Seven hundred Rotherham workers have voted to set up a Council of Action in the town. This important decision was taken at the end of Rotherham's biggest May Day rally since the pre-war years.
This alone would make it a significant event, but it becomes even more important in the light of recent developments in the Rotherham CONFERENCE The ball was started rolling as far back as last Christmas, when a motion from the local UCATT branch proposed that the Trades Council should hold a conference to work out what steps could be taken by the Rotherham labour movement to back the AUEW in its fight against the recently imposed NIRC Lines. Council, however, the question of the AUEW fine was dead. The IMG members on the Trades Council argued that the fine was merely one example of the kind of attack the Tory government was making on the working class They stressed the urgent need to go ahead with the conference on the basis of opposition to the Tory government, and with the aim of organis ing the forces of the labour movement to resist any form of attack from this government. On the basis of these arguments the resolution was carried.
When the Conference met on 14 April, there was one obvious task facing it - to organise for May Day. On the initiative of the IMG delegates present an Action Committee was clected to organise a May Day demonstration as the first step in a real campaien for the removal of the Tory Government.. The Conference also committed itself to 'taking the nevessary steps towards the formation of a Council of Action.
The real importance of the demonstration is that it was worked for and understood, at least by the leading militants in the area, preckely as a 'first step". The 700 who attended the rally at the end of the demonstration unanimously passed a resolution calling for the Action Committee to remain in existence and to continue the campaign against the Tory Government The main topic of debate amongst step!
The IMG will be agitating for a recall Socal Conference to extend the basis of the Action Com miltee - for the creation of a real Council of Action. No matter what particular problems face different sections of the population, they must all deal with the same enemy - the Tory Government. It is an understanding of this that has allowed the movement in Rotherham to continue to develop in spite of specie problems changing from one month to another. This is why the basis of the proposed Council of Action must be opposition to the Tory Government, if the movement is to continue and the Council a to become a permanent force in the life of the Rothurham labour movement. By organising all the different sectors of the population on this basis the way will be open for the establishment of a permanent united front which can provide real support to any section which poes into struggle. With this kind of organisation no one should need to fight their strugale alone. It will becume pos sible to transform the sympathy that exists for victims of the Tories attacks into action, the kind of action which, if taken up by the whole working class, can be unified into a movement with a decisive conclusion -the downfall of the Tory Government.
Mick Blane was also agreed to mobilise for a massive show The spring seems to have brought capitalist euphoria. Anthony Barber has been boasting about the size of his growth rate, the CHI reports its members more chirpy than ever before; and most of the bourgeois press has Joined in the mutual congratulation This surge of publie optimism (significantly not matched by any surge of share prices was based on the flimsiest of evidence — the official figures for the growth of the economy and the CBl's quarterly Industrial treuds survey, What, in fact, is the overall growth rate of the economy? The answer is that nobody knows. The three ways of measuring it (based on calculating out put, income and expenditure, respectively), wbich should in theory give exactly the same results, have in
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