do to help. The motion was adopted unanimously.
Human Rights
12.
The press and some delegates expected controversy over a motion by the Electrical Electronic Telecommunication and Plumbing Union calling on the General Council to support a charter for basic human rights in all countries, providing for the release of all non-violent political prisoners, for the right of all workers to organise free trade unions, for free and democratic elections by ballot, for free- dom of speech and assembly, for freedom of religious worship and a free press and for freedom to demonstrate and protest in a lawful fashion. Mr Chapple said his motion reaffirmed a resolution adopted in 1973 but that it was necessary because of the interpretation placed by the General Council on many recent motions on human rights. That interpretation narrowly defined the motion when its terms had to be applied to communist states and concerned itself purely with trade union rights, ignoring the great upsurge in demand for civil liberties in the USSR and Eastern European countries. When Congress called on the General Council to give assistance to ensure that all people should be able to live in freedom more was expected than that they should act as a go-between and their unwillingness to criticise abuses of freedom and savage penal sentences in communist countries devalued the currency of their criticism in the field of civil rights over the rest of the world. Mr Chapple argued that the concern of Congress had always gone wider than trade union issues and that the General Council had never referred to the repressive apparatus created by Stalin, and never dismantled, when speaking with Russians. It was time to end double standards. Congress should speak out. There was no further contribution from the floor and the motion was accepted unanimously.
Free Trade Unionism
13. Mr Sirs of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation moved a similar motion to that of the EETPU affirming absolute commitment to establishing free trade unionism anywhere in the world. The motion expressed concern at the restrictions being placed on those who sought to establish independent unions and deplored sackings and the use of psychiatric treatment as a means of repressing trade union independence. The motion declared that any genuine expression of this will would receive every encouragement and assistance from the TUC. Mr Sirs surveyed the trade union situation in a number of countries, pointing to encouraging improvements in Portugal and to the work of the inter- national trade union secretariats in promoting trade union development throughout the world. There were, however, discouraging features in such countries as Tunisia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Chile, Argentine and South Africa. He said it was a bleak picture when the trade union movement incurred the wrath of every tinpot dictator. In the Soviet Union psychiatric treatment was applied to free trade unionists.. The attempt to create a free trade union organisation reflected
5
/dissatisfaction
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