IMGpapers 1980–83

Newspapers of the International Marxist Group and its forerunners, 1980–83

AUEW elections - opportunity missed

· Socialist Challenge No. 245, 13 May 1982 · p. 14 of the scan · 346 words

The scan: sc-no245.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
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page 14 of the scan

as expected, in a right wing pected.

In 1978 Terry Duffy Bob Wright ty 40,000 40,000 votes in the second round, and in 1980 won an ab solute majority in the first round which was undoubtedly the worst defcat ever for the lelt.

Laird's majority of 1,062 indicates the beginn ing of a shift to the left at the base of the union. Th right wing course pursued Boyd and Duffy has THE AUEW elections for a replacement for retiring General Secretary John Boyd resulted, victory. Gavin Laird beat the Broad Left candidate Ken Brett but by a much narrower majority than exand brought more and more of the shop floor into conflict with their union A significant element in the move to the left has been the campaigns run by the Laurence Scott strike committee.

Laurence Scott showed how an activist campaign could be run throughout the union. And i showed contrary to the pessimism of many in the Broad Left, that there were important forces at the base of the union that can be mobilised for a fight given the correct lead.

that point of view the campaign that the Broad Left ran was an op portunity missed. Brett's profile affair, focussed on ine песа o *adjust the balance on the National Committee.

Ken Brett's response to Laird's narrow victory was While there is no doubt that there are grounds for suspecting TESTS. given the way in which the count is handice (Bovd appointees handled it and there were no independent scruncers) aegar achon would be totally wrong.

Bringing the bosses courts into union affairs is always a threat to the in and this is even more the case at the moment with the Tones attempting to attack the union move ment through the courts How can the left argue for the courts to be kep them nd / themselves use them? using the CONTES TO TUSCIVE DIES WEL ter takes the Broad Left away from the real issue members to build a mass retorm current based the struggle against the Tories.

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