from the scan and has not been corrected or cut into articles. Each page gives the headlines first, then the columns in order, so one article runs on into the next. Expect misread words. Use it to find things; quote from the scan.
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ACTION SOCiALiSt 7 December 1984
TUC
must back the
miners
Call a 24 hour general strike!
No. 81
30p 1799 1834
1871
1873
1896
1900 1909
1915
1927
1971
1972
1973
1980
1982
1983
1984
1984
1985?
The courts
versus
the unions
Combination Acts: made all 'combinations' of workers illegal. Anyone joining together for the purpose of opposing her or his employer is liable to three months' imprisonment or two months' hard labour Combination Acts: The 1824 Act repealed the earlier anti-combination legislation but a wave of strikes immediately caused Peel's government to tighten up the law again.
Tolpuddle Martyrs: six labourers from Tolpuddle in Dorset were transported to Australla under a 1797 Act forbidding the 'administering and taking of unlawful oaths' for seditions.
Trade Union Act and Criminal Law Amendment Act: effectively outlawed peaceful picketing by 'watching unlawful since the 1825 Act, but had been finally legalised in 1859.
Gas Stokers' Case: London gas workers who had gone on strike to prevent the victimisation of trade
were sentenceo to 12 months' hard labour for 'conspiracy' to break their contracts of employment.
The courts grant an injunction to prevent members of the Amalgamated Trade Society of Fancy Leather Workers from picketing their place of work, throwing into doubt the right to peaceful picketing believed to have been established by the 1896 Trade Union Act.
Taff Vale Judgement: again, the courts grant an injunction to prevent picketing, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants -in dispute with the Taff Vale railway. • Ine Hous of Lords also awards compensation for losses suf fered by the company as a result of the strike and the ASRS has to pay f42,000 in damages and legal costs.
Osborne Judgement: the courts declare that it is il legal for the Amalgamated Society of Railway Ser vants to make contributions to the funds of the Labour Party.
Munitions of War Act: made all strikes illegal in industries employed in war work. All trade union rules on production, such as limitations on overtime, are suspended and arbitration in industrial disputes made compulsory.
Trades Disputes Act: banned sympathetic strikes and all strikes 'designed to coerce the government', introduced a 'contracting-in' system for the payment of the political levy to the Labour Party and forbad civil servants from joining unions af
Industrial Relations Act: established special National Industrial Relations Court with jurisdiction in industrial disputes with power to impose strike ballots, 'cooling-off' periods and fines upon unions undertaking "unfair industrial practices. The pre-entry closed shop declared illegal.
Pentonville Five: the NIRC under • Lord Donaldson imprisoned five dockers, 'The Penton ville Five', for contempt of court in 1972 for refusing to stop boycotting a vehicle depot. Donaldson orders the sequestration of the assets of the AUEW for refusing to stop picketing a Woking firm which would not allow its workers to join a trade union. Three building pickets jailed by the Shrewsbury courts on frame-up conspiracy charges.
Employment Act: ('Prior's Law') outlawed secondary picketing and restricted number of pickets allowed in a lawful industrial action to just six Employment Act: ('Tebbit's Law') effectively made all sympathy strikes illegal and made trade union funds liable to claim for damages as a result of 'unlawful' industrial action.
Sequestration of the funds of the NGA Employment Act: ('King's Law') makes ballots compulsory for strikes and cuts off trade union funds for the Labour Party unless reaffirmed every 10 years by ballot.
Receiver appointed for the NUM, TGWU fined £200,000
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The TUC's road to hell
2 JOHN ROSS looks at how the Tories have based their trade union laws on the expectation that the TUC would put up no resistance to a policy of slowly tightening the noose around the labour movement. And how the chosen the terrain of the miners' strike as the decisive one to force through their plans to change the entire legal framework of trade unionism.
Ever since they were elected in 1979 the Tories ir an had de lion late that for their anti-trade union laws. goal is an American model of trade unionism trade unions which are 'non-political', which base themselves on legally binding contracts with the employers, and unions which take coresponsibility with the employers for policing these contracts. In other words to create an entire union movement on the model of the EETPU or Alistair Graham's role in the CPSA.
The result would naturally be exactly the same as in the United States. catastrophic fall in union membership as trade union members found they belonged to organisations which offered them no protection.
Worse still trade unions on this model would be confined just to those sections of the workforce with the most
employment, with qualifications etc. Strikes would, in addition, be banned in 'essential services' such as health, local government, the water, electricity, and gas industries.
The aim would be a trade union movement enormously reduced in size from its present level - with perhaps six million members in trade union atflated to the TUC compared to ten million at the present. This membership furthermore would be far more concentrated than at present in skilled right sing unions such as the EETPU, the stilled sections of the AUEW etc. The aim would be to destroy public sector unions such as NUPE as an effective force by the combination of anti-union Las and privatisation.
Precisely because breaking the power of the unions, and
their Halulc. sweeping the Tories never calculated they would be able to get their laws through, and enforced, all in one move. Instead their aim was to tighten the noose slowly - - to bring forward a successive series of Acts, and legal deci-
that would in a step fashion accomplish their ral controntation to achieve the new framework of law, evitably come, would then be at a time, and on a terrain, of the government's own choosing. Therefore:
'I AM THE NUM,' said Herbert Brewer, the receiver appointed last Friday to run the NUM. wasn't joking. The court order which installed him not only gives him control of the union's funds, but the power to intervene in any decision with financial tions right down to whether or not a phone call can be made.
By this decision the courts have tried to rule that Arthur Scargill is no longer president of the National Union of Mineworkers and the executive no longer in effective control of the union.
There is only one other where the law has dealt in such a way with a trade union: in the 1950s, when the executive of the electricians' union was removed for alleged ballot rigging.
The entire egal miners is a pure political contrivance. Foulstone and Taylor, began court proceeaings on Ine grounds lal Dranci meetings has not been held regularly and the area elections not held on time.
Socialist Action 7 December 1984
Tories have
Royal penguins on parade
tion, limited picketing, skilled unions municy
fines to compliance with the law.
ballots before strikes, the political funds.
anti-union Acts.
In addition to the
their plans for miners, have been:
al C
over picketing.
by step goals. The funds.
which would in- took out an injunction
the union.
Who is the real NUM?
The judge declare the And he unofficial
implica- personally being fined beginning of October.
Scargill's fine anonymous donor. mains unpaid.
Foulstone got
situation to say the strike is unofficial court can nold
past but all case against ine courts
ballot or a return to work.
Yorkshire.
trustees of ruling class interests?
288* • The 1980 Act outlawed solidarity ac-
and offered for ballots. • The 1982 Act imposed ballots for ible. closed shops and made unions liable for
£250,000 non-
The 1984 Act imposed compulsory
and compulsory Illallalilg
• A new 'Green Paper' is promised by the government on banning strikes in 'essential services' as the next round of
'words
new • laws the courts have been steadily piling up a new series of legal decisions which al c in line with the government's aims. The most important of these, aside from the
• In May 1981 Chloride Batteries took out an injunction against the TGWU
September 1983 Eddie Shah's Stockport Messenger group took out an injunction against the NGA which led to the sequestration of the unions'
• In November 1984 Austin Rover
against the TGWU for not holding a ballot on a strike which led to a £200,000 fine on
used this technicality entire Yorkshire strike
An injunction was granted instructing the national executive to stop urging members not to cross picket lines. The union's refusal to obey led to the £200,000 fine and to Arthur Scargill
£1000 at the
was paid by re For this Taylor and their sequestration
Sequestration means that as long as the union is in contempt — bv refusing
the onto its money, security against further contempt. Furthermore it must accept not merely all
future decisions the including demands for
has pushed the courts into the open. After this blatant attack, who can doubt the role of the courts as
The point about all these decisions it that the framework of law erected by the Tories is completely politically flex-
Legal action can either be initiated, or not initiated, by employers and government simply on the basis of considering the relation of forces. true character of the courts as political instruments is more and more directly revealed.
The calculation of the Tories in all these attacks has been that the TUC would not act in defence of unions threatened by the law. For its part the TUC policy has been purely a case of
not action'. Officially policy is based on the Wembley special conference of 1982. This pointed out that the Heath government's 1971 Industrial Relations Act 'was defeated by a united and etfective trade
. The fact that trade unions generally adopted an aggressive posture The funeral of Joe Green — the second miner killed in the strike
to the Act made the Act unworkable.
The conference adopted a position of total non-compliance with the anti-union laws, including refusal to accept government funds ballots, rejection of ballots on the closed shop, and support for industrial action in under the Acts.
Len Murray, in moving the general council's report to the conference said: 'One thing we one of us
what this Coves them; that if they choose to invoke its TUC provisions it would cost them dearly; if they are foolish enough to start legal trouble they will face the risk of ar escalation of action by the trade union movement acting together.'
But the general council ever since Wembley has been the exact reverse. J 200L
for state imposed
defence of unions attacked accept
- and that means every ASTMS. - has got to do is warn
AcI means Iol
practica course of tne
The decisive labour movement. last Raymond
The ruling
blood.
After
LUKE
death. the pickets dangerous.
refusal to defend the NGA, and the failure to act against the legal attacks on the NUM, has been followed by a further series of retreats. The EETPU and AUEW led the way by repudiatins the Austin Rover strike. The AUEW executive is appealing to its members to
funds for ballots David Basnett of GMBATU is calling for a 'major review' of the TUC polic
opposition the law
Every single one of these retreats has led to a further tightening of the screw by the government. The Tories are now calculating that if the TUC fails to back the miners the major step in forcing through the new framework or anti-trade union aw will have beer taken. This is why the battle over the NUM really is the decisive one for the entire future of the trade union and
'During this
we have lost
of five of our
AFTER THE death of David Wilkie, the driver ferrying one of Merthyr Vale's two scabs to work
Friday, •young miners, Hancock and Russell Shankland, have been charged with murder at Merthyr Tydfil court.
class with the media right behind them, are baying for
The whole process was a pure display of ruling class hypocrisy.
the death, DICK WITHECOMBE and TERRY
spoke to TYRONE O'SULLIVAN, chair of the Cynon Valley joint lodges, about the
What's the response of NUM members in Cynon Valley to the death of David Wilkie this morning?
