Sell-out by Stand-in Official

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Luxury at the TUC-a Ford Granada Ghia • The 350 Oxford car transporter drivers who have been on strike for the past three weeks supporting sacked convenor Brian Preston voted last Friday to return to work on Monday.

Brian Preston was sacked 11 months ago for alleged fraud. The strike began after he had been cleared by a police inquiry and Cartransport Ltd still refused to reinstate him.

The same management who sacked Preston and are refusing to reinstate him are themselves the subject of a fraud squad investigation involving £2 million.

The strikers were sold out after the TGWU had enlisted the support of Bill Lapworth, Coventry District Secretary, who is also acting as Regional Secretary for Region 5 while Regional Secretary Mathers is out of the country.

At an earlier mass meeting Tuesday of last week it had become apparent that so much hostility had built up against Oxford District Secretary David Buckle that his chances of obtaining a return to work were slight.

At that meeting Buckle, as usual, dragged up every argument he could muster to back his call for an immediate return to work.

Slight change

He was met with foot stamping and slow handclapping, and faced a 5-1 majority to continue the strike.

But at a further meeting with management which went on late into the evening prior to the mass meeting Lapworth obtained a slight change in the current management offer.

Previously management had said they would conduct a fresh internal inquiry into the allegations.

If this failed to recommend: reinstatement and Brian Preston took the matter to an Industrial Tribunal they would accept the outcome of the Tribunal.

Meanwhile they would agreement.

The weakness of the action is that it is aimed at there was a meantime.

At the mass meeting, Lapworth gained the confidence of the drivers and stressed that reinstatement would be a near certainty from arbitration.

The meeting voted accept this advice.

This sell-out came point where outright was only days away.

Leyland, who had initially shut their Oxford plants and then restarted them had accumulated astock of eturn to work at the victory Buckle 30,000 cars in fields around Oxfordshire, which could not be moved to the showrooms.

They had announced that they would have to close the plants at Cowley indefinitely from Tuesday of this week while current agreements would oblige them to maintain full pay to the whole labour force-as much as £500,000 a day for 15 days!

Although it is not excluded that Preston could be reinstated from the arbitration hearing, it is criminal to gamble with the job of a sacked convenor under these circumstances.

Preston has a particularly strong case, but arbitration is set up specifically to defuse strikes when all else has failed and once workers are back to work the pressure for reinstatement is off.

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