THE CAMPAIGN for a Fighting and Democratic UNISON is urging branches to submit the following Model Resolution for this year's conference.
It would add in to the union's rule book the formula which was in the old NUPE Rule book and similar to Clause IV.
It should have been in the UNISON Rules agreed al the first conference. "Add new point 4.6 in section B "To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common onership of the means of producfion, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service." ALL OVER the country people are fighting against government road-bulding programmes.
All kinds of people are involved; young and old, well-off and poor. If your home is being demolished to make a road, you're not going to take it lying down, unless your're lying in front of a bulldozer.
The names of these battlefields - Twyford Down, Oaklees Wood, "Wanstonia", Stanworth Woods - are becoming well known.
What has this to do with Clause IV? Well, in whose interests are these roads being built? This is not just a perverse idea of the Tory government, that they will ease traffic problems and accommodate more cars and lorries.
Someone - not the car owners- benefits from the roads programme. The car manufacturer keep turning out cars and persuading people that driving conditions will be improved by new roads, (when in fact they will be made worse)
When it is clear they have over-produced they to complain that they can't sell off their stock. The car industry is a powerful lobby, and it is backed up by another arm of heavy industry, the road construction businesses and quarrying companies, which hack out huge chunks of countryside for their materials.
Like the roads, these quarries destroy areas of natural beauty and scientific interest. Add to these the petroleum industry, which fuels the vehicles and road bulding machines.
Of course the Tory Party, the party of capitalism, listens to and serves powerful lobbyists: these are the kind of people from whom the party receives its funds.
It is much less responsive to the people who are victimised by the road-building programmes -those who are left homeless without adequate compensation; those whose health is ruined by asthma triggered by the toxic emissions of vehicles; those whose scientific or aesthetic pursuits are interrupted or wiped out; victims of road acidents.
What is the way to stop this depredation? To properly restrict the activities of big business would require innumerable specific laws prohibiting various types of action on their part, laws without loopholes that they could dodge through.
There would have to be reaulatory bodies to appeal to that were representative of all the people, not like the present quangos, appointed by the government, and therefore sympathetic to big business.
All this is unimaginable isn't it? It was recognition of the problems of fighting for change in a myriad of individual laws that led women and their supporters in the United States to demand an amendment to the constitution, the Equal Rights Amendment.
So that's where Clause IV comes in, as apart of the Labour Party constitution. The companies that are involved in the road lobby should be owned and controlled by the people, with boards not appointed by the government but elected.
Then they could be held responsible and recalled if necessary. It's obvious, anyway, that a nationwide. system, like transport, must be planned on a nationwide scale, not privatised and given over to numbers of different companies, each under independent control.
A good national system of public transport, buses and trains, would greatly reduce the need for car travel and provide a cleaner, healthier environment, saving some of the beauty for the future generations.
Retention and improvement of nationalised British Rail should therefore be one of Labour's high priorities.
That is the one of the reasons we say: No more privatisations! Retain Clause IV.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.77. 11 February 1995, Page 7