A death in the family is always a tragic experience. We have lived with death in our communities since coal mining began. In the case of the taxi driver, 1 have felt for a long time that someone taking scabs to work would eventually become a fatality.
Firstly, the method of getting scabs into work - driving into pitheads at 70 miles per hour with no regard for either
the police Only on Monday, at the
Page 3 scan of this page
TUC must back the miners
Call a 24 hour general strike!
THE DECISION by the Court to remove the elected the
Leadership of the NUM from the
¡mancial control of the union, and to appoint a Tory solicitor to run the affairs of one of the most powerful unions in the country, is
the most serious legal attack on the labour movement since the Taff Vale decision imposing financial
enalties for strikes in 1901.
It gives the state and the courts complete powers, and a total precedent, to
take over the running of any trade
nion in the country.
That is why the NUM delegate con-
erence has totally correctly refused to
erate in any way with the court and
turn to the TUC with a demand for
emergency general council meeting
and industrial action against the legal attack on the unions.
It is also why Arthur Scargill is dead right when he says the court decision is an attack on every trade union.
The NUM's defiance has forced out into the open what always been the case in the strike. This strike was never planned by Thatcher as
"industrial' dispute. She simply chose muners as une ground which to deliver a shattering blow *gainst the whole trade union movement. This was made clear in the Conservative rary's 19/0 Ridley report which planned confronting the miners' strike down to the smallest detail.
it is aso why the whole miners strike has been surrounded by a rising series of legal assaults on the unions -the latest and most important being the $200,000 fine on the TGWU over the Austin Rover dispute. It is exactly that reality which gives the opportunity for
decisive blow against the whole anti-union laws.
Two of the most powerful unions in the country, the NUM and the TGWU,
simultaneous v find - themselves facing the full force of the courts. they are supported by the TUC they easily have the power to destroy the en-
trike
he lives
members'
very same colliery, Myrthr Vale, a number of policemen were run down causilg major injuries, as a scab was driven in.
Also, the situation arises that when the police stop pickets at road blocks and when they order pickets off their buses 3-o miles trom where thev intend to peacefully picket, it gives frustration. When you put 2-3000 people on the road at any time, you take control of the pickets away from the NUM organisers.
I don't see the death of David Wilkie in any way beneficial to miners on strike, or to the ends and means of the strike. But as far as responsibility is concerned, it hangs not with the NUM, DUL with the government and methods of policing.
During this strike we have lost the lives of tive of our members due to violence inflicted on them pickeling. Ana we have lost nine lves — young and old - while they attempted to keep their premises warm by dig*ging for coal because the NCB has broken long term agreements to vide coal to miners and their families.
What affect will the media campaign have?
As far as we are concerned there is no way this will affect the strike, because although this tragic death has occurred, the death of a community is also
High
tire policy of the government.
It is absurd and ridiculous that what the TUC is discussing today is how to make a further retreat on the anti-union laws instead of coming to the NUM's assistance.
Precisely because the government simply has been forced out into the open by the has miners' resistance this is the time when
the entire trade should be mobilised to break down the Tories package of anti-union laws. on As long as it appeared simply a
question of solidarity with the miners there were many union movement where it was difficult to get solidarity support from But with an sttack single trade union threatened the TUC, with a decisive lead, could swing that round.
The simple call should be, as the NUM has demanded, industrial action in support of the miners — and also of the TGWU. This should mean the TUC fixing the date for a national day of industrial action, a 24 hour general strike, against this legal attack on the NUM and the trade union movement. If this does not force the government to back down it must be followed up by in-
If dustrial action surnicient to force une
withdrawal of the legal attacks on the unions.
I wonder if Maggie Thatcher considers herself in any way responsible tor the anger and bitterness in mining communities?
rise to the
while tragic occurrence.
came out on strike for have not altered. We want a future for ourselves, our families and our communities.
How have the police responded?
The pickets that this morning's Incident have reported that the police are encouraging and
My members have been taunted challenges to 'come on and fight one to ore.
TIONAL UNION OF
waiting for.
against the legal
movenell
TUC right
funds and position in
parts of the trade
tack on the TUC itself.
despite the over-
many olel on every
The time react is now. moral support or resolutions. asking for
cil to be convened to
its fight for jobs.' is needed. The TUC port which is needed.
A PiECE OFTHE ACTION
And one need only listen to her gentle
now much it grieves
The principles we
to eliminate us from their enquiries.
we've had out since thoroughly investigated.
attitude towards us. of increased police intimidation.
by
I've been on in the country.
photo: GM COOKSON
The NUM have given the lead which the trade union movement has been
They have defeated the 'back to work movement'. Now at the delegate conference they have held firm
attack launched against them. It is up to the trade union movement as a whole to give them the support which is needed. Financial support but above all industrial action.
It is simply absurd to claim, as the
wing has done, that supporting the NUM would place the TUC's
jeopardy. The government would not dare risk an at-
Arthur Scargill put it perfectly in his speech in Yorkshire on Tuesday: "The time for mealy mouthed resolutions in unions and organisations is at an end.
• this We're not asking for We're passed by practical assistance.
And we've asked for the general coun-
dustrial action in support of this union.
In defence of its organisation as well as our funds.
The NUM has given the lead which must give the supIf the general council won't give that support then the TUC congress must be recalled to do
Of course she does!
voice and look into those
psychotic eyes to know
her!
The Myrthr Valley has been road- How is morale? blocked all day. On the picket lines this morning the police were trying to take everyone's name and address, allegedh
Presumably, all striking miner SeT on these ists are suspects are t
All this week we have ta z Tric IT seis see
Thes week I've seen more punching and kicking than I've seen on any picket line
tory will be ours.
Arthur Scargill
have any money either. If they hadn't made sacrifices there wouldn't have been a movement. And if we'd had to rely on money rather than principle, courage and determination, then the fight wouldn't have even started. mony from our friends in the national and international trade union movement.
can either be in contempt of the law or in contempt of its membership. If it ever loses the support of its membership and they hold it in contempt then the trade union movement in Britain is lost.
serious and drastic step taken by the High Court so far to smash the NUM is but a prelude to the smashing of the entire trade union and labour
country recognise that they have now to stand up and fight.
NUM resolution
THE FOLLOWING was the resolution
the special delegate con-
ference of the NUM
1: The NUM deplores the court rules.
decision to appoint a Tory party of-
ficial as receiver with total control over
2: The NUM is 'NOT prepared to
sanction payment of the f200,000 fine levied against the union' - though it recognises that the payment will be "seized without our consent.'
But would she consider a death-
a violent death- as a
tragedy for which she
and the NCB must share
some of the blame...
Personally. I think it will have wore:let fer a couple of days as ia: a
Pier te mas tIe cice SITEME DETER
SEE Is presen poserument for five rears - fighting for our futures. Nothing will deter 99.9 per cent of South Wales miners. Vic-
Socialist Action 7 December 1984 3 THE PEOPLE who built this movement didn't
We will have some
The trade union movement has got a choice: it
I only hope there's a recognition that this most
3: The NUM is not prepared to purge its contempt - insisting that the union has acted in accordance with its
4: The union is not prepared to allow any union official to help the receiver or the court sequestrators. 5: The NUM calls on the TUC to mobilise industrial action to stop this most vicious threat in our history to the freedom and independence of British trade unionism. *79 ÇORMAG 12/84 0
...or would she use it as it as an excuse for indulg ina infantasies of the strike crumbling:
I hate people who ask questions to which they alread know the answer!
Apologies
ME APOLOGISE 1o our readers fo doe base appearaace of this seck! cape sad the
pay of the baacted our all bar too torial staff for most of this week's issa We promise that the paper will be
back to its normal self next week.
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BY LAST Thursday Camden conference centre would not hold all the delegates who wanted to attend the Mineworkers Defence Committee conference in London last Sunday. On the day there were at least 1,200 delegates in the main conference. The overspill meeting in the University of London Union had over 500 in attendance.
The activists from the solidarity movement made the conference spectacular SUCCESS main reasons. They came to hear the key leaders of Labour's left wing
Benn, Arthur Scargill ana Ken LIVingstone speaking about Ine dispute. But they also came because the solidaritv movement over the last eight months has grown locally and regionally but has so far
national forum where it could discuss how
increase the effeciveness of its work in the dispute.
By Valerie Coultas
The concicule was built on the success Labour Party conference. Here the NUM intervened io win total support for its struggles. The left stood firm and the centre and right were defeated on the issue extra-parliamentary struggles.
Sunday's conference marked a step for-
ward in the willingness of Labour's left wing
begin to put pressure on the party LeadersHo take those conference policies serious y That's
why the potentially most
important part the
statement endorsed by the
was the last conereic
sentence which called for a
*massive national demon-
stration in support of the
, to be organised at
a date to be agreed with
the NUM'.
Battle
The atmosphere of the
conference was over-
whelmingly positive. Tony
Benn set the tone for the
day with a speech explain-
ing how the British labour
was being
reconstructed in the bat-
tles against the Thatcher
government. The
shop report backs later in
reflected the
development of the
movement and
Solutely
the way that many groups,
previously outside the
"mainstream' British
labour movement politics,
were coming politically to
the fore of the dispute.
Hazel Ash Soments from
Mountain Ash
support group. told the
conference how wonten
were more determined not
to give up what they had
discovered in this strike.
Natasha Sivananden from
the black
workshop explained how
black people had suffered
the kind of treatment the
miners welc receivulg
the pit communities for
Socialist Action 7 December 1984
Mineworkers Defence Conference
Building
for victory
evening. it was clear that decades.
A report from the lesbian and gay workshop outlined how this was the first time In a major ldustrial dispute lesbians
publicly to express their support for another group of workers.
