Organising union Broad Lefts

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Alex Kitson has raised the issue of voting proportions al This democracy, we the rank and file from being think, should be extended fully informed before make concessions on these points.

Objective

The objective of the government is to provide training (YTS) or fulltime education for all under 19 years old.

Those who chose to do neither will have no right to claim Supplementary Benefit, and therefore will not have the freedom to leave home at 16. It is part of the strategy to underplay the real levels of unemployment at the expense of the youth, who will be treated as part of the family unit for the purpose of means testing - spreading the burden of unemployment throughout the family.

Because the government has been defeated at the outset - on the level of allowance and compulsory element of YTS - this will not mean that in the future they will not try again. It will be easier to tighten up the scheme once it is operating, as they are currently doing with the Community Programme scheme.

The training element is, in fact, dressing up the YOP schemes to make them more acceptable for the labour movement and those Rates: £5 for three nonths, £8:75 for ix months, and £16 lor a year.

-Bundle of five each week: £12 for three months.

Bundle of 10: £21 for three months.

Name Address.

I enclose £ To: Socialist Organis0r, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL. and cause of mass unemployment, presenting it as caused by individuals unsuitability for work.

The cruelest part of the deception is that it gives hope to the youth that they stand a better chance of getting a job, when the real problem is that no jobs being available in the first place.

Accepting that these schemes help the youth -by in some way giving them something to do - is a patronising concept, nelping the class enemy to enforce their attacks on the working class. The schemes do nothing to tackle the real problem - creating new, useful jobs. Instead they cover up the problem -and anything help employers to cut jobs.

Training schemes are currently run by workers paid by the MSC through the CEP scheme. The rates for CEP workers were based on trade union rates of pay.

The transfer of CEP to CP is reducing the allowance to levels which would make most of the participants only a little better off than they would be on the dole, and now there growing widespread opposition from local trade unionists to supporting the CP OVER a year ago the Labour Coordinating Committee called a conference of the various Broad Lefts in the unions in order to create a body which could provide a forum for liaison between the rank and file of the various unions where we could share the lessons of the fight to defend members' interests and against the right wing.

from that meeting we set up what was originally called the Liaison Committee of Broad Left Organisations and became the BLOC (TU).

The idea of the organisation is to cooperate together with the Labour Left, to ensure that the policies which have been decided by the movement shall have a stronger voice within the grassroots of the movement.

Open

There are relatively few open Broad Left organisations because of the nature of many of the right wing-run trade unions.

Altogether we have contacts of some sort in anything between 25 and 40 trade unions, and of these about one-third are what 1 would call flourishing Broad lefts. The remainder are either loose organisations or else groups of contacts who are prepared to fight the right-wing. In all the major unions we have contacts with either organisations else influential individuals.

In some of the older established Broad Lefts there was too much stress on being an electoral machine, and this is one of the main reasons why the right were able to take control.

I think that the left is now much more aware that the struggle around policies must come first and foremost. If we can win mem.

Lefts bets' hearts and minds to correct policies, it should follow that candidates standing on those policies should be elected, provided there is a minimum of organisation amongst the left.

This lesson can be seen very clearly, for instance in the CPSA and in the POEU, whose Broad eft I am secretary of.

In this process we can educate whole new strata of activists, and make sure that the Broad lefts are not just at the top of the movement but reach right down to the workers on the shop floor.

Attack

The question of democracy does not just apply to Labour Party or TUC conferences. On many day-to-day issues leaders can, by manoeuvring or keeping their members in the dark, get away with conning their members into believing that they have carried out democratic decisions without having actually done so.

Part of our job is not just to make sure that votes are cast correctly at conferences, but also to ensure that the rank and file control their leaders and receive full information about what is gowg on in negotiating bodies and national executives and so on.

Labour conference right down to branch level.

Another important issue is the recent success, only partial, of the campaign to set up workplace Labour Party branches. This brings up the ongoing issue of the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party, because clearly we have to develop the most effective forms of organisation to defend working people's interests.

The discussion must be aimed at making sure that the leadership of the movement is much more responsive to the rank and file. This immediately brings us into conflict with the right wing, because they want to open up the issue of voting within the Labour Party, for instance their idea of one man, one vote. The difference between ourselves and them is that we want informed discussion within the party and to encourage activity within the movement. The right wing want to do completely the opposite - they want to discourage activity within the movement and to prevent making decisions.

Postal ballots are a move towards these objectives.

In other words, the whole point of conflict between us and the right wing is one of fundamentals, we want the greatest control over our leaders, they want the greatest control over the rank and file.

We shouldn't rebuff the right wing when they want to open up the debates on the block votes and so on, but we must make it quite clear that it is the left which wants genuine change towards an active, democratic structure.

The main disputed issue at our conference I think, will be the proportion of the vote at Labour Party conference held by unions. This is inevitable because the issue has already been raised by Alex Kitson and &l number of leading personalities in the movement, and because of the feeling in the CLPs about misuse of the block vote at both Labour Party and TUC conference.

I think we must not lose sight of the need for the Labour Party to continue to be based on the trade unions - it is and must remain the political expression of the organised working class.

Ance that principle 1 irmly inaintainer we can talk about proportions, but the most important thing is that the block vote must be cast as directed by a fullyinformed membership -that is the real issue before conference.

The conference is essentially one for floating ideas and establishing a broad consensus. We will be producing discussion document for the conference which should be circulated to organisations beforehand and people may wish to discuss move amendments and so on.

On immediate tasks: firstly, the left last year drew up a list for TUC conference. We failed to do that for the Labour Party conference, and I feel that this was a great mistake.

For some instance for unions voted right wingers, purely and simply because they were informed about which candidates the left could unite around.

In the absence of any other organisations we are quite prepared to be seen as campaigning for an agreed Broad Left List.

More important are the basic policy issues. For instance, the question of democracy is crucial to the decisions which have been taken by conferneces. As has been described in all the socialist papers it is clear that the right is preparing to ditch many conference policies.

Our job is to make sure that this is very difficult, if not impossible question of del nocracy is the key.

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Phil Holt, secretary the Broad

Organising Committee spoke to Kevin Feintuck