Make unions fight!

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Chris Erswell reports on a trade union branch which is campaigning to organise the TGWU 6/612 branch in Liverpool.

WHEN the BL Speke factory closed down in 1978. the TGWU branch covering the plants stayed open. Far from dwindling to a few people, the branch has grown and merged with other branches in the same position: Dunlops, Masscy Ferguson, and now Courtaulds.

This has not been an easy business, with the regional and national bureaucracy trying to close the branch at every stage: after all, the TGWU rules do not make organising the unemployed casy.

Refusing to be elbowed aside, the activists in the branch decided to fight for the regional leadership, challenge the existing complacenAMONG the cuts in public expenditure being pushed by President Raygun is small item few Socialist Arronicar rARNArA Will naVE VIBEIDEL I CAMERO i11 lameer noticed.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) must cut its budget by $367 million this year and $1 billion cuts are threatened for each of the next two years.

What will this mean?

Firstly, Voyager 2, which hoo inet cont is anme of the most amazing photographs from the Sun's sixth planet, Saturn, could be switched off and left to drift through the solar system, passing Uranus and Neptune in 1986 and 1989 without sending back any views of these unknown planets.

ewhat? Thore will he' So -At -- _L an tarrinarthaca.: cy on organising the unempl oyed, and tell the union bureaucracy that the lay members were the policy-makers!

They have achieved quite a lot: Bobby Owens from the 6/612 branch was elected regional chairperson, and the regional policy was modified to allow recruitment of the unemployed into tunetioning branches. A policy of funding education courses for the unemployed has been adopted.

Pressure

When TGWU national chairperson Stan Pemberton came to the local trade group coordinating committee to give his monthly report, he was confronted with the question, "When are you going to set up unemployed branches in every town?". He replied with stony silence.

In other unions, like the ISTC, there have been similar developments. For example, the branch covering the closed Shotton steelworks Science planets and their moons, won't there?

Unfortunately not. Because the planets all go amund the Sun at different rates it is very unusual to find the four great planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, virtually in a straight line. This arrangement will certainly never happen again in our lifetime and indeed probably not for hundreds of years.

Resources

Because they are so close to each other, it has been possible for the Voyager spacecraft 1 and 2 to visit them on a single run. But the run is only half-finished and won't be complete for eight years - and to save a naltry $222 million it is has stayed in existence Sr unemployed branch.

There must be other branches thr"ghout. the country which nave remained in existence, like the Ansells branch in Birmingham. They face tremendous pressure from the bureaucracy to close down: the 6/612's fight for the regional leadership was not an optional matter, but a life or death struggle.

To some extent the activists are isolated in these branches: but the 6/612 have broken through this by fighting for leadership in the region, rather than by dispersing themselves into different branches and having dual membership with an unemployed workers' union.

To these people (rightly or wrongly) an unemployed workers union seems superfluous and wrong-headed, cutting across the loyalty they have to their own' union. It would also leave them needlessly vulnerable to witch hunts by the burcaucracy, who can then mission.

Some socialists will say that with millions of people starving here on earth, we shouldn't spend money on exploring the universe.

However, I believe that there are enough resources in the world now to be able to satisfy the wants of everyone and to fund the sort of research carried out by NASA into our surroundings.

A socialist society will not clamp down on research just because there immediate goal in sight.

Before we can find useful things in our environment.

we need to do some basic exploration. After all. when electricity was discovered, Faraday couldn't think of a single use for it!

Other projects which may the...be, dropped 'Lainead incinite the claim that they are linked to 'another union'. Anyone who knows the 'union chauvinism' associated with demarcation disputes will understand this danger.

Although the 6/6.12 activists are hostile to an unemployed workers' union, a recent conference in Merseyside (see report, on these pages) demonstrated that they are very keen to ally with other union branches organising the unemployed, such as the ISTC Shotton branch, and with community groups of unemployed people who may not yet be trade unionists.

Perhaps similar. federal, alliance nationally might be a more appropriate solution to the problem of organising the unemployed than an unemployed union. It is clear, however, that the unemployed are going to have to build this movement themselves, and not wait for others to do it for US.

Space Telescope (one of the peaceful projects proposed for the Space Shuttle) and Galileo, a mission to Jupiter.

Squandering

Galileo would analyse Jupiter's atmosphere and survey its moons, while the Space Telescope could give us a far better view of the solar system and the stars than is at present possible from the ground, due to anure duet and air Dollution.

Ano ready droppeu is the Solar Polar Expedition, which would have added to our understanding of the Sun's behaviour. which in turn affects our climate.

There art other reasons mrit terralist

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