But the core of winning the dispute remains dustrial support. Two printworker aelegales ex plained how they were stopping the lie-machine
the Tories the "The best popular press. front page of the Sun we've had was blank one' said an NGA member
Sun. Deputy father of the chapel at the same paper explained how
of the Fleet 80.000 copies Street workers' 'Miner's Special' which allowed the right of reply to the NUM had raised cash for the miners' cause.
Delegates
The afternoon heard speeches from
of woma rebrescuilalive the CGT, and Italian member of the European
parliament representing Proletarian Democracy, from delegates floor, from Yorkshire area executive and from Joe Mohammed
La striking miner from
Notts.
Joe raised the roof
with his story about going back to work to collect his
overalls and fearing
confrontation
ollysical
with the scabs. where
walked in his head was
held up he said but all
those at work were looking •at the floor. That's the dif
ference between a scab and
a striking miner he told the
audience. They'll always
have their heads to the
ground but we'll hold ou
heads high. No one could
have put it better.
Success so
Ken Livingstone had a
difficult job in chairing the
afternoon session
because 5pm the
organisers informed him
that the chief speaker, Ar-
thur Scargill would not be
arriving because of the
debate the executive
about how to respond to
the appointment of
receiver for
fur's. But despite that the
conference was
success.
conference at-
tracted the activists in the
solidarity movement.
was not represellalive ul
all those who have sup-
ported the miners to date,
unfortunately, refusal of the South East Region of the TUC to give
endorsement was retecnon or gie euvoca attitude of the Communist Party to une event.
Rut marked an important event in the miners' strike preactly sin the sildar precisely because it
movement, rank and
Stand with the
miners!
Ken
Livingstone
If we stand firm and make it clear to the judges and this government that we are not accepting that we should fight this dispute on their terms — if we make it quite clear that we will reverse the things they do - we will actually weaken them.
I believe it's time that we started to hear from those that lead parliament that another government repay every penny that has been stolen trom the miners. will repay to every miner's family the money that's been stolen
58006
London railworkers delegation to Coalville
file members of the NUM, the Women Against Pit Closures movement, and the left leaders the chance to organise together to put pressure on union and labour leaders
implement movement policy of support or lne minels, It was one of the most significant
taken the Labour left for some vcals. by this the DESS in through order to try and starve the miners families back to work.
When Salticals are made by those that lead
it undermines every judge that's bending and twisting the rule, it undermines every part of
the DHSS that's respon
ding to une pressure
this government hit
the miners and the
families.
And we need to be
saying quite cleary that
we soon start the process
of selection
parliamentary can-
We need to de-
mand of everyone who
themselves getting
into parliament: 'Wil
actually vote to
YOU
restore the money that's
been stolen this
government? Will you
judges who have twisted VULC to retire those
every rule and every law?
INERS
refusal to shift coal by rail.
Morale at the depot has never beer higher in the dispute. We passed through the pain barrier some weeks ago. With Christmas approaching we can stick it out interinte-
One of the reasons for our high morale the reinstatement of the young driver management sacked
alleged theft BR property. The reason why this lad has been reinstated is the fuss we have created in the union and in the media.
Two other lads were charged with a similar offence. They are still waiting to appear in court and to have their appeals
ME THE PTE
No fuel to the
power stations!
THE DAY IS drawing nearer when the NCB will try to shift their 22 million tonnes of power station slack which is currently at the pit heads and at the stocking gounds. Yet we at Coalville still remain solid in our
heard by BR management. course subtle pressures are still being ap. plied. week local NUR members For Hislalice last
received a hand-delivered leaflet from the Federation of Professional Railway Staff (FPRS), the scat union that broke away in the 1982 flexible rostering strike.
By Roy Butlin, Coalville NUR (personal capacity)
This leaflet is nothing more than SColte mongering. But it could worry some members who are concerned that we will suffer job losses to the road haulage industry.
It raises some serious questions. How did FPRS get my members home addresses?
At Coalville manage ment continues to send us home on a daily when we refuse to work the coal train. They won't give us alternative useful work which does exist.
Coal stocks are at crisis level at the power stations We at Coalville feel that every available vehicle and driver are already moving coal by road. Theres great poo COT which would be needed for the mountains stockpiled scab coal. In my village
News
I've seen coal lorries with cab-side addresses ranging from Cornwall to Aberdeen. Only the army has ine resources move mass quantities of coal.
Until these coal stocks are shifted power stations are being run on oil and even aviation fuel. You might as well light f20 notes because it is that expensive to fire the boilers.
BR management is involved in oh trains to by running oil trains depots instead of direct to nower salOus From the oil depots it is transferred
tanker lorries which
akes it to the power st tions by road. This is wha is keeping open many of the biggest power stations
I only • hope that train crews on these fuel trains learn from us at Coalville. All our effort must now be concent aicu vil sluvvill: all fuel from reaching power stations.
We have to make sure our union leaders do everything back both rail workers a places like Coalville and Shirebrook and West-
who refuse to shift coal, and to back those refusing to shift other sorts of fuel.
This is the lesson we should be giving our leadership at the lobby of the Confederation 20 December that being considered by union activists
This concrete proposa was made at the transport workshop the mine. workers solidarity
ference in London. . It will be great if it comes off
Page 5 scan of this page
News
movement.
ches in
women have been active.
i domite all this ac
tivity Labour Party have not yet
their own demands WUlE for more power and more representation in the party
The Labommitemen s
Action Committee holding its AGM in Birmingham this weekend, and at the centre of its discussion will be how women in use valv can make amer advances in the coming year.
By Judith Woodward
1985 must be the year of building on the tremen-
given to women's demands oy the from the mining culllmunities.
Scargill described the movement as *too powertul to Ignore. This understanding, which
themselves torced upon the NUM, has to be generalised to the abour movement.
But not everyone in the labour movement is
seeking the support of women, a Hot decader of male prejudices and privilege. It is because they know that women elected their own represenalves Wolle the women who support the policies of women's conference.
This would seriously upset the whole apple cart whereby the trade union leaderships, wielding their bloc votes, determine the policy and priorities of the
Labohen WAC raises its
When demand for power in the party it is not lust demanding power
ABLRTILLERY
WOMEN
IN THE LAST nine months Labour women have been at the forefront of building support for the miners, through linking up with the miners' wives
Labour women campaigned against strip sear-
Armagh jail and successfully changed Labour Party policy on them. In every campaign and struggle, like at Greenham Common. Labour
but it is challenging the structure Ene Labour Party for the 80 vens ones existence waca has ensured it has remainea a Daily bad com promises rather than a party of struggle.
To win such a tough battle WAC needs to be
needs to make. Over the nical veart has to organise its women supporters the unions, in the CLPs, among the youth. It has to ›e at the forefront of turn ing the Labour Party outwards towaras ine mass movements of women and it has to deepen its links will ne tell-wing or lne labour movement.
Tilmanstone
THERE'S BEEN a few changes in Tilmanstone colliery since we visited it some two months ago — especially among the Largely result of the constant intimidation and harrassment by the thousands of police who have invaded the village the women have taken on a far greater role in the running of the strike. 'In 1974 we were constand behind the men, today its different we are up front with them When they are down we keep them golg WIlt they can't stand on the
time is the dispute.
Margaret Thatcher's hypocritical use of David
Wilkie's death to 'imniore
miners to show their abhorrence bv 'flooding' back to work has com-
failed.
Willy
hundred, on NCB figures, returned last Monday and that is a figure inflated upwards. At the same Lime an unprecedented
legal attack has seen a bla tant lorv stooge installed to run the union over the heads of the membership and lis democratically elected executive.
big turn out on
Labour women lead stuggle
YORK SHIRE CO
women tour Southall
picket line we take their place, when they speak at meetings we are tnere on the platform with them.
It was therefore no surDare is at attendant Lyn were more than happy LO SOCIU a WeeK touring local workplaces and meeting local DeoDle in Ealing borough.
By Eve Turner, Southall miners support group
Teh che wence gree
through
WeeK beneve in many wavs. women, we are more credi ble tnan the men. we speak from the heart unlike the men who are hampered by trade union language.'
The was such a
Saturday 8 December march and rally
Come
to Cardiff
THE WOMEN AGAINST Pit Closures rally and march this Saturday will mark another crucial stage in building a national organisation of women in support of the NUM. The miners' wives have made the miners' union understand that the participation and involvement of women strengthens the entire movement. The demonstration comes too at a critical
Saturday will provide an important boost lo ine miners. addition demonstration led organised by women and children presents an entirely different image to the media's current lying camDalell polllay miners as violent thugs.
Such march will highlight the hypocrisy of Thatcher's government wio nave conced mers șocial security payments USL before Christmas, after mining communities have lived on a pittance for nine months in their fight
CERY
MINENSWIVES
SUPPORT GROUP
OT success they decided to come again and visit even Not that they
sorting office, nalite stewards meetings at EMI records, a gate meeting at Acton WUIKS, organised and by receptions NALGO
NÚT, and LOCa Asian women in Southall.
Their visit opened doors which had been shut to the miners and collecfollowed were the biggest yet.
If you'd like to get in
phone Eve Vasudha on 843 2333 (days)
to save their jobs and their communities.
It will show the con fidence and power working class women who have discovered strength during onsoute a power that will not quickly disappear.
If women can sustain the commitment they have during the long months of and this strike, then it's about time the rest of the trade union movement followed sull. come to carall on o December and show the support for the NUM and the new women's move.
• Coaches are booked
(phone Eileen on 01-732 Birmingham (Pat 021-708 0823) and chester (Cath on 061-223 4470)
Dear Socialist Action, Please find enclosed my poem. If you print it, will you not put my full name or address. anyone interested they could write to me c/o you.
The reason is my job could be in jeopardy, and I need this job. I support two striking miners.
One a single lad who receives no money at all;
a wife and my baby grand daughter aged received £9.50 per week -now reduced by the
plus a 16 year old son.
i love mv sons and am proud to support them I will continue to man stalls attend meetings
man soup kitchens, picket, sew, speak, visit pits, laugh and grieve with them all until there is work and peace in the coalfields.
1 am member Women Against Pit Closures and the local defence call artil. member of my union's miners' support group. shall continue to where I can.
