Another way on pensions

As your headline of the same day demonstrated, now that the government have revealed the true awfulness of their "final offer" to teachers, health workers and civil servants, that task is ever more urgent.

There are, on the left, different traditions and bodies of opinion and as we go forward together we need to find comradely ways of expressing these differences.

I agree with Robert that those leaders who are not taking the struggle forward are "giving voice to the political confusion and lack of confidence of their own members."

But this is not what leaders should do and other leaders are doing far better from our point of view.

From where I sit in our movement, I can see clearly that there are those in our leadership who believe we must be seen to fight so as to preserve union membership, rather than believing that we can fight and win for workers.

I don't think that asking whether the material interests of those who have that belief may help to shape it amounts to denunciation or for that matter to an infantile disorder.

At this moment it is immaterial why important sections of our leadership want to settle the pensions battle on miserable terms.

Our vital task is to show trade unionists that there is an alternative and that we do not have to do so.

Jon Rogers
London SW2