By Harry Sloan

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Norman Tebbit must have wrinkled into a grin at the news that the TUC leaders have voted to restart talks with him over his next round of anti-union legislation.

Not that talks were ever properly stopped. Union bureaucrats have trailed along tamely with Tories and employers to meetings of the NEDC; and they have shamefully collaborated with Tebbit and the MSC in formulating the exploitative Youth Training' Scheme (see Editorial, p. 2).

But one timid gesture of defiance had been TUC refusal to negotiate with the Tories over their future rounds of legislation to shackle and crush the unions. Now even this has been discarded by leaders in headlong cowardly retreat.

Union chiefs have tried to put a stern face on it. Some argue that they will only' talk about the future of the political levy...

Hangman

Nothing could be more tupid. This is arguing in ffect that they will 'only' alk about the topic on which hey are most impotent to esist a determined Tory offenive.

As Arthur Scargill pointed ut, it is like discussing with Le hangman over the quality f the rope. Prade Te bilen or While enou protestations of concern for "democracy' ', the union bureaucrats remain completely opposed to the kind of mass, participatory workers' democracy which could galvanise the membership and expose the cynical Tory deception.

TUC bigwigs know that once their members got a taste of workers' democracy and the feel for mass activity, this would spill over to every aspect of union affairs demanding that officials be made accountable, cutting away the roots of bureaucratic privilege, and disrupting officials cosy relations with the employers.

Even while they prepared to visit Tebbit, TUC leaders were once again demonstiating their contempt for the membership staging a secret top level backroom meeting in an (unsuccessful) attempt to stitch up the Labour leadership election.

The very decision to talk to Tebbit was taken by a handful of union leaders on a twovote majority after no consultation whatever with their members. 4.

How, then are the TUC quipped to fight Tebbit's phony "democratisation' of employers, given the TUC's scandalous decision to back the management of the Financial Times, and threaten to expel the print union NGA if it does not return to work?

How does TUC support for Tebbit's low-wage Youth Training' Scheme - designed to drive down wages for youth and workers as a whole -help convince members of the need for unions to defend and improve living standards?

The fight to break links at every level between the TUC and the Tory government Last Monday, July 25, SAS men seized a gas tanker in Chatham docks. They were joined in the operation by men from the Special Boat Squadron, the navy's sister squad. -The bewildered crew had been ordered off the ship at an hour's notice when they docked at midday, and bundled off to an army barracks. The incident might never have come to light, but for the fact that a National Union of Seamen official happened to be on board at the time.

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ACCORDING to the TUC, next month will bring a new dawn for Organiser no. 142; August 4 1983: Page 2