I have been asked if I 'don't do too much'. I am amazed. How can loving and caring people, wanting jobs an peace in •IT coalfields be much'?
And whilst we have this oppressiveness, my little contribution will never be enough.
The miners do not condone violence. But whilst everyday they are batoned beaten, rode over horses, vans backed into them and legs broken, and without the slightest
- there wil
Coalfields. Fee us!
A Yorkshire miner's mother.
Socialist Action
1921 126 1972 1984
of their this
your
9776), Man who grace
raise
cry. And she watched the miner picket
The grey mist swirling round And a figure stepped forward,
Seeped the miners' blood, Into the mud His arms down by his side.
Another blow from a stooping man, On a horse he was astride. help
And forward a figure ran To help the injured miner, and The grey mist swirling round And blinded by her tears A mother to her son. too
To help the miner on the ground And she cradled the miner to her, The wound on the head was wide. Into the mud Seeped the miner's blood, The grey mist swirling round.
And the woman knelt beside him The miner to whom she had run, by For the man who had been beaten
Was the anguished woman's son.
our Will bring her miner to the mud.
And this happens at every coalfield, In the darkness of the night, Some miner is beaten senseless Because he is standing up for his rights.
7 December 1984 5
THEN SINNE MAERDY SOLIDARITA WIVES1S THE
TO SEE SAVE THE PITS From a Yorkshire miner's mother Truncheon raised - beat the miner to the ground The miner was defenceless — no weapon in his hand
A scream rang out in the darkness.
The mother came forward in anguish
And every wife and mother of a miner In the hands of the 'legalised bully boys' Knows the dread of a truncheon's thud,
Page 6 scan of this page
EVER SINCE he became party
to find a way out of his dilemma on 'defence' policy.
On the membership is now totally committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. To attempt to openly that out would destroy Neil Kinnock's support just as much as his position on the miners' strike has done.
On the other hand, abandonment of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable for the British ruling class. Kinnock has tried to square the circle with the new Labour Party defence document.
This takes as its framework current American and NATO plans to boost conventional weapons spending in Europe. The defence document therefore commits Labour more firmly than ever to NATO, and therefore to an American veto over military policy, while trying to specialise Britain as a 'non-nuclear' contributor of conventional armed forces inside the Atlantic alliance.
The aim of the policy, for the Labour right and centre, was that THE Moscow Agreement last week was a triumph for the peace movement and the labour movement. If carried through by a Labour government, it would be the first time in East-West history that ment led to an actual reduction of nukes on both sides. It would make Britain a nuclear-free would thus protect the people of this country from being a nuclear target.
There are now coherent policies weapons here. the more nukes we have, the more we try to frighten the USSR the safer we are, and any deal with the Reds getting rid of our nukes will mean they they have always wanted to do kill us all at the first opportunity; and Labour's British sues scrapping nuclear security guarantees Soviets that will take Britain out of the target area and make Britain Socialist Action 7 December 1984
leader Neil Kinnock has been trying plemented and that the commit-
hand, the party Moscow,
sell
Britain
Union
British ones. policy,
the big increase in conventional British policy.
KINNOCK-Chernenko
into
an agree-
zone and voters.
only LWO on nuclear One is Thatcher's:
will probably do what
that by nukes and US bases here we can have
from the where
does
code
US,
spending would
ment to abandon nuclear weapons would be dumped in practice.
But on his recent visit
the Soviet quietly blew up Kinnock's line by proposing serious abandonment of nuclear weapons. Namely that, if
removed all weapons from its soil, the Soviet
would unconditionally guarantee that no nuclear weapons would be targetted on Britain and that Soviet nuclear arms would be destroyed in the same numbers as
It is the same eminently practical proposal the Soviet leadership has made to other countries proposal completely unacceptable to both the United States and the British ruling class.
OLIVER MACDONALD argues that the left has to take up and campaign on the Soviet offer. He shows this is in contradiction to the rest of Labour's present 'defence'
in particular the Labour leadership's support for and acceptance of a US veto on
Kinnock and Chernenko
more secure than at any time in the
last 35 years.
The muddle-heads in the mid-
dle who feel reluctant to go openly
Thatcher's 'bash
horde' camp now have no coherent
policy at all for dealing with Bri-
tain's nukes, no policy, that
with any clear-cut meaning for the
Peter Jenkins of the Guardian
gleefully raised the menace of the
nuclear winter. The line was: just
because Labour's policy stops us
being a nuclear target, we will still
get the nuclear winter to kill us, so
there. If he thinks that will wash
with the voters, he's more befuddl-
ed by his Foreign Office briefings
than we thought.
But the right has one argument
that may not have voter appeal but
certainly wins over the bulk of the
Labour leadership.
simple: no European NATO goy-
ernment can take any initiative in
defence policy. or East-West rela-
tions that conflicts with the basic
view of the US administration.
This point is, of course, never
stated openly like that. To do so
would be disastrous electorally in a
country whose people like to think
of themselves as sovereign,
people
Reagan administration as danger-
ous war-mongers.
So the argument is wrapped up
in code words:
not mean disarmament by
both sides (eg the Moscow Agree-
ment). It means disarmament with
NATO (ie American) agreement.
'Loyalty to NATO' is another phrase meaning
NATO government (apart from the
of course) can do business
directly with Moscow on its own
account. You must do it with US
approval. Another
be im-
to leadership
atomic
- a
NATO
the Red
IS, being in NATO talk Agreement This is very
and
regard the
'Multilateralism'
see
security.
superiority that no destabilising
such code
phrase is 'alliance solidarity'
None of this, of course, is in the NATO treaty — hence the difficulty many people in the labour movement must have in grasping all this talk about the Moscow Agreement
conflict with commitment. What this means is that the IS in conflict American policy.
Of course it is! Any idiot can see that Reagan would not wish to remove US nuclear bases from Britain. More than that, any idiot can
the entire US policy towards Europe runs counter to the interests of the European people's
US policy is geared to achieving OVCI the USSR and it. Let us ourselves of some facts:
• The Reagan administration had declared it has political ambitions in the East: at the Stockholm con-
ference earlier Reagan had rhetoric,
into the American sphere.
Britain's
Moscow
with
quidating the Polish state. tions with the Russians.
'The new
be adopted
fighting
Eastern sphere. surely
remind
'Britain's
realism, ABC.
this year, after begun his peace Schultz explicitly called for roll-back in Eastern Europe -the aim of pulling Eastern Europe
• The Reaganite wing of the Koh government in West Germany has been raising the claim for a return to Germany's 1937 frontiers — li-
" The Reagan administration has rebuffed recent suggestions from some West European governments that it should freeze the deployment of first strike missiles like cruise and Pershing to aid negotia-
Follow-On Forces strategy coupled with Air Land Battle methods of Blitzkreig war will
by •NATO this December for no other reason than that the US insists upon it. This war
approach consistent with the idea of a sudden strike to 'liberate' this or that country in
Europe from the Soviet The virtually unanimous condemnation of it by West European military experts has simply been brushed aside by the United States. (The Lionheart exercise this autumn, by the way, showed that NATO is going over not just to FOFA as the media says, but the AirLand Battle plan as a whole.)
Against this background it is blindingly obvious that no government commited to any sort of peace policy can allow the US administration a veto over its dealings with the East. For the left, this is not a matter of nationalism
right decide everything at all costs - but of
Page 7 scan of this page
TE COUNCE TOLD TO
Moscow propaganda Vishinsky ONE
danger to peace
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the present shadow cabinet and the foreign policy and defence policy leadership of the Labour Party is fully committed to clearing a Labour policy towards the East through Washington. They opposed to the implementation of the Moscow Agreement, simple reason that they Washington will not agree with such an agreement, US nuclear bases from Britain.
Is such a view of the shadow cabinet and parliamentary leadership just a matter of 'typical' left wing primitive paranoia? Not in the slightest.
We need simply refer back to reports of this year's Labour Party conference. On the day defence debate, The reported as follows: 'A majority of Mr Kinnock's shadow would never agree to a unilateral eviction of American bases, without prior US consultation and agreement.' (This before the recent shadow tions).
tail
Daily tos
BEVIN ACCUSES RUSSIA BRITAIN
CHOOSE BETWEEN attacks or so la suary.
IN THE SHOPS 190N
carpets, chairs
MALS IN puts the entire
Parliamentary
Origins of the Cold War government's
are therefore
for the consult know before becoming total nuclear disarmament... removing all Healey,
the Labour
that unilateral
of the Times would be
cabinet reactions by nuclear NATO...
cabinet elec-
WARDONIA
BLADES
More cups, lino, VENGE
NOTICE
Wing
code. and
The Financial Times the same day reported that Healey and Shore had urged their party colleagues to
its allies in NATO •.• committed to
bending over backwards to seem sympathetic to
Party's view while sticking to the NATO principle was quoted as telling the Fabian Society
actions are alright providing they do not lead to reactions by other governments; inside or outside the alliance, which made the situation more dangerous ... It
fool-hardy take unilateral action without first making sure that they did not provoke
other members OT
In other words, Healey is saying that unilateral actions are fine so long as they are not unilateral at all, but have US approval. And on
the debate itself, Denzil Davies insisted on the need 'for changes be-
made within NATO' vaguer formulation but the same
So the message is clear: the Moscow Agreements embody a policy backed four to one at conference this year, but which the bulk of the PLP leadership will sabotage if the Americans want them to. This means labour movement must adopt the following steps to prevent Healey
co from sabotaging establishment of Britain nuclear free zone: * We must demand that Labour leadership turns Moscow Agreement into a formalised, draft treaty in consultation with the Soviet leadership before the next election. * We must extract a pledge from the PLP leadership, backed by a massive conference majority, that the Moscow Agreement will not be conditional on US approval, and will be made a bilateral treaty with Moscow. * Any attempt by the US government to undermine the reductions in nukes agreed in the Moscow Agreement by shifting nukes from here to the continent will be opposed by a future Labour government. * Any negotiations agreements with the US over US bases and weapons here will occur after the treaty with Moscow is initialled and will be conducted
open diplomacy secret treaties or secret agreements. These are the minimum necessary to ensure that Neil Kinnock's success in Moscow last week is more than a flash in the pan.
whole role
printing it for our readers. : the British Labour Party.
that has
That is the policy
parliamentarism.
the
Tony Benn
as a
the a Labour candidate,
the
forward for us.
tended to regard
got to be
support groups ference have carried out.
constituency groups,
and
terests of working people.
steps blacks,
are under similar attack.
