editorial group was also electedto supervise the production of the bulletin.
The next year will provide us with plenty of opportunities for action. Local authorities - whether Tory or Labour - are now making cuts that hit the poorest and most vulnerable, and there is a need to link campaigns in areas like Bradford, Brent and Hackney, where poople are organising to fight for johs and services.
The Tories are planning even more anti-union mcasures, while privatisation of local govemment departments will decimate jobs and services. Bosscs are cutting their workforce, speeding up production lines and closing factories (Austin Rover. British
There are battles in the NHS: battles by council tenants against compulsory transfer to private landlords, and the perennial fight of workers against victimisations
Women face even more pressure to choose between low paid, low status part time jobs or staying at home on poverty level benefits caring for children or handicapped, sick or elderly rela-
The Solidarity Network cannot promise to win on all of these issues: but it can begin to support those who are fighting, and make the links between the campaigns,
For affiliation, copier of the bulletin or more details of local contacts, write to the Secretary, Andrea Campbell, 6. Cherisey House, Arnold Circus, London E2.
Andrea Campbell
UPDA developments around the light to defend the jobs of trade union members at GCHQ contrast the timidity of the TUC leadership and the willingness of union members to take action.
Thourands of trade union memhere took strike action on November 7th, by no mcans all of them civil servants, and demonstrations and rallies look place in many major towns, often organised independently of the TUC.
For its part, the TUC called on union members to do no more on "GCHQ Day' than tum up in their breaks to the rallies. Many TUC unions circulated nothing more than this appeal, though the civil service unions balloted their members and NALGO local govemment conference voted for a one-
Ever since the ban on union membership was announced in January 1984 (to be enforced from March) the TUC and civil service union leaderships have avoided the scale of fight needed to force the government to back down, despite fine speeches about democratic rights. They have preferred to hecome enmeshed in
AUSTIN Rover's 23.000 hourly paid workers have voted by a two to one majority to accept a two-year deal recently offered by management and promoted by a curious alliance of the Communist Party and the hard-line
The negotiations and the agreement at the end of them were extraordinary. The JNC were taken to a plush residential conference centre for three days.
Management put £500 behind the bar for their drinks in the evening.
At the end of the negotiations, acceptance of the offer was proposed by the Electricions'
(EETPU) representative, and supported by Jack Adams, the
TGWU national officer, a member of the Communist Party, He was backed on this by the
GCHQ - TUC bottles out
appeals to British and European courts and the International Labour Organisation.
In choosing to make their main focuscounteringthe government's arguments in courtrooms rather than mobilising for action, the TUC and CCSU (Council of Civil Service Unions) have conceded large parts of the Tories' argument.
They have quoted Tory statements on how industrial action by civil servants never disrupted operations at GCHQ as 'proof of how unnecessary the ban is and have argued that there is no contradiction between TU membership and 'defence of the national interest", that trade unionists are as patriotic as the ruling class (or
Despite winning the support of all opposition parties to a commilment to restore trade union rights at GCHQ, all of this has (predictahly) not prevented the govemment moving ahead with its policy, sacking union members, or union membership dwindling to a small hard core.
If union membership means anything, then ultimately it means taking industrial action, and if such action is to achieve anything it has pay sell-out
Longbridge delegation, who are strongly influenced by Adams.
More surprising still was the spectacie of the deal being opposed by the regular right wing, including every representative from Cowley, among them Ivor Braggins, convenor of the
Ce eye opponent or cone
Secretary Ron Todd on the TGWU executive.
In selling the deal to the membership, both the management and those (including the Morning Star) who supported it exaggerated the size of the offer by including the shift allowances in
The settlement represents a four percent incrcase on basic rates plus sizable increases in shift allowances. In carh tems it is worth £7.50 for the first year lo he cffective and hit the employers, The right to union membership without the right to take effective action is only half'a
Similarly, acceptance of a common national interest concedes the argument to the Tories. If there in such a common interest then it makes sense for the elected government of the day" to decide what it is at any one time. Of course, challenging the idea of such a common interest also means questioning the need for spy-centres like GCHO Cheltenham and arguing for alterative employment.
TUC and CCSU pussyfooting has considerably weakened the Fight to defend trade union rights, but it doesn'tmean the fight is lost. The response to even the limited call on November 7th shows the possibilities. Union activists have to step up support for the further actions called by the CCSU and TUC, but also demand they go beyond their present policy to calling all-out action, the only way to stop the Tories taking away more and more of our democratic rights. and €8.50 the next: it falls far short of the unions' claim, submitted three months ago, for an eight percent (E15) per woek increase in a one-ycar deal,
The wording on the ballot paper held out no possibility of further negotiations il the offer were rejected, saying that: "The only alterative is to take industrial action, and therefom if the deal is not accepted there will be an immediate ballot fur sinke
However wages were not the only thing at stake in this pay review. Austin Rover stands on the brink of massive redondancies and the threat of closure of its Cowley body and assembly complex. A successful campaign on the wage review could have radicalised the membership for action to defend jobs as well.
