THE KEY task for socialists in the unions is to build alliances of the class struggle left that are politically and organisationally independent of the bureaucracy.
Such lefts are needed at every level in the unions to lead the fight against the employers on key industrial issues, and to ensure that the unions and the Labour. Party are committed to socialist policies and democratic structures.
To be successful, such left formations must be open, broad and democratic, and not the property or "front" of any one political current or organisation.
Most left groupings have fallen far short of these criteria. The prime objective of the old Communist party-led Broad lefts of the 1960s and 1970s was to get CP-backed bureaucrats elected to national office.
They only mobilised the membership in campaigns for industrial action when the right was in control.
The TGWU Broad Left, a remnant of this Morning Star tradition, is a bureaucratic, invitation-only electoral machine, incapable of breaking with the policies of the bureaucrats it supports. wing) Broad left.
Many of the 'new' Broad Lefts of the 1980s, such as that in the civil service union CPSA were led by Militant, with varying fortunes. They did not break from the primarily electoralist methods of the old CP-led Broad Lefts. Most never became more than front organisations promoting Militant.
Today's CWU Broad Left originated in the old NCU and had a relatively open and democratic structure: it is now at the crossroads. It could either become an electoral machine for a rightward-moving NEC caucus, or become a obnule class struggle formation capable of leading the fight against BT and the Post Office.
The most advanced lett formation at present is undoubtedly the Socialist Teachers Alliance (STA) in right wing. the NUT. Through 20 years of systematic work, members' meetings and regular publications and a democratic internal regime, the STA has built itself a dominant position in union conferences, challenging the leadership of the (right The SWP, Britain's biggest far-left organisation, characteristically walked out of the STA at the peak of its recent success. What the SWP cannot stomach is participation in an organisation it doesn't control and that refuses to accent its sectarian and over-optimistic schemas for the class struggle.
Its sectarian insistence on building only at rank and past. file level, and its refusal to fight through the official union structures means that the SWP, for all its numbers, has never wielded real influence in the unions. Organisation The way forward is not Name(s) sectarian self-proclamation Address or erecting programmatic obstacles to unity: the left in the unions must organise and strike together to deal We enclose 1. effective blows against the Arried by Werhem Petters Let (TUA OCIALIST MOVEMENT Trade Union Committee Honorary President: Tony Benn M.P.
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