The rebirth
of the
Labour Party
AT THE Mineworkers Defence Campaign conference in London 2 December Tony Benn made a major speech not only dealing with the miners' strike but on its
rebuilding the Labour movement. Because that section of his speech dealt with magistrates key questions of socialist strategy under debate on the left we are
TAM absolutely confident that the organisation that the NUM, the women's support groups, and other groups represented at the defend conference today have been able
generations to achieve is going to transtorm
Because I'll tell you something And
come to light in the course of the last nine months.
end of electoral demands.
The idea that all you've got to do is to be quiet, then canvass for
and then when he or she gets into power be an wait for five years, be loyal to everything that's done, and then turn out again. That is not a way They
filiated to
The electoral politics that we
as being the nature of the Labour Party has
replaced and supplemented by the sort of action that the miners and the women's
and this con-
I believe that what has hap- the pened over the last nine months, apart from educating people, has business been to establish in every single
party miners' women's groups, women's action groups, that have no intention whatever of disbanding when the strike is over and are instruments ready and able to support any issue that is in the in-
This means defending trade unionists, miners defending women, defending the
defending the Irish who
What we are witnessing now is a redrawing of the political map of Britain. We are seeing now the true nature of Tory institutions.
The idea that the BBC is impartial, that the judges are free from political pressure that the
are just decent citizens doing their job without fear or favour, that the police are above politics, we are seeing all that being exposed.
But we're seeing something else as well. That if we're going to
rights won by earlier of labour people we've got to fight as hard to retain them as they fought to win them.
we've got to harness the energy and commitment released by the miners strike to make fresh
What we are seeing now is the rebirth of the labour and trade union movement in its new form. If the Labour Party had a founding conference now, as in 1918, we know that all the groups that are represented here would be at that conference
The women's sections would
auto tous group affiliated, so would the black sec. tions and a whole range of others
would all be properly af the Labour Party because a Labour Party that has to do its job has got to be comprehensive in character. It's got to be a party fit and appropriate for the magnitude of the struggle that faces us and truly representative of all the interests and problems that confront working people in
Wage high technology, nuclear weapons, multinational
and multinational finance. It's got to be an international movement as well.
I believe that 1984 will be remembered as an historic year for us. At the very moment when we were called upon to fight for the rights which we have enjoyed because of the struggles of the earlier generations the miners, the
wIves, and their communities have risen to the occasion and given us the lead that we need for that victory.
Socialist Action 7 December 1984 7
Page 8 scan of this page
The West and the USSR
8 Oliver MacDonald's article 'Stalinist Regime and Soviet State' we published earlier this year has provoked considerable debate. We have already printed & reply by Zbigniew Kowalewski Lodz region of Solidarnosc before the declaration of martial law in Poland. Here we are printing a further reply by FRED PORTER, ford branch of the British-Soviet Friendship Society.
It becomes increasingly urgent to develop discussion and then to 'What Attitude to Eastern Oliver MacDonald's article 'Stalinist Regime and Soviet State'.
MacDonald recognises that 'the world balance of power heavily against
declares his sympathy with the USSR's terests and recognises that the economic and military cold war is not a reciprocal ding-dong between equivalent super-powers but a sustained aggression against the USSR which is noW encircled by 300 American military bases.
But MacDonald writes as though the cold war was a post 1945 phenomenon, like NATO, and historical.
from preceded it. doesn't
discuss NATO and the cold war in the historical context which he must know is relevant?
As early as 4 Foreist
1918 Foreign Secretary, Balfour, claimed in parliament
'the categorically declare that they have intention whatever of infringing in the slightest degree the territorial integrity of Russia'. In the same month British troops landed at Archangel.
From 1918 to 1921 14 foreign powers were imposing a total blockade on te new coverse. vading its territory frọm every direction, and giving every kind of support to
anti-Bolshevik forces in the civil war.
From the initial German invasion of Russia August 1914 to the end oi the wars of foreign inICI VCuLUl 1921, the Soviet state suffered
Socialist Action 7 December 1984
— a leader of the
chairperson of the Ox-
Europe?' following
unimaginable destruction and chaos and lost 30 million people (give take the odd million or two human beings). Prime
George proudly declared in parlia-
November 1919 that 'there is no country that nas spent more in supporting the anti-
elements in Russia than this country has'.
And 30 years later, on January, 1949, Mr Churchill still claimed in
House of Commons the that history would one day justify the attempt he had made sarance DO -shevism in its cradle'.
Cynical
In 1921 the last British troops left Russia which then had just 20 years to create (from less than nothing) agricultural, industrial and military base to withstand the next invasion from the West -an invasion which was correctly seen as inevitable. These 20 employed by the Capitalist WCIC International to undermine денино security against fascist aggression ano to give all out open support to the fascist
their colonial and anti-socialist ag gressions and especially
Nazi Germany ambitions to conquer 'Leben-
(living space)
Eastern Europe and the USSR
was not until May 1939 British
government accepted the Soviet proposal of a Three power accessarcel of genuine responsibility and mutua assistance against Nazi aggression. minor Foreign Office official was sent to Moscow and like the military mission which followed him it August (taking an unhurried six davs to arrive bi rail) neither he nor they nad authority to agree to anything of importance and had to report back to London continually for instructions.
This cynical tactic was tried again TITSLA 1939-40 when 'phoney war' inaction in the West concealed plans and train-
"switch the ing lor a real war' strategy against the USSR, and secondly in the aclayea opening ol a cond front in Europe for
mediate danger of the Red
beating the wenr macht in Europe. Vulnerable
Sw nen the Polish government decared August 1939 that it would not acceot soviet ald resisting aggression from Germany the British and French governments simp-
acquiesced this refusal of any alliance with the Soviet leaving the USSR to wait behind its own frontiers wate German 'panzers destroyed Poland and
invaded Soviet ter ritory without any serious distraction from the West.
No minimall responsible COlO be manoeuvred into such vulcasic BOS LION non-aggression pact with vermany. recognised as ‹
expedient to gain a little more time to For event Union e became
the Soviet
1939a mat trof wore his
light this record will yOUL COll tributor of 5 October still maintain that the Soviet bureaucracy has an 'obses-
sion' (ie an irrational fixed idea with protecting borders? Can
we lault that Reagan, Thatcher et al are less dangerous and belligerent at this stage of capitalist crisis than Baltour and Churchill that the new right would not encourage, explolt and intervene in disturbances and upheavals of the USSR's military allies? Does Socialist Action and Labour Focus on Eastern Europe • (via Oliver MacDonald) call upon socialists to urge the Soviet
not military alliances to detend its territory, besieged and threatened for the third time this century for Croes saker
Subjugation
Have your contributors forgotten (they must surely know) that disruption of post-war settlements in Europe has
of US foreign policy fron
Foster Dulles' 'roll-back'
and McNamara's 'containment' theory on carters 'liberation' of Eastern
Europe and now the con sidered polic statements (not funny jokes) made by Reagan rejecting the 'passive acceptance of the permanents aste
peoples Eastern Europe' and Secretary of State Schultz's view that: 'the USA will never accept the idea divided Europe'.
Bluff
Are ceaseless
of states
nothing than the
social and pro-
was and,
Soviet troops entering Stalingrad bodadiy because ic was d dotard, involuntarily more candid, when he proposed to parliament on January 1948 that 'we bring mallers to a ncad and impose a settlement on the USSR bv the threat of wat before the Soviet Union got the A bomb. Liberation
excuse for or ever overt
once the
was detled.
The Labour › campaign for
diverts attention firstly
1917 continuing
and 30s
agents
doubtedly many)
USSR.
American magazine
whether
if defeated war and
This
uprisings along the borders the Soviet Union which could somehow remain more free of US intervention and contamination than the wretched countries of Central America and the Caribbean. And in pertod of galloping imperialist crisis that kind of 'liberation' means curtains for the lot of us.
US. HANDS OFF
NICARAGUA!
America
EVENTS SINCE
movement with Central America.
transigence in the latest round
on the military 'solution'.
At the same time, the "moderate'
US intervention is in disarray. The Contadora group is wrestling over whether to rewrite its peace pro-
Dy the Sate Department,
the State Department, whilst Socialist International can't make up their minds whether they're going backwards of forwards.
Spain's Felipe Gonzales denounces Nicaragua's elections, whilst Willy Brandt half-
heads 30,000 strong solidarity demo in Bonn
Solidarity
The big question IS how the solidarity movement can measure up to the
raised.
'Nica-
Town Hall
tial
It showed ble, numbers people terent of the Central meeting. but they help
unless they people
this: to the
active SUD port practical
• movement
ple.
There several positive signs. Firstly, the
campaigns themselves recognise the weakness and are discuss ing ways of extending their labour movement base, through calling regional labour activists meetings, and maybe Labour committee to
MODEL RESOLUTION
send the party leader and spokesperson of foreign
elected President of Nicaragua in
response to the invitation made by FSLN represen-
tative Carlos Nunez at this year's annual con-
ference.
International
Hands off Central
Reagan's re-election have underlined the challenge which faces the solidarity
First the Mig scare', now the US encouragement for Duarte's in-
of talks in Salvador, make ever more blatant Reagan's reliance
build up greater pressure on Labour Party policy.
Secondly, reconvening NICA (No Intervention In Central America) as a national co-ordinating body can help to bring together the initiatives of the dif ferent campaigns coherent programme of
tion.
Thirdly, and of most immediate importance, CND has demonstrated a vital new interest in Central American solidarity Not only did the recent conference pass an important emergency
defence of Nicaragua CND International Com mittee is now sending a representative to the re convened NICA, and the leaderships of both CND and END have decided tr endorse the plans for Central America Anti War Conference in the middle of next year.
