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One of the motions being discussed at the forthcoming Scottish Labour Party conference in Stirling, tabled by Aberdeen branch, calls for the SLP to adopt the demands of the controversial Stirling Trades Council resolution to this year's STUC conference.
This resolution, passed on a show of hands by the STUC but defeated on a card vote, lays out a general plan of opposition to the goverment's cuts in social spending and incomes policy. It was the subject of a barstorming attack by Jack Jones because of its opposition to govemment policy, but still acquired very substantial support. indicating both the depth of feeling amonst trade unionists against goverment policy and the desire for a fighting alternative We asked Corrie McChord, who proposed the resolution on behalf of Stirling Trades Council, to write for Scottish Socialist on its context and significance. We print below his letter and the resolution itself.
Dear Comrades, Having been invited to write on motion Number 17 to the STUC this year, my first reaction was to refrain from resurrecting a defeated resolution. However, reflection there are important lessons for socialists on how and why the resolution was defeated at Perth. Aberdeen SLP have also made the subject more topical by incorporating the substance of resolution 17 into one of their resolutions to the SLP conference.
The demands of resolution 17 were benchmark progressions to a planned socialist economy and will be instantly recognisable committed socialist. So it will be more fruitful for Aberdeen to open the debate. Instead I would hope it profitable to explain how the resolution came about and the reasons for its eventual rejection.
The resolution was the result of agreement among the Stirling Trades Council executive, which comprises a wide spectrum of socialist viewpoints. On being put to the full council as one of seven prospective motions to the STUC, it was overwhelmingly carried as one of three motions to go forward.
The council initially rejected an amendment from Irvine Trades Council
which effectively removed the paragraph criticising the Labour government. On arrival at Perth, however, the 3 Stirling delegates were subjected to strong pressure by the standing orders committee and told that the General Council would ask that the unamended motion be rejected.
Being informed that the motion had discussed by the Communist Party and that their support hinged on delegates reluctantly accepted. Despite excellent support from Jim Dollan of Irvine Trades Council, Mick McGahey and John Walker (ASLEF), the motion, after being visibly carried by hand vote, was defeated on a block card vote.
The repeated pleas for loyalty to the Labour Government, with its attendant ills of expenditure cuts, unemployment and wage erosion, at the expense of jobs and free collective bargaining, poses the question of whether the trade union leadership has forgotten its raison d'etre.
The hand vote following the debate 250 delegates were not convinced by the arguments of these stalwarts. Inevitably the cry came, and the TGWU GWU and AUEW duly cast a third
of conference votes against the motion to gain an effective majority.
The voting machinery allowed these 3 unions to cast over 600 votes whilst Trades Councils like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Clydebank, Aberdeen, Dundee and Stirling, each with thousands of affiliates, were holding cards showing three votes. therefore becomes obvious that resistance to the classic conservative methods of government will not come from the trade union leadership. Rather the potential lies in the union branches, lay district committees and trades councils.
The potential is limited, though, by the lack of leadership. The traditional leaders of the Scottish working class, the Labour Party, the Communist Party and the STUC have abnegated their role by a deafening silence and sheer inertia. The mantle lies unworn. Whether the SEP will pick it up depends on the October conference. But one thing is clear. The formula for success must include the winning over of the organised working class and this will not be achieved by the politics of expediency.
Fraternally Yours, Corrie MeChord, Stirling branch SLP.
"That this Congress recognises that the 16 wage limit and cuts in public expenditure are measures which help to extend mass unemployment. We have no option but to conclude that the present Labour Government is deliberately using mass unemployment as an economic policy. *This Congress rejects policies which are aimed at making working people pay for the crisis in the capitalist syster. It instructs the General Council to fight unemployment by campaigning for:- (1) immediate implementation of the 35 hour week with no loss of pay: (2) longer holidays with no loss of pay: (3) no redundancies without adequate alternative employment at an equal status being provided; (4) an opening of the books of any company declaring redundancies; (5) nationalisation without compensation of any company unable to ensure full employment at a living wage for its workforce; (6) an end to cuts in public expenditure and a new programme to restore the cuts in housing, education and health; (7) an end to incomes policy measures like the 26 wage limit, and any similar scheme; (8) full cover of all wage agreements against inflation by cost of living clauses; (9) full cover in all state benefits and grants to individuals for cost of living increases. "The General Council should co-ordinate a campaign against unemployment and the cuts; this should be done at two levels, nationally through the unions and locally through the Trades Councils."