can be beaten. But only provided two things are done. First, the struggle must be organised. This means the establishment in every area of bodies to organise pickets, to decide who shall and who shall not have supplies cut off, to organise defence of pickets against the police, to arrange food and supplies for occupations, and to gain support from other groups of workers, Second, the widest possible numbers must be drawn into active involvement in the struggles.
It was the tens of thousands of people who were drawn into activity in the miners pickets which allowed that decisive strike to be won. To get this type of mass active support, every worker must feel that he has real control and a real interest in what is going on: direct involvement in all decisions about how the struggle is to be carried on, This does not exclude using the full time resources of the union-only a fool would suggest that but it does mean that one of the oldest rules of working class demo cracy has to be given a new force: the people who take decisions about the struggles must be those who actually have to fight them, It is only in this way that the maximum poisible solidarity of all those in strugele can be gained. Union officials have a valuable role to play, if they have the right policies, in contacting other groups of workers to gain support, and assisting in negotiations, However, at all times the worker actually engaged in the struggles must have the information to decide what is the best course of action and to judge what their representatives are up to. This can only he done through mass meetings and elected strike committees.
These types of moves have already developed in some recent key struggles. In the building workers strike, action committees of the various unions involved were sel up locally. In the miners strike, mass meetings of the pickets were organised in some arcas to decide tacties and strategy. In the Manchester engineering strikes, moves were made to set up a city-wide stnike committee.
This type of organisation is also necessary in elected strike committees on the local, regional and national level. *No secret negotiations: elected representatives of the workers to be present at all negotiations; all negotiations to be regularly reported to mass meetings of workers, who will have the final say on all agreements and major decisions A particularly important role in the coming