Where Next on Tebbit? on Tebbit?

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IE mass pickets and last week: "The mass the campaign for mpathy strikes in the movement is moving again links and for Several women delegates the consequences of her These are arguments up ana oppust punncauy• It is unlikely that Spanswick and the NEC will get away with their latest attack on women. The issue of abortion and the manipulation of conference will be raised in branches and regions.

Meanwhile individual branches should affiliate to NAC if they have not already done so, and details of affiliations should be sent to Spanswick along with condemnations of this latest attack on the right of conference to decide COHSE policy. THE mass pickets and sympathy strikes in the NHS pay dispute, and the political strikes on June 10, would certainly be unlawful under the Tebbit Bill and probably were in large measure e Prior barploy ment Act.

Yet the Tories and the bosses knew better than to take on these thousands of workers mobilised in class action. Prudently they avoided any talk of using the courts.

At the same time the TUC leaders are disavowing any and every hint of working class action to stop - or even protest against - the Tebbit Bill. Leaflets at railway stations is about as far as they go.

The contrast sums up the problems in the fight against Tebbit. The labour movement has the strength to stop the Bill - but our leaders will not mobilise it.

Their long-standing excuse is that trade unionists are depressed and demoralised by the slump. It was always a half-truth at best: whatever the difficulties of a struggle, the point was that the leaders' line added to the difficulties rather than combatting them.

But now the depression in the working class movement is clearly lifting. As Socialist Organiser wrote last week: 'The mass movement is moving again for all to see"

There is still time to stop the Bill. It has completed its course through the Commons, but is not likely to become law or come into force until about September. Already the director-general of the Engineering Employers' Federation - aware of the potential strength of trade union resistance - has called on the Tories to postpone putting parts of the Bill into force.

The Mobilising Committee for the Defence of Trade Union Rights was formed in April to campaign for action to stop the Tebbit Bill. Its slogans were:

*Break all links with the Tories, withdraw from tripartite committees like the NEDC.

*For the TUC to call a one-day national strike, as preparation for the indefinite general strike action needed to defeat the Bill.

Since April many trade union and Labour Party bodies have affiliated to the Mobilising Committee or taken its leaflets to distribute. And the two slogans have had increasing resonance, especially in recent union conterences.

The call to withdraw from the NEDC will come up at the September TUC. But breaking one-dar strike action can ana snowa be pressed ahead now in individual unions.

The GMWU conference has called for increased powers for the TUC to instruct individual unions to take strike action. This call needs to be taken up -and strengthened with a campaign for a commitment to all-out strike actior in the event of the Tebbit Bill being made law and used against trade unionists.

Finally: the campaign against Tebbit should be taken through the whole labour movement, not just the trade unions. The Mobilising Committee 1s seeking commitments from Labour councillors and Labour councils to defy the law, especially its ban of 'union labour only' con ditions in contracts.

Available from the Mobilising Committee, 2% Middle Lane, London 8PL:

*Act Now Agains Tebbit: basic statement o the Mobilising Committee.

*How does lebbit : Bill affect you: factsheet oI the law prepared by Ruti Goldman.

*Draft statement the Tebbit law for Labou councillors.

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