Peoples TGWU Directors back salami tactics

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JON Membership of National is £6 (adult), £9 (couple), £3 (student) and f1 for Youth CND (under 21). Send to CND, 11 Goodwi St, London N4.

)CND UNTIL Thatcher's gang took office, the Institute of Directors was seen as a fringe outfit to the right of the capitalist establishment. But its rabid politics have been caught up and overtaken by the Cabinet, making some of its views appear distinctly moderate in comparison to Tebbit.

This is shown by comparison between an Institute discussion document drawn up last year and the proposals for new anti-union measures contained in the Tory election manifesto.

Both the government and the Institute are agreed on the link between union-basing moves and the privatisation and compartmentalisation of large state enterprises.

The Institute labels the big public sector unions as the main element. within the ' labour movement which has not lost strength in the recession, and advocates moves to break up the existing national level bargaining structures:

'Decentralisation of bargaining would be a major step towards solving the problems of public sector union power. However the most obvious and most desirable method for achieving the aims ... would be a massive programme oi privatisation.

'Quite apart from the many other desirable aspects of such a change le.g. inflow of private funds; better competition and thus greater efficiency; more consumer choice and lower prices(1!)] privatisation would: 1. Present employees with the choice between accepting market realities or reducing their job security; 2. Help employees [!] to identify with their private employer [!] rather than an industry-wide organisation [any industrial action taken on an industry-wide basis would therefore be secondary industrial action and would thus fall within the provisions of the Employment Act 1980]; 3. Tend to make bargaining arrangements land thus the scope for industrial action] far more localised than at present.' The IoD focus on this line of action - in preference to new legislation on secret ballots, on legal enforcement of procedure agreements, or further frontal attacks on the closed shop.

And they • argue that once again this 'salami tactic' eroding conditions slice by slice - should be adopted in order to minimise working class resistance:

ig thapubic is that the attempt might itself "The danger of any attempt to curb public sector union power generate massive industrial action, in which a number of industries or sectors engage in sympathetic action.

'A piecemeal approach, introduced first in those sectors which could most easily accommodate change, would gradually isolate those sectors which initially might find such changes wholly unacceptable, and would lessen the possibility of secondary industrial action being taken in their support.' Though the Institute expresses its reservations on prestrike ballots, to which the Tories are now pledged, and the usefulness of mass lay-offs during strikes, it is unreservedly enthusiastic about 'any measure which might lead to the development of non-party political trade unionism' In this respect, therefore, perhaps the Institute should have lent its backing to the People's March which aims to further the 'non party political' approach to unemployment -and, by implication, to trade unionism as well.

For 11 years PROP has been trying to get across the basic fact that overcrowding is just one of the results of the prison crisis, not its cause. The fundamental cause of riots in the long term prisons and of the overcrowding and squalor in the big city jails is the same - sentencing levels which, on average and across the range, are the highest in Europe.

The UK does not imprison more of its citizens than other countries, so the reason for having proportionately the biggest prison population throughout the EEC is essentially because of sentence length.

Now that overcrowding is becoming untenable as the easy explanation for the riots, the authorities have to dream up other causes to divert attention from a correct analysis of what is happening.

Every national newspaper, from the Sunday Times to the Sun, has accepted without question the charge that the Albany riot was an 'IRA plot. Prison officers, using the platform of a conveniently-timed Prison Officers Association (POA) annual conference, have fleshed out the charges with the sort of detail which insults the intelligence of anyone else, but appears to go unchallenged by other prison officers.

Irish prisoners, using their own babies to smuggle in drugs during family visits, are supposed to have steadily built up a drug reliant prison population 'who will do anything to pay off their debts which they owe to a drug habit fed to them by the IRA' (Daily Telegraph).

Similar allegations have been used in the past to justify degrading. strip-searching of visitors, including women and children, despite the total control which the authorities have over the prisoner after the visit. Searching of visitors is a blatant provocation with no logical justification whatsoever.

Yet the prisons to which these allegations refer are precisely those jails which head the list of those issuing, through the prison medical service, a whole battery of psychotropic drugs which are employed specifically as control measures..

Compared to that lot, any soft drugs which might or might not be smuggled in represent a drop in the ocean.

As it happens PROP has always argued against the acceptance by prisoners of drugs that have no specific medicinal purpose - precisely because we believe that drug-induced docility plays into the hands of the prison • Yes, Irish prisoners are at the forefront whenever issues of prisoners' solidarity arise: where else would they be! But they are not so superhuman as to be able to tell other prisoners what to do. Prisoners must be just about the most difficult people in the world to lead by the nose.

It is notable that the newspapers which make the most of these stories of the IRA undermining of prison order are those which at other times entertain themselves by publishing 'trish jokes' portraying Irishmen as incapable of organising anything. When racism feeds the imagination, reason flies out of the window.

A couple of years ago, these same newspapers were busy manufacturing plots to explain away the street riots in Brixton - anything to avoid recognising that there are deep reservoirs of justiliable anger in the streets or, in the present example, the prisons.

Conflagration

The anger will continue to grow, and the prisons are heading for the sort of conflagration that Wil make Hull, Gartree or Albany seem like picnics. The Irish prisoners could all be repatriated tomorrow, as they should be, but the anger will continue to fester, fuelled by the deeply-felt injustices inherent in a prison system which gets bigger and more repressive day by day.

The national press, in its failure to discuss the real issues and its willingness to accept at face value the most blatant propaganda emanating from the Home Office, will carry a heavy responsibility for the disaster which is looming.

Fighter The Bomb and how to 2SY.

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Socialist Organiser no. 134, June 2 1983 Page

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