Alan Thornett
Gillespie looks smug - before the Govan result AS THE Labour party in Scotland hegins to take stock of the party's by-clection defeat in Govan, all the signs are that the result has only served to deepen the divisions over party strategy which bave been developed since last year's general election,
Jim Sillar's victory, which the Scoltish National Party has hailed as a "sea-change in Scottish Politics, was indeed impressive, if sadly predictable, achievement for the nationalists. Overturing a labour majority of 19,000, Sillars increased the SNP share of the vote to forty-eight per cent. Labour's vote slumped from 24,000 at the general cloction to just over 11,000,
The SNP mounted a high profile campaign, flooding the constituency with activists. They emphasised opposition to the Poll Tax and spport for a campaign of non-payment, while pouring scor on the ineffectual conduct of Labour's 'feeble fifty' MPs.
By contrast, Labour's campaign generated Little enthusiasm. The candidate, Bob Gillespic's stance on the poll tax - personal non-payment, combined with a refusal to call on others to do Likewise - epitomised the timidity and incoherence of Labour's offi-
In response to the defeat, the party leader has called for an enquiry into why Lahour Tost. Scottish organiser, Jimmy Allison has already ventured to suggest that the Govan electorate enquiry is unlikely to identify the real factors
Govan by-election:
a warning to Kinnock
which underlay Labour's specLacular defeat. The problem is certainly not that Govan's overwhelmingly working class electorate failed to understand the party's policies. Rather it is those policies themselves - not least of refusing to organise any serious resistance to the poll tax - which have been tested and found want-
Two months ago, the Scottish Labour party held a rocall conference to decide the party's atLitude to the poll lax. The conwas organised presumably by somcone with a strong sense of irony - in Govan town hall. Arthe conference, in the face of strong opposition from the left, the party leadership realinned the strategy of the dented shield. Surrender to the Tories now; hope for a Labour govern-
It is Little exaggeration to say that the Govan by-election was lost two mooths ago in Govan town hall, and the explanations which concentrate on the personal calibre of the candidates or the technical details of the campaign simply obscure an basic fact of Scottish political life. As the prospect of a Kinnock led Labour government in Westminster recedes into political makebelieve, and in the absence of a serious fight, the SN' svision - of an independent Scotland within the EEC - will continue to gain ground, In this respect, the Govan by-election should stand hoth as a challenge and a warning to the
AT E WITH THE announcement of a media ban on the expression of republican views and the removal of the historic right to silence, it is clear that the Thatcher goverment has become one of the most repressive this century.
Coming in the wake of other developments in recent ycars — the total erosion of trade union rights, the bann on the 'promotion ofles bian and gay sexuality, shoot-to kill policien and the frame-up of black and Irish prisoners (causing Amnesty International to affack British justice tiree times in the past year) there is an urgent need for a broad political movement un defence of democratic nights.
The right to silence in an ancient right than can be dated back to the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641. Under the star chamber, and the Europcan inquisitorial judicial systems, the accused were forced through the use of torture to inthemselves. The development of rules preventing those accused from heing compelled to appear as witnesses in their own cases, and barring the prosecution from commenting ad versely on the cxercise of this right - hecame basic elements of any syslem in which there is a presumption of innocence and the onus is on the prosecution to prove
Although the current proposals do not appear to affect the defendant's right not be a witness. in court, the abolition of the pretrial right to silence 1s in many ways more dangerous. It is while in custody - often denied access to Lawyers, questioned for lengthy periods, denied sleep, isolated and vunerable - that prisoners are most exposed to pressure to make confessions. The government has responded to the concern over the Totienham Three, Guildford Four, and the Birmingham Six cases-all 'confessions* under such cir-
Thatcher's Britain
No right to
speak - or stay
silent!
cumstances - by saying: 'the best way to ensure there is no denial of justice is to make such practices official and legal':
The media han has similarly been implemented through the wholly undemocratic structures of the British state. Self-censorship was already widespread in the media, with dovens of programmes on Ireland altered or withdrawn since the early 1970s. The ban itself is being descrihed by TV and radio newsreaders an applying to Northern Irish or ganisations linked to temorism': in fact the han is a broad political sweep aimed at clamping down on the growth of any public debate on the government's handling of the
Within weeks, those barined in cluded the late Miriam James of the Labour Conmittee on Ireland. Bernadette McAliskey, a radio programme about the Guildford Four, featuring Enrol Smalley (one: of their relatives) and Sinn Fein councilor Dodie McGuiness on the closure of a Derry matemity unit. Suppression of poblic sup port for the IRA is thus a very small part of the ban's aim.
This will make official a double standard in electoral politics - in which different rights are acconded to voters, representatives and partics according to whetherthey sup POI or oppose the governent on: key issues. Today it in Ireland. Tomorrow it may be extend to these advocating defiance of the Poll Tax, Section 28, or trade
The current attacks on civil liberties will most certainly not be the last: it is well known that further measures on the cards include enabling convections for IRA membership to be obtained solely on the word of an RUC officer, and the introduction of an oath against violence for electoral candidates,
The widespread opposition to the measures is very positive. Dexpite its apparent strength, the goverment is taking a big risk.
PHOTO: Piers Cavendish/Reflex SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 11 Decerber 1988/January 1989