No decisions have yet been made about details, but activists throughout the peace JCaL. should spare no efforts to ensure that this conference
happen. become the main focus for building the solidarity movement over the next six months, culminating in the biggest organising conference we have yet seen, with a central emphasis on labour movement and youth participation.
Plans for a mass lobby of parliament and picket of the US embassy at the time of Reagan's in-
help to build it.
Labour Party we should also be pushing for Kin nock and Healey to attend the swearing-in of Daniel Orteg: as president of Nicaragua, one week before Reagan (see mode resolution).
None of these larger schemes will come
do the bread and butter work getting out the facts, raising people's understanding and enthusiasm for the gains being made it Central America, and rais ino ther material aid fo the heroin trough twose revolutionaries gains.
This CLP/YS/women's section urges the NEC to
affairs to attend the swearing-in of the newly
January, in
Page 9 scan of this page
Surplus Value
MANY OF US are still reeling from the shock of nightly TV pictures of starving children. The famine has already taken its place alongside Biafra, Cambodia and the boat people as a tragedy which ordinary people respond to generously whilst their governments try to Hass the buck. JOHN RISON and BOB MORGAN examine the dimensions and causes of this 'silent THE SCENES covered by the camera crews do not begin to depict the scale of suffering. Four in ten of Ethiopia's 42 million inhabitants are nourished (too few calories). Relief workers expect one million to starve to death this year. Nearly 24¼ million have already left their homes in search of food. Dying relatives are abandoned on the wayside.
Ethiopia is just one of the countries afflicted. Food supplies dangerously low this year in 26 of Alrica s su countries (see lable), 1lcluding the whole of the sub-Saharan regions.
One hundred and fifty Africans face undernourishment or
shortage nutriments). Over 200,000 already died Mozambique. Djibouti one third of the livestock has already died. The EEC commissioner for development aid, recently estimated the monthly grain
7,500 tonnes Sold al 17,000 in Mali, 18,000 in Mauritania" 29,000 in Niger and Ethiopia.
In Mauritania more than four-fifths of growing land has been reduced desert. Pisaui valetaa potentially straights than Ethiopia, whose aid is at last beginning to flow. Famine
The scale of the problem dwarfs that the last major drought, in the Sahel in 1974. killed 'only' some 300,000 people in half dozen countries.
Recentle told timeone or t
told a ministers that: 'I think famine that is the worst in memory... despite our best efforts in Marcn or April or next year we lay see hundreds of thousands more dying and millions also in danger'
In this context the US boast of an aid programme to 'match or exceed' the Sahel pitifully inadequate. It has so far committed $135m worth of emergency food Ethiopia enough to cover only about four and a half months of the expected grain shortfall. A further $45m has been allocated to Kenya, Mozambique and Mali. I ne aside $102m for the Sahel region this year. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisations (rAO) nas with $15.0m of emegency food aid for the content. No figure are available for Eastern Bloc relief although it is known that the USSR has sent 300 trucks, 16 planes and 24 helicopters to assist food distribution.
When the pro-US Emperor Haile Selassie ruled Ethiopia a decade ago, he received more aid from the US in six months than the new regime has •orantes over the last three vears Prior to the famine, the US allocated less than one per cent of its food ald to Ethiopia. The new allocations are too little and too late. has estimated that even if all Ethiopia's food needs were met tomorrow, two in ten of those gripped by the famine would still die.
The Reagan administration is not the only government at Labour shadow minister Robin Cook pointed out in the House of Commons: 'The amount of grain so far released by the EEC is barely one per cent of surplus stocks and less than one tenth of the amount that the EEC is currently converting into animal foodstuffs for Europe.
Even this meagre response was only prompted by pressure from the public ana voluntary rene Urgalisa-
Ethiopian
Vietnamese
HAR-
holocaust'.
under are
million
essential
have
Edgar Pisaui
in Chad,
55,000 in
regards African This
James
we face a
living
Ethiopia. been surprised
Bala
long term
set government into action.
Hypocrisy
acculale
political.
Ethiopia to
Ethiopia.'
Doubts have been
been had aid withheld -denied in Addis Ababa.
fault. As disrupted for
leading Republican
only go to
BUTTEROR
THE POPPERS BL MICT. 4x5 к4
TEADIL
11 8k5 Kel MACT N BELGIUM tions in the wake of media coverage of
While the public may have by the famine the powers that be were not. US satellites regularly monitor crop developments throughout the world and the FAO had predicted major food shortfalls in Africa as early as December 1982. Yet Oxfam had to divert tom from its
development assistance programme into emergency food aid in an attempt to shame the Thatcher
people
things
The reluctance to help Ethiopia is
As Newsweek recently put it: "The Reagan administration was reluctant at first to send food to the Marxist regimes in Mozambique and
• The US representative to the UN, Jean Kirkpatrick, has constantly sniped at the motives of the Ethiopian government in seeking aid
expressed as to whether western aid gets to those in most need, with critics suggesting that rebel-occupied areas of Ethiopia have
- a charge strongly
Kirkpatrick recently told the UN general assembly that nothing would be more 'reprehensible (than) to find relief for some regions hampered and
political reasons'.
Perhaps she ought to have had a quiet word with Senator Jessie Helms, a
foreign affairs who has suggested that:
Food policy will be our main foreign
Slave in the tutire Reagan's 575m aid programme for Africa next vear stipulates that the monev should
governments that reject socialism. Over half this year's allocation for the sub-Saharan region went
Ethiopia and
the politics
of starvation
BUTTERDIE
000 МОТЕ ТА НА AN ЕСМІС СВІ IT THE PEOPLE BE ETHORA AT MEG: 4-5 kg MAIL IN SELGIUM
BUTTEROI
IF THE TONGPEAN ISONORC CA TO THE PEOPLE OF ETHOPIA NET WEIGHT 4 × 5 Kg MADE IN BELGIUM
BUTTEROIL
FRED ARDOF THE EUROPEAN ECI
THE PEOPLE OF ETHER WEiGHT, 4 * 5 kg
MB 006
NOUNCHOIL to the US's four major allies there: Somalia, Kenya, Liberia and Zaire.
The problem is also far more deep rooted than a natural disaster year, whose victims become pawns in a game of Aid and Imperialism. In a normal year, at least 800 million peo-
- or about one in six of the planetary population - suffer undernourishment. Tens of millions ground down by malnutrition. Most
the 30 underdeveloned countries are worse off today than a decade ago. And
will get worse. population is set to double in the next
TABLE
Severe Food
Shortage
Ethiopia Angola
Kenya Botswana
Mozambique
Republic
Niger Chad
Sudan Lesotho
Mali
quarter century. Most of the growth
thousand extra people are born every day in the less developed world.
Africa in straits. Income per head averages only $482 a year, one decade ago. Six out of ten Africans go
bed hungry every night. million children a year die of malaria.
Africa also has the highest population growth rate in the world. Today 435m people inhabit the continent.
BUTTEROIL
TO THE PLOPLE OF ETHOPIA
MET WEIGHT: 4 * 5 Me
МВ 006- MADE IN BELGIUM
BUTTEROIL
- THE PEOPLE OF ETIRIPLA AT WEIGHT: 4250 MADE IA Sixteen years on there will probably be 817 million.
Yet today's world is quite capable of providing for Output worldwide averages around $2,500 per person, (about the average living standard in Portugal) resources could, if mobilised, add another $500 a person. diverted into more socially useful are avenues. The eighteen most advanced
capitalist counties spend at least $200 billion a year on what is euphemistically described in their accounts as 'defence', (adding in world the Warsaw pact might take up to
•$400bn).
Inadequate Food Supplies
Mauritania Morocco Central African Somalia
Tanzania Zambia
By contrast the 36 poorest countries in the world the four billion plus inhabitants of our planet live - together spend only dire $5 billion a year on health care. These
poorest countries three times as military as on health.
One not a lack of productive capacity. It is
the distribution of output.
The average income in the US is forty times greater than that in the 36 poorest countries. Within Brazil the
Socialist Action 7 December 1984
and milions starve.
Even
dramatically.
immunisation deserts and periphery
1973/74,
vast
response western incestedes. vice its debts.
Spared America). evervone's needs
Profit
Resources could also be Many
production between them ment. dignation
— in which half of adequate.
themselves spend much money on the is not that
The problem is
ways. It over and
9
wealthiest 20 per cent are 67 times better off than the poorest 20 per cent Europe is a landscape of wine lake.
grain mountains while Africa's
such apparently 'natural' facts as the spurt in the third world population growth are a product of developments within the system as a whole. Birth rates have hardly chang ed while life expectancy has increased
IVealca science penetrated the third world unevenly,
and other forms of basic health care have arrived ahead of effective, acceptable and freely available forms of contraception. In this context the Reagan administrations recent decision to withhold contraceptive aid from any country permitting abortion is one of the most sickening fruits of the rise of the "moral majority'.
The worsening plight of much of the third world over the last decade -of which the current famine in Africa is the highest symptom to date - is far more a product of developments in the metropolitan centres than ir
paddy fields of
The story begins in the winter of when the price of oil quadrupled within three months. The
majority of the third world, which produces no oil, was instantly hit by escalating fuel import bills. Its
was lo seek oans banks, justified on the strength of high export earnings commodity prices had almost doubled over the previous 18 months.
Banks in the advanced countries found themselves flooded with loans from the newly rich oil producers. They were keen to lend these at a profit. Over the next decade third world precedented lever of s8000 billion. the
Loans present no immediate problem so long as you can meet the in. terest repayments. But many LEs Developed Countries are no longer able to. Governments in the advanced countries responded to the oil price rise by squeezing credit sharply. This generated a slump in the north, hitting commodity imports and hence reducing LDC export earnings. At the same time it raised interest rates, making it still harder for the south to ser-
Higher interest rates cost the LDCs $20 - 25 billion over the three years 1979-1981. The Organisation of African Unity estimates that the servicing of the continent's $130 billion foreign debts now absorbs 60 per cent of export earnings (as com-
30 per cent
third world countries responded by shifting agricultural
from domestic
sold for dollars. Guinea-Bissau forbade all domestic sale of ground nuts (a traditional basic staple) in the attempt to increase its export earnings and' thereby stave off its international creditors. The nuts are now fed to pigs
Western Europe while their producers go hungry
Africa's plight is a particularly traumatic example of an aspect of the law of combined and uneven develop
Processes whose causes lie in the rythmn of economic development in the metropolitan power-houses of the system often have their most explosive effects in the villages and shanthe hand thingerish ery.
