against the unions. This is the meaning of the vicious hate campaign launched by the capitalist press against trade unionists.
The newspapers are providing a verbal fore. taste of future action by the law-abiding. 'democratic and above all anonymous men who run the ciribservice, the courts and the army for capitalism. So trade unionists must be able to go beyond denunciations of the alltoo predictable betrayals of Jones and Feather. To ensure victory on the most immediate problems - pay, redundancies, the Act -militants must make their central task the organisation of a struggle against those institutions on whose authority the attacks are made: unless the working class is politically prepared to challenge the power of the capitalist state and develop its own means for controlling society, then Heath will have all the machinery needed to confuse and defeat the trade union movement.
But here we have the historic weakness of the British Labour Movement: when a great opportunity to smash the capitalist's army exists today in Ireland, the Labour Movement does nothing + even supports its enemy's greatest weapon! When the whole legal system stands exposed as a protection racket for private profit the trade union leaders urge capitulation to its law and order. When Parliament is shown to be an instrument for excluding the mass of people from power, both the Labour and Communist Parties proclaim their allegiance to Parliamentary democracy'. When the capitalist system brings violence against millions every day, the miserable TUC leaders help spread the latest scar cooked up by the gutter press against pickets and strikers.
The TUC Congress in Brighton will be filled with the traditional resounding resolutions on the economic problems of the working class. But the only road to victory against these social evils lies through a will and a programme of struggle for control of British society by the working class: through combining a massive solidarity with the dockers with an equally strong campaign in solidarity with the Irish masses and their Republican leaders: through linking union activity with the fight to create new Committees for the Defence of Trade Unions and to prepare the ground for Councils of Action drawing all sections of workers in every aren into the struggle; and through matching critieism of the existing leaders with the fight to buiki a new political leadership which is not frightened to Where NIRC, the Law Lords, "States of Emergency", threats by the Government, etc., all failed. Jack Jones has succeeded He has managed to break the solidarity of the working class in an important - even decisive -strike At the very moment when the dock strike was beginning to bite he got it called off for what dockers consider to be a few piffling concessions. The real long-term problems of redundancy are left untouched.
The aim of the Jones-Aldington Report was to get port workers to accept unemployment without a struggle.
The T&GWU leaders took no action to stop its own members from scabbing, el alone mobilise its huge resources for victory, It was left to the rank and file to deal with the scabs by mass picketing. Jones was too busy with Lord Aldington even to organise proper international solidarity. Portworkers in Western Europe complained bitterly of lack of information ubour the strike. In France, Belgium and elsewhere dockers' leaders stated that all they got was a fifty-word telegram.
The government, forced time and again to retreat in the face of workers militancy. found it unwise to use the emergence powers and relied upon Jones instead.
Those who think Jones' promise of 200 jobs is going to solve port redundancies should read last week's National Ports' Council report: it forecaste 11,000 dock redundancies in the next year!
Those who think Jones won a majority of dockers at the delegate conference should look more closely: the 30 delegates voting to continue the strike represent 30,000 men. The rest speak for less than 15,000.
Now the press have been given the go-ahead for working up a lynch mob atmos phere against the strikers and the govern ment. is free to try to break the striking ports. All the talk about essential supplies that must be moved means nothing but strike-breaking by the state machine. There must be no confusion on this within the labour movement. Jack Jones gets polee poorecrion on his way into the delegare conference This latest stap is just one more example of the way the militancy of rank and file trade unionists is being frustrated by the leaders of the TUC.
The British trade union mosernent is strong. militant and capable of inflicting big delcats on the Government and employers. We see signs of this every day: the close down of Coventry in the one-day strike against the Industrial Relations Act, the way the building workers have fored their leaders to turn down the employers offer, the mumerous occupations, etc Despite this, the Industrial Relations Act remains upon the statute book; the courts can fine unions thousands of pounds; and sackings and rationalisations, involving the loss of hard fought gains, go ahead, The answer to why this should be so is simple because of the uctivities of people like Jones and the failure of organisations like the LCDTU to deal with this.
The folly of relying on the so-called leftwing of the TUC is now very clear. On the contrary, Jones has set up the dockers for a defear which would have severe repercussions for the whole trade union movement. More Chan this, his action is also an invitation to the NIRC to slap further fines on the T&GWU for the unofficial action of its members in the docks. He threatens not only the jobs of the dockers but also the funds of the union To the altempts by the Government, aided and abetted by Jones and Feather, to isolate sections of the working class like the dockers, a counter-strategy must be advanced. All struggles should be unified on the understanding that every strike, occupation. etc., now lakes on the Government and its Industrial Relations Act.
A start can be made by the setting up of support committees for the dockers unofficial strike — a first step in generulising the struggle against the Government and its strike-breaking attempts, The aim should be for rapid and decisive political, material and industrial support. The responsibility on such bodies as the LCDTU, Action Committees, trades councils and militant trade union organisations is very cleur: ALL OUT AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT STRIKE-BREAKING, AND FOR A DOCKERS' VICTORY