Tory government Red Weekly 31 August 1973 Page 4 policies.
The key issue for any future Labour governThe present attacks on the working class do not | ment is going to be the question of nationalisaTake the proposal to nationalise 25 major firms. We are talking about taking out of private ownership ICI, British Leyland, Fords, Shell, Unilever and so on. Does comrade Heffer think this is going to be done peacefully? If so, this is the greatest lack of realism we have heard for years.
The employers have already shown how they will react to even moderate proposals. Take the 1950 Nationalisation of Steel. The employers simply refused to co-operate, sabotaging the nationalisation and the economy. They imposed a complete boy cott of the Iron and Steel Board and no administrative or technical personnel were permitted to attend the board. As a result, state control over the industry, despite nominal ownership, never became a reality. This tactic was maintained until Labour was out of office. Such sabotage is carried out by every capitalist class when measures are taken against it which it does not like. The lorry owners strikes in Chile are another recent example of this.
For this reason workers control, and in particular, opening the books of all the capitalist trusts, is not simply something to come after nationalisation, but something which is vital in order to carry out nationalisation. In an article in the 6th July Tribune, which we disagree with on many other points, Ken Coates gets this correct: 'workers need to insist upon their rights to any and all information which they consider relevant.' This is the indispensable pre-requisite both for workers control and to ensure nationalisation can really be carried through. In order to be effective such a struggle for control has to start at once throughout the whole economy - in particular in those industries which are going to be nationalised.
This struggle for control and for opening the books can be begun by shop stewards committees and trade union branches. This will start to fuse the industrial struggle with the struggle to take industry out of the hands of the capitalists. We concretely propose that in every major industry, starting with those proposed for nationalisation, a nationalisation committee is set up to start the campaign for nationalisation and opening the books. Here is a real question on which left unity should be built. to avert them through his negotiations with the TUC. He knows that getting an agreement on incomes policy is the best chance he has of staying in power. At the same time the Industrial Relations Act is still on the books and that, together with the freeze legislation. can be used to carry out future attacks on the In this situation most of the left has come out firmly against the talks with the government. The Morning Star has campaigned against them. The AUEW instructed Scanlon to withdraw from the talks. The National Conference of Trades Councils has voted against the negotiations. The move to get the NUR to withdraw was defeated by a narrow right wing Part of Bloody Sunday commemoration this year
liberty the working class possesses. We are in a period marked by the undermining of capitalist democracy. In this situation the defence of " democratic rights is crucial.
This summer the defence of democratic rights has been focussed on the case of the Shrewsbury building workers. A real measure of left unity has been achieved here. The IMG and the SLL have had joint meetings. The Communist Party has supported the campaign against the trials. So far, unfortunately, not much has been