'Moderates reach for their teeth

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WHO now can doubt that the SDP is a mighty force for radical change and mould breaking? Last week's "rolling conference" brought the definitive answer to those who doubt, the power of mobilised moderation.

It came from a shop steward at BL's Cowley Assembly Plant - one of the very first people to demonstrate • that "moderate" is simply a polite word for witch-hunting reactionary.

Charles Hammond told the gasping audience of careerists and closet Tories what he and his ilk had helped do to working. conditions in Cowley.

As a result of the "silent majority" getting "off their backsides" , production had gone up, the workforce had gone down, and pay packets had been cut. "Now we have a management that rules by fear and not by agreement •.. There must be a better way of industrial democcracy," he concluded.

Harry Sloan Small wonder that, as Hammond confessed, the working class at Cowley and elsewhere seem far from enchanted at the prospect of wholesale "moderate': takeover!

AUEW official Charlie (a lot of Charlies at the SDP conference) Westley also grumbled that the SDP had failed to get its brand of "commonsense" into British politics, or "capture the hearts of working people"

From the platform William Rodgers, proposing the package of anti-union policies, also took a moment to "wonder what the average member l of the NUR thinks."

Echoing the previous week's praise from Norman Tebbit, Rodgers too lauded ousted NUR leader Sid Weighell as "one of the outstanding and best trade union leaders."

And he bemoaned the way in which such statesmen "tied hand and foot to Labour" had to devote time to manoeuvring on political questions instead of concentrating on "the great industrial issues" - (presumably implementing Charlie Hammond's plans for wage cuts ad sackings).

This was why, he suggested, the SP favours cutting the unions' links with the Rodgers claimed that the SDP wish to "give the unions back to their members" . But the policies he proposed would give substantial control of the unions to the Tory press and mass media -through instituting • still further secret postal ballots on industrial action and on union elections as well as on Labour Party affiliation. And the SDP would featherbed scabs and non-union freeloaders.

Anyone should be able on grounds of "conscience" to refuse to join a union, suggested Rodgers. And the SDP's proposals for "industrial democracy" involves the establishment of works councils' on which non-union members" should sit side by side with union representatives.

Confused

On top of this, the SDP though confused as to it's precise tactics, favours a policy of. government-imposed wage controls.

Party leader Jenkins scowled and his defeated rival Owen grinned as delegates overwhelmingly voted down a call for a "conventional" statutory pay policy.

This made nonsense of Jenkins' major speech on the issue. But the Party's Council carried a vaguer proposal to "seek a specific mandate" for an incomes policy, and the commitment to hold down working class living standards was unquestioned on either side of the "debate"

There was similar equivocation over defence policy. As the party of opportunism par excellence, the SDP canSocialist Organiser no. 105 October 21 1982 Page 4

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