single speaker attacked the revolutionaries. The way the Communist Party managed the conference showed once again the CP's fear of its political strategy being challenged in open debate.
The Committee's Resolution stated that: *This Conference calls upon the whole movement to show maximum solidarity in action with all those forces in the forefront of the struggle against Phase 2 in every possible way -financially, joining picket lines and solidarity industrial action... similar solidarity with workers facing criminal charges arising out of participation in traditional forms of trade union activity." Halpin's opening speech was even more explicit: mass strike action in solidarity with the hospital workers is the task of the moment, and making May Day a big success an overriding aim.
NO INDEPENDENT ROLE But the LCDTU intends to play no independent role in carrying out these tasks of the day. It proposed no organisational or agitational initiatives within the actions already planned by the TUC, no independent calls to follow-up from May Day, nor any concrete proposals as to the mechanics of getting strikes in solidarity with the hospital workers. This Conference actually marks a decline in the activity and influence of the LCDTU since its high point in 1971 when it was able to call out over 600,000 workers against the Industrial Relations Bill under its own name, with some union executives endorsing this call.
In the struggle against the Bill the LCDTU revealed its capacity to take independent initiatives which sections of the union bureaucracy were then forced to endorse, If it had continued to do so it would have found itself building a formidable movement in the unions which would have acted increasingly as an alternative political leadership to the political line of the trade union bureaucracy. Instead, the CP was content to pressure the left wing of the bureaucracy into action on the supposition that the left bureaucracy had a political line adequate to the problems confronting the working class. Events proved the CP ALF JENNING anti-Trade Union legislation, then an unlimited General Strike to achieve this objective", is an admission of helplessness.
The CP's strategy flows, as we have argued before, from its parliamentary road. Its aim is to build electoral alliances with the Labour left and to this end it pursues a reformist political alliance with the left trade union bureaucracy, covering up for its patent betrayals in the process. *SPLITTING The CP reply that to have built the sort of independent political focus we have argued for would "split the trade union movement". They repeat the argument that the LCDTU would violate the constitution of the unions. In fact of course, the CP built just such a movement in the 1920's, the Minority Movement. And the LCDTU itself has made calls for strikes independently of the leaders (December 1971 being a case in point). But the "unity" of the CP is a confusion between the interests and polities of the trade union bureaucracy, a definite social layer in the unions, and the interests that the unions have in fighting capitalism on behalf of their members. To do that it is necessary to fight against the bureaucracy as such in the unions and against the politics of class collaboration which are expressed in the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy itself thrives on this sort of confusion. It tries to present itself as expressing the unity of the trade union machine on which the workers depend in the factories. They argue against political strikes not on the basis that workers should collaborate with Above: Delegates demand the right to pass resolutions at Liaison Committee Conference.
capitalism (only the right wing bureaucracy does that) but by appealing to the shop stewards' genuine anxieties over political strikes. Shop stewards feel that political strikes might jeopardise the future of the union in the plant, split the union membership, bankrupt the company etc. But instead of building for a General Strike, a confrontation with capital in which the gains made justify these risks, the CP uses precisely these fears to reinforce the shop stewards dependence on the left bureaucracy. It thus discourages any organised initiative on their part which would fundamentally threaten the bureaucracy's political and organisational power.
So today, when the working class itself is beginning to undertake one solidarity strike after another, when the militants recognise that an enormous increase in this sort of action is more than ever an objective task of the movement and a preparation for a General Strike, the LCDTU has no infrastructure to help organise it.
NEW TYPES OF ORGANISATION What is more, the CP has learned nothing from history. Precisely because an increase in the number of political strikes militants have to carry out does open the union machine in the plants to the employers attack, the workers feel the need for new types of organisation: organisations in which the workers can democratically work out where all this activity should lead, ie. a political programme capable of resolving the social crisis. And in fact, only if the LCDTU can answer this political need, will it have the authority to call political struggles independently of the bureaucracy. And if the CP is serious about the General Strike then it is precisely these types of organisation writ large which must arise in order to organise the strike independently of the TUC (at such a moment hurrying along to Downing Street) and project the aims of the General The CP have forgotten what rising political strikes imply. They have forgotten the lesson that a General Strike is a fight with the state which demands new forms of workers' democracy. They believe that existing trade union organisation is sufficient for the task. They have abandoned altogether Lenin's concept of the revolution.
for talks