The hand wringing world leaders over Ethiopia is pure cant. Whilst aware of the scale of Africa's problems, they did nothing until investigative journalism awoke the in-
of the electorate. Even then, their response was pitifully in-
The US's policy makes mockery of Henry Kissinger's 1974 claim that, 'within a decade no child will go to bed hungry'
The real criticism of these people
they respond to human disasters in niggardly and self seeking
is rather that they preside promote a systenn generates hundreds upon thousands of unnecessary deaths in the pursuit of private profit.
Page 10 scan of this page
Students back on the streets!
10 IT WAS IRONIC indeed that Polly writing in the Guardian last Wednesday, should have asked, 'Where has gone?'. For Wednesday 28 largest student demonstration for ten years or more.
took part in a demonstration that was illegal and militant. Over 40 students were arrested and charged with public order offences, had been leading chants of 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out!'
Many newspapers have tried to explain this sudden re-emergence ot students
taking to the streets. Most Diane Thatcher and Jospeh for provoking
of students whose
parental income is in the
£20,000 a year bracket prime Tory supporters by and large!
proposals to abolish the minimum award of £205 and
troduce £530 tuition fees,
have led the biggest
Tory nack-benca ICVUELI yet seen against Thatcher.
the reality is However. that firstly, this is an at-
tack on the principle of the
grant support system, not
just a 'privileged' layer of
the student movement.
For a variety of reasons,
many students whose pass of e20,000, already do parental income is in
cannot pay their
contribulous to the pre
sent system of grant supFees
students in this bracket have to pay f520
fees before they Coll stall their courses, thousands, women in par-
will be denied access to further and higher education.
Secondly, hundreds of thousands suffered from students
the have decline in the value of the
grant. For SLUUCHIL students in the further education colleges it has disappeared entirely, and for hundreds of thousands ol orners it has been rcauc ed by as much as 30 per
Refuse cruise on 12
December 12 December.
Be there!
Socialist Action 7 December 1984
Toynbee,
all the Student Revolt November saw the
All estimates agree that over 15,000 students
including. Tories who
past five cent over ycals.
CFE
Wing amongst very the This
1981, national Labour students the leaderswallp ing all in the process.
Cy flas
leadership whatsoever
the cuts DI ULCOl through met with response.
and persuasion will this
the NUS. une ballot for movement has been mobilised and regrouped around the issues raised by the miners strike Having seen the Labour Student's leadership NUS dash the hopes of the lett STUDENT CND believes 'there is a big feeling for an anti-cruise demo' to mark the fifth anniversary of NATO's announcement that the missiles would be deployed in Britain. They have called an action in Trafalgar Square on the evening of Wednesday
They say: "The demonstration will take the form of civil disobedience in central London, a symbolic protest to make our voices heard.'
through carrying out theil 'middle-of-the-road' politics, ine lent broadest sense — is once again pushing forward within the students' movement.
the left remats unorganised the tional level, it is likely that the 'Kinnockites' leading the NUS will repeat their performances over Harrington at the Polytechnic
North London (PNL), and the students that were with conspiracy to import indecent articles.
These indecent' Sartre and Oscar Wilde.
returned.
What has become clear that not only do the shop CUSTOMS closea, but that it is con-
nationwide operation against lesbian and gay literature.
Britain's other main Menace in Edinburgh, has bookshop, Lavender had many books and magazines taken cluding literature for the Edinburgh Festival. One gay bookclub - Essential-
• Gay — has been closed
Other left book-
down. shops have had books seized, and organisation • Has
arrested on Wednesday.
The NUS leadership is so obsessed with Kinnock's 'abhorrence violence and desire to stay within that they have been denouncing refusing to support those attacked and arrested by the police last Wednesday.
At the PNL, where two students nave Deci llllprisoned for breaking COLIT injunction picketing, rather than sup-
Gays the Word -
directors charged
CUSTOMS AND Excise have now issued criminal charges against the directors and bookshop manager of Gay's the Word in London. They are charged
articles include Jean Genet, Since the original raid in April over £12,000 worth of stock has been seized, in addition to many of the books, records and the mailing list for the shop's newsletter — all yet to be
books stopped - the Gay Christian movement.
By Paul Canning, Lesbian and Gay Young Socialists Customs such that only Gay's the Word and GCM can afford to challenge the Customs rulIng. Il also means that a massive campaign against Custom's OUCLaliUl needs to be built up if actions like this be stopped in the future. present any customs officer ..a carlpaign with impunity.
Already the bookshop
port students in struggle, the leadership of NUS has organised a campaign of lies and slurs, about what is happening.
While the left does not organise nationally LUC NUS leadership get away with such disgusting acts of sabotage against their own members. However, as the
ahead with their DI COS cuts, attacks on studen union financing and autonomy through 'ultrahas received massive support, even Trom such unlikely sources as John Weller, the Tory MP, and from the book trade. The lesbian and gay communities have so far raised ine nuge sum of t7.000. but much larger sums than
are necessarv it the Customs campaign is to be stopped in its tracks.
NCCL is makin the
defence of Gay's the Wor‹ one of its first priorities this year. It is time for the labour and trade union movement to do likewise.
Just as Rugby is the first stage in a general attack on jobs, so Gay's the
Word is the first stage in an attack on the left's right
read. needs to be halted, right at the beginning Gay's Copies the Word informa
donations Gay's the Word, 66
Marchmoni St, London
WCl (01 278-7654):
vires, will more and more come up against the use of the law.
Students will be forced to look for leadershit tha
interests. that end, they will fing themselves standing shoul aer to shoulder with miners, those fighting rate-capping, those in the disarma cruise and NATO disarmament - indeed, all those sectors in real struggle against the
Southwark black
section: making
links
AFTER THE defeat at Labour Party ference, black section activists recognise that the way forward is to build black sections at grass-roots level in the black community and particularly to link up with black workers organising in their unions.
The public meeting organised wee. Southwark black section
of this. Under the heading 'Making Links', Southwark black section assembled impressive
all platform, including. Joe Mohammed, a black Notts
miner Gulam Mayet,
BTUSM, and Marc Wads worth, Section Steering Committee.
Joe pointed out that the black community's
struggle against the police
News
Tories.
The task for socialists in the student movement is to organise the 'new left
emerged around miners strike and which extending its radicalising influence into all other student struggles. To link student struggles to those occuring in socie ty at large, and to raise the question of leadership the task that the socialis students must get down to in a serious way. and the media is the same struggle the miners are facing defence their communities. And BTUSM speaker took up the theme of racism in the unions and the need for autonomous organisation to challenge this.
By Antia Patel and Joel O'Loughlin, Southwark black section
But Mare Wadsworth summed it up for us
The said wé need to turn our ex-
of defending ourselves on individual
into concrete NUC. political changes through the Labour Party
Most successful of all: the majority of the 80-plus
local black people. They want black sections n the party to campaign ground issue affecting them, not mili. tant rhetoric alone:
Page 11 scan of this page
News
Militant
discredits
party among
blacks
BARELY TWO MONTHS after the fury of the black section debate at Labour Party conference, the Sam Bond affair in Liverpool affords us an opportunity of appraising the record of the opposition's line in practice. they are in a position to 'show us the way'. They, of course, being primarily the Militant tendency, who did most to articulate opposition to black sections. By Mike Wongsam, Black Section Steering Committee
In answer to the demand that black people be properly represented both in the formulation and implementation of policy that is, on policy-making bodies and council subcommitttes, as well as at a national level Militant
Phat one d hour Party
the Labour Party should take up the 'white man's burden' when comes to the black community. Nor does their record stand up in Liver-
controlling District Labour Party and the city council Labour group. • Prior to the last general election representatives of Liverpool's black community went television (Channel 4's Black on Black programme) to proclaim that they felt that they should stand a candidate against Ine Labour rally lo voice their dissatisfaction with
unwillingness to consult the black community or take the views of black people seriously. • A black caucus was organised as long ago as 1979 in order to pressurise the council into adopting
equal opportunities policy and positive action programme. The present
Labour group has been dragged kicking and screaming into establishing the race relations unit which is the focus of the present dispute involving Sam Bond.
• The same Sam Bond was unceremoniously marked' for the job
despite the or olestallvils
of both the black caucus
and the NALGO observer
on the council's sub-
THREE HUNDRED
people attended Satur-
day's conference in
defence of the political
levy organised by
Coordinating
Committee.
Robin Cook MP, Ron
Todd of the TGWU and
Ann Pettifor of the
Women's Action Commit-
ICC were the morning
speakers. Peter Hain, Tom
Sawyer of NUPE and Ken
Livingstone spoke in
afternoon sessions. Hain
urged people to start work
now to ensure that the
ballot on whether or not
unions hold political funds
is won and welcomed the
After all, they won the day in terms of votes, and
committee. Comrade
suppd rust happens to bara
supporter Milliant policies. • Despite a signed agreement between Derek Hatton and the black caucus
Distric erise ther ob, the
LaDUul reaffirmed Bond's avi politicul. • Derek Hatton and Sam Bond had to be persuaded not to cross an official NALGO picket line they refused to recognise a black picket. • Steve French, a prominent member of the black caucus, had an application
join the Labour Party 'deferred'. this case deferred is just a nice word for blocked.
This is a catalogue of the District Labour Party and Labour group's record of implementing 'bold socialist programme' order to attract blacks to unhappy resul is that it af- Labour Party. fords Liberals, and even the Tories, the chance to cynically put themselves forward as champions of the black community.
