Poll Tax and the unions: organise the counter-offensive!
Labour Briefing1990sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Support is growing for the Socialist Movement Trade Union Committee's anti-Poll Tax Conference.
The conference, on the trade unions and the Poll Tax, will be held on Saturday September 8th in Sheffield.
It already has 60 sponsoring organisations, and many other bodies have already elected delegates.
Fourteen million people in England, Scotland, and Wales are now refusing to pay the Poll Tax — an unprecedented mass movement of civil disobedience in Britain.
It represents the biggest single problem to the Tories face in trying to cling onto office and recover their position by the next election.
This level of mass non-payment has serious implications for the trade unions.
As the courts grapple with the problem of collecting the money, it is becoming clearer that their principal method of collection will be attachment of wages orders — implemented through the employers.
In most cases the attachment orders will have to be administered by trade union members. Will they allow employers to interfere with wage packets with impunity, or will they take sanctions to stop this action?
Mass non-payment also creates the basis for non-collection of the Tax and for effective support to be organised in support of workers refusing to operate the system — including local government workers, postal workers, and civil servants.
The Tax is directly eroding living standards and transferring money from the poor to the rich — wage increases to compensate are needed.
Redundancies
There will be mass redundancies and attacks on the wages and working conditions of Local Authority workers, and all workers will suffer losses through cuts in services and loss of local democracy.
The biggest area of trade union action, however, is likely to be in defence of jobs directly destroyed by the Tax.
The operation of the Poll Tax and Poll Tax capping is already affecting and threatening tens of thousands of jobs in Local Authorities — teaching in particular.
The fight against the Poll Tax will not be complete unless it organises to defend those jobs which are threatened by it, and to support those workers who are made redundant by it.
The gap between the mass popular movement against the Poll Tax and the New Realist dominated trade union leaderships is huge. The gap must be closed, by challenging New Realism, so that the unions and the TUC can be brought into the campaign.
The TUC should be calling for mass demonstations against the Tax: clearly, if it did issue a call, the resulting demonstration would be absolutely enormous.
It is with all this in mind that the Conference is being organised.
The Socialist Movement Trade Union Committee supported the trade union Conference called by the National Federation of Anti-Poll Tax Unions on June 23rd.
It was a good initiative and well attended. But it was very brief, effectively only three and a half hours.
It was unable to provide much of the detailed tactical discussion, sector by sector, union by union, which is necessary if successful trade union action is to be expanded and made more effective.
Achieved
The Socialist Movement Conference aims to build on what was achieved on June 23rd.
It will be a full day, with workshops on the main aspects of trade union action and the Poll Tax, and meetings of members in individual unions to discuss the problems industry by industry.
It will be addressed by Tony Benn and other leading figures of the Socialist Movement as well as representatives of those who have already taken action against the Tax.
By the beginning of September, most Local Authorities will have started operating their chosen tactics for attacking the non-payment movement. Come to Sheffield to help organise the counter-offensive!