"Turkeys voting for Christmas' was the way the Sun described Tory MPs reelecting John Major.
Popular ideas that might restore the Tories' flagging fortunes were in desperately short supply throughout the Tory leadership contest.
Major ran on a platform of continuing the present government policies which have received such overwhelming and humiliating rejection from the electorate in the Major: it's the policies that are unpopular Euro-elections, by-elections the far right is equally unand three rounds of council popular. Even Redwood botelections. tled out of presenting a Sections of the Tory press full-blooded right wing platand top employers who took form, in the knowledge that their distance from Major the electorate would not acaimed their criticisms at pre- cept it.
cisely this weakness. That's why, far from offerThey are worried that with- ing a clear alternative, Redout a fundamental change, the wood was left at the level of appearance of new policies tinkering and gimmickry, and a more popular touch, with pledges to save the Royal Major will prove unelectable. yacht that will do little to win over the millions caught with Bottled out negative equity and wonderBut of course many more ing how.long they will have a recognise that the agenda of job.
While the strikers have folBy Simon Day lowed the letter of the law, the union has not organised any As the Mainland Car Deliv- support. The full resources of eries strike enters its sec- the union now need to be put ond month the 37 sacked behind the strikers. workers need support from The Oxford District Council has passed a resolution calling trade unionists more than for action to be stepped up. It ever. will be discussed at the TGWU The Oxfordshire dispute be- bi-annual delegate conference gan when the car delivery comthis coming week. Union pany issued eight compulsory members throughout the redundancies.
While the other workers country should also pass resolutions of support. gave the legal seven days noIt is clear that the decision tice before their supportive acto sack all the strikers is part of tion, MCD began to move cars La wider plan to de-unionise car out of the depot to other distridistribution completelv. The bution centres.
workers are being used as an On the day the strike began all the workers were sacked. example to intimidate others in the industry.
There is a round-the-clock It is important to pressurise HOME picket. No more cars have the union leadership to organbeen moved out of the depot ise proper solidarity action -since the strike commenced. while the Ely plant is not unionThe depot at Milton near ised, all the workers who supDidcot is the centre for Rover ply it are. distribution all over southern England. Cars that would have • Money, letters of suppreviously been sent to the de- port and copies of resolupot have now been diverted to tion should be sent to the the non-unionised plant at Ely strike fund, c/o B. Hill. 38 in Cambridgeshire.
Tyrell's Way, Sutton CourtThe TGWU has been less than forthcoming in its support. ney, Abingdon 0X14 4DF.
Opinion polls showed consistently stronger public support for Major than for Redwood or Portillo, though of course suggesting that electing Heseltine as leader could save the Tories as many as 52 extra seats.
The reshuffled cabinet attempts to exploit this Heseltine effect, but it is doubtful how much difference voters will detect in the day to day issues which matter most.
Any government still embarrassed by sky-high pay deals to privatised utility The train drivers' union has voted for industrial action over its pay claim. Socialist Outlook's Simon Day spoke to ASLEF member Mark Thompson about the dispute. What is the background to the decision?
The main reason for the success of the strike vote is the bubbling resentment over the union leadership's behaviour in recent years. We have had to accept a below-inflation rise every year - a cut in effect. Between 1992 and 1993 there was a 7.2 per cent reduction in driving staff. At our 1994 conference delegates issued a serious reprimand to the leadership, saying repetition would be unacceptable - and called for a "substantial increase in the rate of pay" in the next round. This means, in practice, a rise of around five per cent.
The union has conducted a wide-ranging consultative process since the conference. It came out with a clear message - 80 per cent in favour of taking industrial action for an increase in the basic rate of bosses, hell-bent on the privatisation of the railways, and offering nothing to secure the jobs of a newly-insecure middle class will find it hard to win back the votes it has lost.
Their best hope is that Tony Blair will drag Labour's policy so far to the right that disgruntled Tory voters see Labour as offering no real change.
So far Blair's proposals on the economy, health and education seem to be headed down that dangerous path. The fight for socialist policies pay, an overwhelming majority.
So the policy has been on the table for a year. But the strike is connected to privatisation?
Of course. There is massive anger about the privatisation programme. The signal workers strike showed how industrial action was an effective obstacle to privatision - it puts big financial strains on these "small" companies that are trying to profit out of the decimation of the industry.
But it is obvious that the government is pulling all the strings. The activists realise that this is a strike against privatisation and, therefore, a strike against the government. We're taking on the Tories. So the mood is determined?
Absolutely. The only doubts are directed at the leadership. Some question whether Lew Adams will carry it through. The record so far is not promising. It has been thirteen years since the last real strike. Leaders have done everything in their power to prevent such action.
A series of one day strikes in 1993 over redundancy and compulsory transfers was By Harry Sloan LIKE THE CAST of a tedious soap opera, a few faces may have been swapped around in John Major's cabinet, but the basic plot remains grimly, predictably unchanged.
Virginia Bottomley, (who had expressed concern that she might be given a cabinet job that would make her unpopular!), does a straight swap with philistine Stephen Dorrell, taking over as supremo of the National Lottery at the Ministry of Fun.
Having turned the hunt for NHS treatment into a lottery, she is now to have a go at running the real thing.
The concepts of Bottomley and Fun sit so strangely together that it is hard to see how she could survive. If she follows the methods of her search and destroy mission against London's teaching hospitals, she will soon be embroiled in battles for the closure of the Royal Opera House, with funding stopped after one day with nothing to show for our efforts. How will the RMT result affect the strike?
Of course the RMT voting is disappointing. We had hoped the action would be together. We recognise that any decent pay rise should be for all BR workers, not just drivers.
There is nevertheless, a strong "go it alone" tradition in ASLEF. Drivers have seen themselves as independent from other rail workers.
This is due in large part to their ability to bring the network to a standstill all on their own. There is support from other grades though - RMT members wont be crossing picket lines. For this, we are grateful.
Since the recruitment criterion to the union was expanded there has been a wave of young recruits with different union experience to the older members.
They will be central to the strike. They are generally more militant. They'll be at the forefront of the action, on picket lines and branch meetings. This is certainly happening in my branch. Closing the Opera? switched to the delivery of smaller-scale local operas 'in the community.
Of course Tories take the opera much more seriously than the NHS, and tens of millions of lottery cash will doubtless be funnelled into subsidising this and other middle class pursuits.
For his part Dorrell has already declared his intention to adhere rigidly to the closures already rubberstamped by Bottomley, creating the probability that the Tories will go into the next election threatening to axe key services from over a dozen London hospitals.
The Department Employ. ment has itself been made redundant following the removal of the rabid Michael Portillo: Gillian Shephard will now combine the task of cutting the training of jobless with that of slashing spending in schools and cutting student grants. She is also fronting up the introduction of the cynical nursery voucher scheme.
Outrage
The outrage of Tory minorlty rule over Scotland is perpetuated with the appointment as Scottish Secretary of Thatchertte Michael Forsyth, so right wing even Scottish Tories can't stand him. Wales is saddled with boy wonder William Haig, the fourth Tory Welsh Secretary to come from an English constituency.
With Kenneth Clarke still in place as Chancellor setting the pace in spending cuts to produce a tax bribe for the next election, and the brutal Michael Howard spearheading new attacks on asylum seekers and endorsing more police racism, the apparent leftward' shift of ministers will if anything lead to a rightward shift in policy.
The key battleground will remain the welfare state, as the Tories seek every avenue for cuts that could stuff more cash into the pockets of middle class punters in a bid to buy back lost votes.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 87, July 15 1995 Page 3