Even the NUM left has gone for the idea that they could claim a 'miners' rise' under the Pay Board's relativities report. But this report is part and parcel of Phase 3, and the whole idea of 'relativities" is to put workers at each others' throats, fighting for a bigger slice of a cake that will remain within Phase 3 limits. The workers" movement must not fight over the relative position of each group of workers, but for the tight of every worker to a decent standard of living for himself and his family. On this basis a fighting unity can be built and the whole Phase 3 scheme smashed, along with its Tory masterminds.
is something that the NUM lefts have neither lone not proposed!
After all, what is the purpose of making demands on the TUC! Surely the NUM lefts are under no illusions that these veteran bureaucrats are prepared to lead a real strugple?
The experience of their own union in 1926 is bitter evidence of the falsity of such a view.
Demands on the TUC serve only one purpose -they are a means of winning the hundreds of thousands of working class militants who lock to this body for leadersbip to the programme of action necessary to defcat the Government. But the most correct programme in the world is useless unless it is put into practice, Thus demands on the TUC must be coupled with practical proposals for action which can he undertaken by those who are convinced by such demands. Militants must be urged to go beyond calls on the leadersbip and actually launch and organise the struggle themselves.
It is this latter step that the NUM lefts both of yusterycar and of today — are not prepared to take. Their political ideas are trappod within the formal houndaries and rules of thu official trade union structure, and they are un-