We need action - not just protest
Socialist Organiser1981 1981-11-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
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IN THE youth unemployment workshop, Bob Towers, from a TGWU branch in Liverpool that organises the unemployed, spoke of the reluctance of the. national trade union leadership to organise the young unemployed.
The TUC had organised the People's March for Jobs (which Bob was on), and a demo at the end of it attracted 100,000 workers showing their support for the young unemployed. But the TUC did nothing to build on the strength of that.
Instead they ing a train load of youth to go round the country 'protesting' unemployment.
The feeling of the workshop was that we have to put pressure on the unions and build a movement that the TUC cannot ignore. Many areas had already built groups linked to the National Unemployed Workers' Movement.
In the YOPs workshop Dave Curtis, a YOP worker from Merseyside, explained that he was doing a building labourer's job for $23.50 a week. We didn't need to say what a rip-off YOPs is because we already knew.
We talked about how we could organised YOPs into the unions, and passed proposals for branches to set up local YOPs bulletins, to write more for Class Fighter and Socialist Organiser on YOPs, and to produce a pamphlet.
We decided to work in the campaign the YS has set emphasised the heed for we empnasised the need I0l it to go further than the unions do in its demands, and to involve YOP workers rather than YS hacks like Andy Bevan and Kevin Ramage in the leadership of the campaign.
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