Build a rank and file movement NIRT

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leaders limit it, halt it. If we leave it to Murray and Co. then like the general in Sassoon's poem, "He'll do for us all with his plan of attack" . If it ever comes, that is.

Left leaders

If we look at how the left leaders have behaved over the last few years, I don't think that they will fill the gap and organise in opposition to Murray. There is a difference between Murray and Scargill, an obvious difference. But I think that the ordinary members need to control both.

We need to fight to make all our leaders accountable. That's why I'm suspicious of those who tell us, "electing officials isn't central". It is, you know. We are all corruptible. We all have to be controlled. Should we have our shop stewards appointed by a democratically elected executive? No? Then the same goes for full-timers, only more so.

I hear that argument in the TGWU. In NUPE I hear, 'we've got a left leadership, we don't need a Broad Left." I'm suspicious of that too, for the same reasons. Corrupting pressures and their material position act to separate union leaders, ight and left, from their mem›ers. That's why we need Broad efts.

How to build them? We will jet nowhere unless we base hem on the ordinary members. It the moment those who are villing to fight and those who ee even a basic way to do it are i minority. The existing leaders an take the majority, however irotesting, reluctant, cynical, vith them. We have to start rom that minority of class onscious, aware workers. But re are heading for a dead end nless we turn this minority Taro pamphlets summing up the ideas of Socialist Where We Stand - 20p plus 16p postage. 'How to fight the Tories' - 10p plus 16p postage. Or the two together for 45p including postage. From Socialist Organser, 28 Middle Lane, London A workplaces are vital.

In many unions there is a structure where the branch is separated from the workplace.

Ten or twelve activists attend the branch. Three or four are in the Broad Left. Some are on the divisional council. There is mutual toleration at the branch.

They can even swing the votes in executive elections to get Broad Left members like themselves elected.

There is a temptation here to see this as a strategy for winning control of the union. In the workplace the membership is more backward or disillusioned. 1o win them is hard and unedifying. It's more congenial to huddle together with the activists at branch, district or division.

Even the centre and the right speak a certain common language and share certain concerns. Left wing full time officials may be sympathetic.

taking issues back to the membership, to soft-pedal on them.

Stage army

They have no objection to you carrying on at branch or trades council as long as you let them get on with whatever gets them through the recession.

This is one big danger. Just as another is seeing the stage army of activists at branch, trades council or district who are won to left candidates or resolutions as a real army.

Branch, division, executive -the formal organs of union policy making are vital. We have to fight for leadership in the unions. But winning the apparatus, vital as it is, will achieve nothing but disaster if we don't win the members and take them with us. ( Of course this is a tactical ORGANISER ocialis!

How to fight the lories Te Labour Socialist the ORGANISER Fight for socialist policies strategy as well as an electoral strategy. We obviously need to fight for the ordinary trade union requirements at the workplace active shop stewards a proper steward structure, regular meetings, regular report back from other | bodies, 100% membership, delegates to Labour Party GMCs and so on.

Bulletins

A useful way of communicating in larger workplaces is through union bulletins. It is also important that Broad Left bulletins and meetings reflect what is happening in the workplace. Often, given the blows of the last few years, this will involve us in rebuilding workplace organisation. We have to do this on a political basis means first of all behaving as socialist activists at work.

Compared with the past this is far easier. In today's crisis you can't make easy bread and butter gains like in the boom.

There isn't the same gap between workplace issues and politics. The Tories are daily driving them together.

Members want to tackle and argue about the NGA, about Ireland, about the Royal Family, about GCHQ, about Hart and Mondale, as well as asbestos and the state of the canteen.

Often this is a tough job. Those who talk about an inexorable move to the left obviously have limited experience of it. But it's the key to starting to build anything of value.

Racism and sexism are particularly important. And you do have to show that the left are the best fighters in the everyday conflicts that erupt. But use them to take the members further. I think a very good index of any healthy Broad Left is whether or not it has a paper, no matter how primitive, that you can sell at work and that will start discussion and argument - in other words a paper which relates not just to the intèrnal concerns of the activists, but to the ordinary members.

Of course we have to try and get unon structure improved, to focus more on the workplace.

Workplace union branches are generally a good idea. But so are workplace Labour Party branches. These can initially provide the forum in which the committed minority can come together at the workplace and begin to formulate a strategy for relating in a day to day way to the membership. That's why they are vital.

Building a Broad Left is a hard job. There are far too few socialists in the unions today. It has to be done on the basis of neither just the workplace nor just the apparatus, but fusing the two together. It can be done on this basis.

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It's a temptation to look upwards at the union apparatus, to stop

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