were still refusing to implement the Housing Finance Act. Two weeks later, Glasgow Council capitulated following a court order. Camden was ordered to increase the rents by the statutory amount by mid-January, following a threat from the Government to cut off housing subsidies. They too surrendered. Then the district auditor was sent into Conisborough, a mining town near Rotherham. The councillors were surcharged, subsidies were withdrawn, and the councillors ordered to make up the rent deficit out of the rates. They yielded. Three Labour Councils still lead the resistance: Clydebank, Merthyr, and of course Clay Cross. Meanwhile, the legal process has gone much further in areas where Councils capitulated early on. In Liantrisant for example, 600 tenants are facing court action, attachment of earnings and possible eviction for refusing to pay an extra 96p. On the industrial front, the Government can be expected to make big blunders from time to time. But on the rent front, the Government has been able to apply its legal tricks with ease. The force of the courts has been brought to bear on the heads of the individual councillors. Big demonstrations have been held all over the country to put pressur on the coun cillors to stand firm. Tenants and trade unionists marched side by side to many a town hall to demand: "No betrayal'. Following the Glasgow sell out, workers and tenants from all over Scotland marched in their thousands to rally the beleaguered Labour councillors of the town. The Housing Finance Act has provoked the biggest mobilisation of the trade unions on the rents issue since the War.
But in most cases even this has not prevented the Labour Councillors from giving in.
SHREWD TACTICS The Government's tactics have been shrewd.
Many councillors once in favour of non-implementation have been bought off by being allowed to bargain over the amount of rent to be paid. Birmingham set the pace here, Those who continued to stand firm were then forced to run the gauntlet of surcharges, appeals, loss of subsidies, suspension from office for five years, district auditors, and local court rulings that rent arrears must be financed from rate rises, and so on. The last of these is an indirect but potent piece of financial pressure. It puts the Council at the mercy of local capitalists and private tenants who face an increase in the rates as a result of tenants witholding rent: Singers threatened Clydebank Council with a rates strike.
Many of those hoping that the Commissioner would be called in quickly, were kept dangling on the hook while all these proceedings took their course. The Government have made sure that councillors were subject to all these legal moves before going over their heads and threatening the tenants themselves. This was designed to isolate the councillors in order to allow time for other, political, pressures to have their effect.
Merthyr tenants march on recent Camden demo These pressures came mainly from within the Labour Party itself. Respect for the rule of law and the sovereignty of the Parliament to which it is so attached, are traditions which weigh heavily on the minds of those who have not been directly involved in, and often deplore, the against the law of the Labour Party conference: non-implementation, and compensation for any councillor who suffers personal loss. This reversal, in December, further whittled down the number of Councils still standing firm.
The Labour leaders know that should they return to Government, they have no alterHousing Finance Act represents a major shift native to the Act. Why is this? Because the in state policy. Briefly, it attempts to standardise rents nationally, putting an end to local Councils having their own peculiar low-rent policies. This will result in a series of rent rises in many places, the extra finance from which will be used, (a) to repay interest on capital loaned by financiers to housing authorities, and (b) to help out those Councils in inner urban districts facing acute housing crisis without placing further burdens on the capitalists. The Labour Party could hardly come up with any other solution more favourable to monopoly capital. It therefore wants to accept the basic "fair rents" framework.
INDUSTRIAL ACTION When it comes to evictions, union militants have responded well. In Kirkby, for example, workers blocked off the estates and turned them into no-go areas for the bailiffs. In Merthyr and other South Wales districts, miners have promised immediate strike action when the first tenant is taken to court and their earnings attacked. In Camden, NALGO and G&MWU Council workers refused to be party to evictions. But the overall campaign has suffered from the weakness that the union militants neglected industrial action against the Act earlier on. Even with those Councils still standing out in December, the union militants have tended to postpone the task of helping to organise the tenants while the councillors protested their loyalty to the working class under the pressure of demonstrations and meetings, only later to bow the knee to the Government. The campaign was organised to put pressure on the councillors. While this was necessary, it has proved insufficient. Two of the Labour Councils still standing - Clay Cross and Clydebank - are doing so partly because they have enjoyed unique links with the unions in the past: Clydebank Council's support for the UCS struggle, and the action which Clay Cross Council members took in turning over Council facilities to striking miners and engineers last year. These are examples which other Labour c ouncillors looking for support have unfortunately not followed.
DIFFERENT COURSE The labour moyement knew well how to put pressure on those it had elected. But it did not grasp in time the gravity of the Act. This would have dictated a different course of action, the elements of which are still valid now. First: to smash the Act, because otherwise it will have to fight on a localised basis against further rent rises under the Act.
Second: the isolated pockets of rebel tenants still left cannot be expected to do this by themselves. These areas of resistance must be not just defended - with mass industrial struggle and flying anti-eviction squads - but must be turned into a base from which to fight the Act and all further increases made under it.
The NUM has special opportunities here.
At the same time, since it is in the interests of these tenants to bring down the Government, the tenants associations in these areas must agitate for tenants organisations all over the country to give practical support to all workers in struggle against the Freeze.
