May Day is an occasion for celehrating the great, heroic tradition of working class struggles. It is a day when the red flag-the flag of strugglo-flies af its післез апо реашись But many of those who gather around the red flag are marching under false colours. Trade union buraucrats and the reformist leaders of the Lalar Party all gather around this banner to evoke the heroic past of the workers movement and postificate on its even greater future.
Bur whot of the present? Where were these speechmakers when workers were actually making that history of which they like to boast Where were they on 30 April! And where will they be on 2 May?
Huddled around a rather different Rag-the white fing of class collaboration and surrender-or marching. comforcably perhaps, with those whose banner is of a darker and more treacherous hue.
Those Nike Michael Foot and Hugh Scanion to say nothing of Haroki Wilson. Frank Chapple or Roy Jenkins) have oo allegiance to the flag of struggle. They will maur this year's May Day platform with their hands still bearing fresh stains from the sell-out of the ALEW national clain.
There are ochers whose talk continually has a reddish tint, but whose actions are always pale in comparison. These are the bearers of the pink flag of compromise and 'pressuring.
For these people, like the Communist Party of Great Britain, it is never poete the right time to ware the red flag. never quire the noment to break with nets and lawach the struggl, But no decisive victory has ever been won under we pink tag toe cuted nas saved it rigorously these past tew months. But the prison walls enclosing the Shrewsbury pickets have remained as tirm as they were huilt. The hamiser of the NIRC has continued to tain down on the trade union movement, and struggle after struggle has heen led up the garden path by the bureaucracy.
The white flag sif Scanion and Foot could not have won the day in the ALEW if their opponents had adopted a brighter banner and puslied the workers" struggle forward, regardless of the burentcrabs manoeavees.
May Day is also a day of unity. But the question is what kind of unity Dity under wlat fag!
Yes, we must build the broodest posshic unity ment to anest she caniziat offendie. Bur in noar be unity tin strugele, It must be wow water the rod foz, not just foc one day a year, hut for meers single day Secretary Foot's intervention into the AUEW socal contrast' will protect workers against National Committee strengthened the inflation, or further the welfare of the Tower hand of the union right-wing and paid enabled them to call off the engineer's overtime ban and sell-out the struggle for the national engincering claims.
Veteran red baiter (and former Labour MP) Woodrow Wyatt summed up the situation aptly in last week's Sunday Mirror:
Like many a new Labour minister before Foot, the darling of the left, is discovering that he can get things done oaly with the help of the right wing moderates.
But Foot was not alone in the camp of He was jeined there, on the question of the wage claim at least, by his contract. old friend, AUEW President Hugh Scanion.
The Foor-Scanion double act managed to pitned the right label on Labour's poley engineer the sell-out of the national claim.
But they have also shown just what an ugly restraint will go agrinst the worker and onl kettle of fish Labour's social contract really The AUEW bureaucracy had long ago abandoned the demands of the national Claim on shorter hours and equal pay. And. * Hugh Scanion argued vehemently before the ruling classes. the election, the wage demand by itself was within Phase 3 Moreover, since the wage demand was for an increase in the basic rate, its would have primarily benefitted the the Living standards of working people can be mounted So much for Labour's claim that the It is now up to tank-and-tile engineering workers to protect their living standards through the vigprous prosecution and national coordination of the fighir around local The Engineers" sell-out hammers home an important obiect lesson: Labour's social contract is nothing more than fancy language for conditional turrender to the capitalist offensive This lesson is already being grasped by seme sections of the trade union movement Last Monday the annual conference of TASS the AUEW, while collar section, voted to press their pay cinim despite the social TASS executive mether Jack Carr firmly Within a capitalist system any form of wage help the employer. We are therefore opposed to the concept of the social compact, which will further crode the standard of the wor. kers and make bigger and better profits for This is the basis on which trade unionists must approach the coming struggles. It is the only basis on which a serious fight to protect