It must surely be clear all observers Militant's only interest in black people is as fertilizer for their own current, as is the case in the Labour Party Young Socialists.
Everyone on the left of the party who voted
black sections, must now reconsider their judgement in the light of present developments.
From whence does careerism come in the party? tokenismo who Who employing
traudulently. interests to represente Lite interests black people? Who discredits
the party in the eyes of the black community! The lamentable comrades of Militant.
participation newspapers and organisations In supporting conference and the cam-
The 47 Labour Party
affiliated unions have set
up a steering committee to
organise campaign
before the 1986 ballots.
This campaign, nowever.
intends to centre its work
around the need
political funds in general
and specifically
round Labour Party af
Hain
this approach and called
for a direct campaign by
Labour Party activists.
Ken Livingstone stress-
ed that, at the end of the
'WE FOLLOWED all the procedures we waited 16 ycals. But enough is enough! We've got to stick up for our rights. Our patience has run out, the procedures are exhausted so we have gone on strike.' This statement from the Ford women sewing machinists sums up their total exasperation with their situation.
The 270 women Ford's Dagenham and Halewood plant have taken up their case for grading
with their skill six times: in 1970, 1974 and every year
1981. They have gone industrial tribunal which refused to act because a supposedly 'non-discriminatory evaluation scheme was in operation. Enough enough.
According to the
Financial Times, Ford is hoping that the strike does not mean history is about to repeat itself. When the women went on strike in
1968 over the same claim
wave of general industrial
the two plants. It also ushered in a
wave of other strikes and
struggles of women
workers across Britain for
equal pay, led to a national
cular rights campaign
(NJACCWER)
tributed to the birth of the
women s nocrallo iuve
ment. Not a small achieve-
By Antonia Gorton
Certainly Ron Todd,
chief negotiator and
1UWU,
uneasy at the 22 November
lobby of the national Ford
shop stewards meeting and
reacted angrily to implica-
abead and sign this year's tions that might
agreement with the com-
over the women's
pally
heads. The pressure on the
union leadership
tense.
At the moment
however the company's 7
percent pay offer remains
to be voted on and some
8.000 assembly workers
are laid off for the third
week running as the
women continue their
round the clock picketing
A meeting on luesdas
27 November between the
Todd and the
company,
women's shop stewards
ended in deadlock in the
face company's
refusal to budge on this
Levy campaign underway
day, it will be the overall performance of the party in the eyes of the working class which significantly influence the outcome any Call paigns. The political levy is completely the overall positions OI the
and that should start with a campaign of
the miners' supportig strike and the local authorities faced with rate capping.
The LCC is calling for
conferences on the defence of the political levy in the new and the setting ad hoc Labour Party-trade union committees in each area lo
issue even when the idea of going to independent bitration was put.
The pressure on the women to shelve their action is bound to mount as the 5 December deadline for signing the agreement nears with the threat of the withdrawal of the wages
There is no Labour government to intervene as in 1968 to make promises of justice in the Allies
The women have only their own ability to stick it out, to win allies and to make it impossible for the union leadership to back down. Thatcher out to smash strikes, not to head them off via cups of tea with the Employment and Productivity Minister Barbara Castle, as in the strike sixteen years ago
The Ford women don't see their fight as an equal pay struggle. They consider uncy gol / in 1968. They considered this as a fight for recognition of their skill while agreeing campaign for a YES vote in une ballols
oops!
Last week's article by Stuart Holland MP. on tre Nicaraguan elections (SA 80) contained three errors of fact for which we apologise. Stuart was in Nicaragua for TWO. and not three, weeks during the elections; Claude minister. France's foreign
of the Chall
Irish Labour Party
Ford women:
EQUAL
'Enough is
enough'
that they have this low skill grading because they are women.
trouble is that earlier Labour governments did an extremely clever job when they introduced their equal pay emislators five years giving figure out how around it and persuading everybody that had sorted things out.
precisely by grading and job segregation questions that women are left behind in the wages front, still earning approximately thirds men's wages and with the wage differential widening
When it comes to job evaluation involving
workers, the
worner bosses suddenly give a lot
weight to physical
strength rather
At Fords,
management agrees that it
requires six months train-
ing to produce a fully com-
petent sewing machinist
compared on
the assembly line but
low marks on Inland 6 months t8: 12 months f15 Overseas 112 months only)
Europe (17: Air Mail C:+ (Double these rates for multi-reader institions
Name
Address
Please send me as special offer
Socialist Action 7 December 1984 physical demands and working conditions. On these critera surgeon would rate lower on skill than a grave dig ger. Of course, what really determines wage rates has little to do with skill and scientifically reputable job evaluation studies but the social weight of the workers and their ability to struggle
The Ford women are in
if fraught,
DOWCLIul position. Their labour vital to the production of cars ana pront lor un company. It is estimated that already. thell strike has cost Ford over £100m
While in lost producuon in some ways, talking of equal pay or its equivalent supercedriously da mas superceded mass unemployment and miners' strike - this strike is important. It is another indicator of the growth of a new women's movemen born from the struggle of working class women such as the miners' wives and of a fighting mood in sections of the class.
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11
Women's
rights
THE NATIONAL Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equa Rights (NJACCWER) was the campaign that grew out of the 1968 strike of Ford sewing machinists.
It was launched on 22 October 1968 that year to achieve equal rents for women. Officers includ
Summer skill, various MPs and trade union leaders and its secretary-treasurer
Fred Blake organiser the Ford sewing machinists' union at the time, the Nationa Union of Vehicle Builders.
Over 300 people atCentel inaugural meeting at the House of Commons from a wide range of trade unions, women's organisations, political and civil rights groups. It held one na. tional demonstration. of some 3,000 women drawn mainly from industrial/manual unions
first national women's demonstration in almost 30 years!
It collapsed eventually due to the dead hand of Com-
munist Party figures who argued that Labour's Equal Pay Bill fulfilled
goals of the cam paign.
Its charter included: 1. To demand the removal of sex discrim. ination against women in employment, social and public life. 2. To demand the inclu sion of equal pay for work of equal value in all agreements between employers and trade unions 3. To demand that MPs enforce equal legal rights for women through parliament in 1969.
To demand that the
TUC leads
ordinates a national ac.
tion campaign for equal
pay and opportunities in
industry
with their decision
their 1968 conference.
5. To demand the im-
government
ratification of the ILO
Convention 100. Special free book offer! •Take our a tears inland subscription and He will send you free one of these book»: Thatcher and Friends by John Row
Over our Dead Bodies -Women Against the Bomb
Introductory offer for new readers: Eight issues for just f2!
Page 12 scan of this page
Down to Greenham on 9 December
the fifth anniversary of NATO's announcement that cruise missiles would be deployed in this country.
that everyone who
and the unemployed.
At the beginning of the camp, just over three years ago, the women were treated much more sympathetically by the media than today. Now they face Consulassical. timidation and violence from the police and groups of local thugs. The camp "image' the media try to present has changed accor dingly: from women deter-
standing up for their beliefs, to holigans and misfits hell-bent undermining the fabric of 'civilised' society.
1984 is the year of the MIStorie mothers They too have experienced the violent and repressive arm of the state in standing up for their rights and the rights of their com-
Keistered as a newspaper with tne rost Urnice Published by Cardinal Enterprises, PO Box 50, London N1 Printed by waneride ta. u. London de
THIS WEEKEND will see a traditional December women-only action at Greenham Common to mark
This year, the women of the camp are suggesting
visits Greenham should bring with them food to distribute to the striking miners
munities. Greenham woand COllmunities have experienced the same fate: criminalisation at the hands of Thatcher's war-mongering, anti-union government.
By Carol Turner
So it's not surprising that up and down the country report after report is that the first women to join the miners' wives support groups were women who support the camp al ureennam com mon. And it's not surprisng that the women t camp have suggested theme they nave for this year's activity.
The links forged between Lne mining com-
SOCiAList
ACTION
munitie. and the 'communities' of Greenham women throughout Britain will not easily be broken. Women have learned that ley re nguing me samne fight against the same enemy.
Action
CND's annual conference recently passed an emergency resolution sunport of the December action at Greenham. Despite the resistance of the leadership to discussing any aspect of how to campaign against missiles 1985, peace
reasserted the priority of
cruise and supporting the women in the forefront of that fight.
In the coming year it's up to all or us to ensure that the camp is supported and the fight against the mussues connues will lIc same determination. WoacH. down Greenham this Sunday.
Kay
Sutcliffe THE GOVERNMENT is waging a campaign against the mining community. They are trying to set worker against worker. But we're telling Thatcher and her government we're not going to be used as pawns on their economic board.
Us women are going to Helen John I HAVE JUST received a blanket from the Women's Peace Caucus in Tallassee, Florida. They want to blanket the base during the 9 December action at Greenham.
stick together and fight right through to the end. We've seen a mass movement of women since this strike began. They've come together
country / in a way we never did envisage. We can look forward after the strike, to maintaining the links we've made and using our experience for the benefit of every dispute and every group that's
The side hanging inwards towardst the base is covered with eyes and messages which say 'the world is watching you' and 'the eyes have it'. Outside are peace symbols and a large
LONDON WOMEN FOR PEACE
Women on the Greater London Region CND Council have called a meeting of all women CND members and Greenham supporters to discuss coordinating practical support for the
camp in the coming year.
SATURDAY 15 DECEMBER
2-5pm, COUNTY HALL ALL WOMEN WELCOME! helped us. But we're not just miners' wives.
There are a lot more women than that in our support groups.
In the past nine months we've gained a lot of inspiration from a lot of groups. Particularly women's groups - and particularly the strength of the resolve of the Greenham Common women. We wholeheartedly support their efforts to rid this
dove, an attempt to reconstruct the common.
The miners and the peace movement have a common enemy: nuclear weapons and
Photo: JOHN HARRIS
country of cruise missiles. We'll always back them all the way.
the Tory government. If we don't defeat them, they will defeat us. Neither the miners nor the Greenham women have any intention of being beaten. We must win!
← Socialist Action No. 80, 30 November 1984Socialist Action No. 82, 14 December 1984 →