cover a very wide range of issues concerning the strengthening of rank-and-file power and confidence in the community as well as industry, the bulk of the report was concerned with the most male-dominated sectors of the working class.
The needs of women, other than the needs which they share with the working class as a whole, hardly entered into it.
Power The conference organisers have very conscious of the Cancer that because the report focused on these Laudond dominated sectors of in- lilalc dustry, the area of workng class power could br narrowly as trade union power.
If it succeeds the conference could provide small but significant step towards a more practical meaning to vision of based Sociais Ul. workers' power rather than one which has beer distorted and discredited by association with the corporate state.
The conference. on 'Building Working Class Power' is to be held on 28 February, Ham-5.30pm, at Lanchester Polytechnic, coveniry. Further details and application forms Coventry Trades Council, Stepney Rd, THE last Labour government was voted out of office in May 1979 after a discontent' which thousands of trade unionists in strike action against its pay policies. unemployment had doubled, wages had been frozen, democratic rights attacked.
Yet Labour came to office in 1974 At the heart of was. industrial policy halting the long term decline of the British economy. whole battery of new powers to deal with the economy, and formed the National Enterprise Board to carry out its promises.
The reality from the promises of the manifesto. It presided over the loss of 30,000 jobs Leyland, ționalisation of Britain's shipbuilding industry. donated Chrysler passively watch the destroy 8,000 jobs and then run off with its money The NEB donated f8m to Lucas, while the management refused to even consider the socially useful products designed by the NEB support, Lucas make Chieftain tanks freedom fighters the world over.
The record of the NEB is one of job loss, attacks on working. through increased redundancy, and generous handouts to any employer. aims.
Advocates Despite this dismal record, leftwing activists continue to argue in the Labour Party for an updated version of the NEB as a part of their 'Alternative Economic Strategy' is now widely Party and trade union members Its leading advocates include MPs Tonv Benn and Stuart union leaders Alan and Bob Wright of the AUEW. argue Inal ine bore little resemblance to the radical policies of the Labour manifesto. Ir this they are correct Even after 1973 Labour Party conference decision to nationalise 25 to 30 profitable companies, the proposals of the 1974 manifesto were still quite radical.
The original idea NEB would enter agreements' Various types of would be used to keep the companies in line with government policy, and government aid would be ted to the acceptance of planning agreements.
Handouts The NEB was to have the power to buy a controlling share in a company, or even buy it outright.
the power to open the financial books to the worktorce When the NEB established planning agreements were voluntary, evel WiCC aid was involved. Only one planning agreement Labour 'winter of total bankruptcy. involved money Labour, During and to industry. radical than its manifesto almec Labour promised a saying that the policies elected'. of the NEB was far and the £147m to the only to multinational workforce.
contnuca lo NEB murder from the nothing to do people and dings.
who shared these tract' The AES supported by Labour Holland INUPE They practice of the NEE the dropping of the was that the into 'planning with the top 100 entercompulsion It would have and trades unions was tinal v was concluded by the government, with Chrysler, which the government rescued from The NEB was only giver £1,000m and 94 per cent of this used keep Leyland and Rolls Royce afloat.
the same period the government donated £15,000m in aid The Labour policies became little more cheap handouts for manufacturing employers.
Civil service Tony Benn explains this retreat by 'the majority cabinet did not understand or support which were On his first day at the Department of Industry a civil service boss told him: 'I presume, Secretary plement the industrial strategy of the Labour Partv's programme The Civil Service, , the employers organisation, the CBi, and the press conducted a campaign to discredit the manifesto commitments.
This opposition was to be expected, but what was not expected by thousands of Labour supporters was the spectacle of Tony Benn as the main campaigner for the powerless The retreat of the Labour cabinet radical manifesto had Wilson, and later Callaghan, were well aware of the effects on the economy if it were implemented.
The truth is that the '73 policy, along with the AES of today, are im.
fronting the employers head on. The I abour leaders refused to do this instead they chose to cooperate with them and devised the 'Social ConThe problem with this type of strategy is that it is based on maintaining the present system - capitalism Callaghan and Viscount Wa