The six-week-old National Abortion Campaign (NAC) got a boost last Wednesday when 800 people tried to crowd into a 300-seater hall in the House of Commons for a meeting against the Abortion (Amendment) BilL Finally, an overbow meeting had to be set up in a Committee room in mother part of Parliament, witlt speakers going from one meeting to the other.
The MPs, who wite billed as the star eemed to concede the anti-ahortionists case (Ms Hayman). Nothing was said about making the issue of abortion a "line' for WEEKLY the Parliamentary Labour Party to adopt. nothing about the fact that this move to restriet abortions is taking pince against a background of cuts in the wellare sirsices and nothing about de need for a mass compan. organseu puisde ramament to enforce not only the defeat of tie Amendment but also the implementation and extension of the present Act.
The call for the building of the camр a se parat or see dune demonstration, was left to the NAC speakers and chairwomen. opposing, voted against any form of incomes policy, voluntary or ocherwise, under capitalism. Most Importantly they passed by a large majority a resolution on Cost of Living Safeguards which calls on unions to fight for sliding scale of wapes agreements which give 100 to the real value of wages.
Moved by Roland Sheret on Council, the resolution calis for unions to negotiate cost of living clauses in their wage agreements which would transform threshold agreements as they are presently conceived into a genuine sliding scale of wages bused on a working class cost-of-living index This would be designed to cover increases in the cost of living with over and above this.
scale of wages comes when a whole against inflation, Already the Incal IFLI E NAME... The Scottish Trades Union Congress meeting in Aberdeen last week overwhelmingly denounced the budget as a serious attack on the standard of living of working people as it will increase the cost of living and, at the same time, have a disastrous effect on employment prospects. It declared that a sharp reaction from the trade union movement was necessary and went on to pledge 'support to all unions seeking wage increases designed to improve the living standards of their members.
The 470 delegates, with only two per cent protection against inflation behalf of Stirling and District Trades the cost of living normal wage bargaining taking place policies The STUC decision on a sliding series of unions are beginning to put in demands for protection of wages A hundred and fifty Medical Research Council tachsical workars stagod a mass picket outside the MRC's clinical research centre at Northwick Park Hospital In London last Friday. The demonstration - against the Ministar responsible for their wages, Reg Prentice, who was visiting the hospital-was the first blow in an official ASTMS dispute for a new grading structure and for a national minimum starting wage of EZ, 200 BUY RED WEEKLY!
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
DOMESTIC: 16 per year 13.00 for b mouths FOREIGN: D per year surface mail 62 per year airmail Write to RED WEEKLY (discribution) 182 Pentonville Road, London N.I. ENGLAND.
.....•..AMOUNT ENCLOSED..... government workers union NALGO has a pay claim in for 30 per cent increases plus a 60p threshold for every one per cent rise in the cost of living index. Railwaymen are also seeking a new cost of living agroo ment. Ray Buckton of ASLEF has said that the latest rax and price rises will have to be taken into account in their pay talks. We are asking for some formula to be huilt into the settlement which would take care of any other increases in ACTION NOT WORDS But the problem with the STUC decision is whether it will actually be the basis for action. Here the STUC gave only too many indica tions that it has little intention of leading a light fur working class It is true that miners' leader Mick MeGahey made an appeal to delegates not just to pass resolutions, but to act on them. But despite an impassioned plea from the floor to delegates not to turn their backs on the two Shrewsbury comrades in jail," the Congress was closed with a resolution calling for industrist action to free them next on the agenda.
It was clear that the majority of delegates, including the Communist Party, saw cling on resolutions as hoping to convince their Labour Government' to carry out these measures the very sume Labour Government that had just carried oul a serious attack un the standard of living of working people.' Exactly the same attitude is Likely to apply to the other important positions which the conference voted for on paper-opposition to the EEC. calls for the nationalisation of North Sea Oil and of the British subsidiaries of ITT (the firm heavily involved in the mustary coup in Chile), and support for the Working Women's Charter.
If the STUC actually fought lor the policies passed, particularly the policy of the sliding scale of wages they could give a lead to the whole working class. The bureaucrats will do everything to sabotage that fight. It is up to socalist militants to turn the words into real deeds.
----- pull-quotes -----
Aberdeen IMG OXFORD