But more than this. The trade unions must begin to take responsibility for those sectors of the population living in the hell of inner urban slums. If this is not done, then these sections of the population, ill-housed and unhoused though they may be, can be won over to the Government, which hypocritically explains that it is screwing those 'comfortable' and 'secure' tenants in or der to help those living in misery with a few sops. The unions must help win over those voluntary and semivoluntary organisations working in these areas to a policy of class struggle rather than individual 'case' pressure on the state. The deep social crisis here makes these tasks necessary and possible, and it is up to unions like NALGO which organise state employees, to take such leadership of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions had met and decided to hold a recall Liaison Committee Conference on April 7th. This was linked to the call for massive action on May Ist to support the international day of labour and protest against the freeze. The purpose of this article is to show where the call for the LCDTU conference came from, what it represents and what policy working class militants should adopt towards it. But first we should ask, what is the LCDTU? THE LCDTU The growing capitalist campaign against shop-stewards in the late 1960s led to the call for a national rank and file organisation which would mobilise support in defence of the movement. The Communist Party understood that a direct initiative from one central body of the rank and file would have a tremendous effect in pushing the trade union leadership to 'embrace' the new "lefts", Scanlon and Jones. The LCDTU carried on to organise a series of one day strikes against the then Industrial Relations Bill, which were taken up by Scanlon and the AUEW. It came briefly into existence again in September 1972 to 'take up' the struggle against the Act, when it managed to mobilise 400 odd workers to strike during the TUC conference.
There is a clear oddity in that last event which needs to be At the height of its influence the LCDTU was explained. capable of holding a conference in London attended by mittees, union branches and the like. If there was ever a over 2,000 workers. These represented shop-stewards commeeting of the rank and file leadership of the British working class in one room, that was it. of such a conference is possible to show. Similar conferences, even on an industry basis, of the shop-stewards movement of the old Amalgamated Society of Engineers, organised massive solidarity strike waves which sent the employers and the government reeling during the first world war. So the LCDTU is really the only national rank and file organisation of the working class.
QUESTIONS Why did this movement then fail to have any impact during the TUC conference last year? Why has it been called together again just now? Before we can answer these questions we must look closely at two developments in the class struggle in Britain since the miners' strike.
been taken up in The Red Mole before, in its discussion of how the Engineers responded to the Goad fines.
first time in the last year, there have been two clear and contradictory choices for the way the struggle should be carried out in difficult economic and political conditions. On the one hand is the need felt by most militants for central leadership and national action. On the other is the practice of the 'left' in the union leadership, of leaving the rank and file to fight on their own. crush the attack from the N.I.R.C. posed very sharply the question as to who or what is to co-ordinate and lead the struggles of the rank and file. The CP during the Engineers' strike was not able to offer a reply. It had lined up behind Scanlon in his defence against 'wreckers" and "critics", who wanted to see a successful national, coordinated struggle.
More difficult to catch hold of, but more important, are the uneven changes that have been occurring in the way that sections of the most militantworkers think and act. There has probably never been a clearer understanding that the struggle on the industrial front should be directed at poliorganised sectors, see the industrial struggle as havig dir- tical aims. Many militants, even in traditionally badly the gas workers, for they know more acutely than anyone ectly political ends at this stage.
else the dangers of isolation from the support of old age pensioners, housewives and tenants, let alone the rest of the working class. Those workers providing public services realise the need to gain broad sympathy for their actions to their struggle takes up the interests of these groups. All this be fully effective.
boils down to two basic needs: for a central leadership to co-ordinate industrial action, and for a central political line so that this struggle has clear aims which can unite the struggles of the entire working class movement and all its potential allies.
C.P. OLD STYLE The Communist Party never understood the actions that it called through the LCDTU as any mere than a means to put pressure on the trade union bureaucrats. The lining up of Scanion and Jones was not done so that industrial action would be developed and led; so that the independent organisation and action of the working class would be increased.
The object of the pressure was to influence the left to push them into alliance with the Communist Party.
Workers were trotted out duly for their protests against the Bill, and then the Act. But this was made redundant by the seeming "left turn' of the TUC.
at that Congress came precisely from the notion that he was the one who led the rank and file. It would actually decrease Scanion's influence if the rank and file started doing their own thing " while the congress was going on. The result: the last action of the LCDTU was a national protest by some 400 workers.
Having lined up Scanlon, and having managed to get joint platforms with such working class leaders as Wedgwood Benn, the Communist Party saw little point in further national industrial initiatives. It was pressing home the advantages it had won in the bureaucracy through the Labour Party conference, and with the slogan "Labour to Power with Socialist Policies"
resulted in confusion an allowed the right to tilt ecutive Committee (41 Scanion.
Being the engineering u base was sharply affecte play it both ways, by ba action" and by praising (which had borne the b ing the pay struggle ear tail the feelings of the r Scanlon. Once this por why this was a new in what this new initiative We must return to the ustrial struggle to be ce It appears at first sight both these questions s National Executive Co of the struggle to the r posed the next step as the Liaison Committe struggles against Phase REAL AIM A closer examination of these moves is actu the hook. Both meas the collision course of union 'lefts", by passin Party Secretary, point fight for a General Bk The potential strength mitted to left policies The first has For the The failure of the AUEW to The problem was raised by PA And that means showing in practice how method by which emment is throug line is still the po (and here and the trade union leade In practice this a ist Party on the r Ion's and Heffer':
The recall of the Scanlon's big strength is of course in fa recall of any bod way forward. Bi tur the struggle union leadership of the rank and ship and bypass The recall of the Liaison Commit such that it will gles at Fords an portunity to use other require me Party. How mu conference to a
movement: it also opened the of decisive action by Scanion etherank and file and thereby cularly since the Morning Star has already indicated its projected aim for the conference: massive industrial protest action on May Ist against Phase 2. Again national indusStatement of the Fourth International
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Paul S Liaison C