unionists forgathered in Sheffield, last March, for the Workers Control Conference the Institute for Workers" Control faced an organisational crisis, Everything was now too big, too busy, to be effectively serviced from a small voluntary centre. Only one decision could Strong official delegation. ossibly follow from this: and accordingly th Council of the Institute agreed upon a strategy for the continuation of industry seminars throughout the winter months, during which prerogatives. Mergers, the various industrial groups would become more and more organised to act independently.
The Institute would continue its ambitious publishing programme, servicing the mushrooming groups that were springing up on all sides; and where it was asked to help, it would provide various organisational resources for particular groups.
Now the Autumn programme for the Institute has been fixed. It includes a series of Stewards in response to the pressures towards industrial seminars throughout the months of September, October and November; among the industries to be covered will be old established • bases of the Workers' Control movement: like clauses, calculated to strengthen Docks, Public Transport, Steel and Mines; but management power. Against this, he set a series also a number of important new sectors, notably motors, computers and public services.
Also scheduled for October is a weekend study conference on trade union democracy, from which it is hoped to commission a number of for much greater accountability, drawing on the research papers, and, for November the General proposals in the Labour Party Report Meeting of the Institute's members and affiliates. During the same period, a conference is planned for the London area.
Opening the Autumn programme, on the weekend 13th and 14th September, will be a very important seminar of motor workers.
Sponsored by conveners of more than half a dozen key plants, and by Labour M.P.s Stan Newens, Stan Orme and Norman Atkinson, the seminar will open to all workers in the motor industry, and will hear papers by Ernie Roberts, I enclose p.o./cheque for £1/E2.
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The BLACK DWARF, 7 Carlisle Street, London W1A 4PZ. Telephone: 01-734 4827.
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Foreign subs: Asia/Africa/N,&S, America/ Australia: £5 per Notes from Workers Control Institute After more than a thousand trades the Engineering Workers' leader, and Moss Evans, of The Transport and General Workers Union. The meeting will be held in Coventry. Already a number of European car workers have agreed to attend, and the Italian Metal Workers' Union, F.I.O.M. will be sending a The problems of the motor industry demand a very serious struggle to extend the frontiers of control, and to limit managerial takeovers, car industry are all pushing the shop stewards movement to think ahead, and to abandon purely detensive trade union strategies for more far-sighted, aggressive forms of action for greater industrial democracy. Tony Topham has already shown in detail what could be done if the proposals of the Labour Party's NEC on Industrial Democracy were taken up by kinds of restrictive productivity bargains. He took the projected deal offered by the Rootes group, and analysed all its regressive arbitrary of proposals for mutuality in determining working conditions, and for asserting work peoples rights of veto and conrol over changing working conditions. He also spelt out the need These suggestions have been widely discussed in the motor industry, and it is hoped that the Coventry meeting will mark out serious progress in the co-ordination and systematisation of the ideas of workers' control within what is a vital growth industry.
Further information about this important meeting can be obtained from the Motor Conference Organiser, IWC, Goldsmith Street, Nottingham.
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