Laws That Shackled

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Truman gloats over his election victory overturning press predictions. But the trade unionists whose leaders backed Ronald Reagan, leader of the biggest arms drive in history outside wartime, and main prop and support of the El Salvador military butchers, visits his his loyal ally Margaret Thatcher in June. Join the protests: Sunday 6 June, 12.30 at Hyde Park; Monday June 7, 5.30 at Grosvenor Square; Tuesday June 8, ¡GROSVENOR SQUARE JUNE 7•$.30pm LOBBY PARLIAM NT JUNE 8 1pm final offer could then be put to the secret ballot before a stoppage would be allowed.

Union funds were to be responsible for unlawful acts. All union officials were required to file a statement that they were not members of the Communist Party.

Where state law was more stringent than TaftHartley, override it. (By the time the Act came into force, 34 states had already enacted their own laws to restrict in one way or another, the right to strike, picket, organise closed shops and conduct union affairs without state supervision).

What was the unions' response to this attempt to halt the strike movement in its tracks and use the law to undermine all the gains of the last decade and a half? In a word, inadequate.

By the end of 1946, AFL and CIO membership was over 17 million. Militancy had never been greater. The Stalinists had a membership of 100,000. They controlled unions involving about a quarter of CO membership - vital organisations - the United THIS YEAR the CLPD Women's Action Committee is pushing three resolutions for the National Conference of Labour Women. These demand that all-male shortlists should be disallowed, that the Women's Conference should have the right to submit five resolutions to Annual Labour Party Conference as of right and that the Women's Section of the NEC should be elected by the National Conference of Labour Women.

Of the three proposals, Truman had nothing to celebrate. Electrical Workers, the National Maritime Workers, the Longshoremen.

They had powerful factions in others, such as the UAW.

The unions were potentially in a powerful position to resist the legislation. The leaders' stance however, was to rely on the Democrats and the Presidential veto, ignore Truman's role of broker for TaftHartley, and firmly oppose industrial action. Some suggested Labour should draft its own anti-strike laws, others blamed it all on Lewis' "megalomania" and "dictatorship complex"

This week's CLPD column is from Heather Gaebler of the CLPD Women's Action Committee.

however, it is clear that the message has not yet got through that these demands are a central and inextricable part of any program to carry on with the democratisation of the Labour Party. They are

DEFEATS TRUMAN

The Stalinists equally gave no lead. They gave precedence to manoeuvring to maintain their own position as the cold war got under way. Their wartime strike-breaking was now followed by blatant opportunism.

Reuther was able, with some justifiction (if exaggeration) to describe the separate settlement made by their CP controlled UE union, while the Auto Workers were still out, as "an act of treachery unparallelled in the history of the labour movement" When in November 1946 the CO passed a declaration rejecting "efforts of has been shown by positive discrimination initiatives in the United States).

What many on the left ignore is that these measures would strengthen the left inside the Labour Party as a whole.

Counter-arguments tend to centre on the dredging up of women like Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher as being 'typical' - typical of what happens if you let women get involved in politics.

But what is left out, is the fact that some of these the CP or other political partners and their adherents to interfere in the affairs of the CIO" three well-known Stalinist union leaders were part of the drafting committee.

Such acts of "statesmanship" were legion. On December 15, Merrill, President of the CIO United Office Workers and himself a Stalinist supporter, stated that "any effort to impose the viewpoint of outside organisation on the union will be met by the firmest exercise of union discipline."

Demands for a fight against Taft-Hartley came from the ranks.

In February 1947 Joint Action Committees of AFL-CIO sprang up in various cities. On April 16 20,000 Chicago packinghouse workers staged a one-day strike and demonstrated. In Iowa on April 22 100,000 workers went on a one-day strike whilst the Flint CIO initiated proposal for a national 24 hour stoppage.

Taken up by other bodies, it was opposed by Green and Murray of the AFL.

was clear: prayers, petitions and postcards. They even opposed protest, denouncing Los Angeles to Washington motorcade.

On the day the Bill became law - Truman's veto being overriden by Congress - there was no national strike action. But a stoppage of 200,000 miners showed what could have been done.

Filled with illusions in Truman and the Democrats, the union leaders pinned everything on the 1948 elections. The President asked Congress for complete repeal of TaftHartley. In the crucial vote he was short of 5 supporters in the Senate. 14 in the house. Poetic justice for the man who had paved the way for Senator Taft.

When all the bluster was over, the union leaders accepted Taft-Hartley with no fight. In the words of Lewis, they "ran like cravens before the TattHartley law"

The first year of the TaftHartley saw the issue of 12 anti-strike injunctions. By that time every international union, bar the mineworkers and the typoBending the knee since 1948 follows George Meany at the graphical union, had bent the knee.

British trade unionists, facing the Tories' legal attack, must ponder on the way a powerful movement which had gone from 3 million in 1933 to 17 million in 1946, a movement that had just reached a high tide of militancy, was tamed and house broken.

We should think of TaftHartley when we think of Tebbit. We should think of 1pm, lobby of Parliament.

Contact: Reagan Reception Box 51, London SW10.

GUAT ... Lane Kirkland (left) now head of the AFL-CIO the futility of protest ar parliamentary manoeuv ings. We should ponder tr refusal of the union leader to use the strength that wi there. We should scrutinis the inability of the CP 1 provide leadership.

Once more lions al going into battle, led k asses. If the fight again: Tebbit is to succeed then must be made part of wider fight for new leade ship and new policies i our movement.

HONDURAS SALVADOR NICARAGUA COSTA RICA

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-Send him - packing!

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