Witch-hunt Wins Court Acquittal

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REJECT MERSEYSIDE PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report Firemen lobby their leaders at the January Conference at Bridlington A new element has been brought into the campaign by TGWU officials to victimise militant stewards in British Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant.

Thomas Quinn, a supporter of right wing ex-convenor Reg Parsons and District Secretary David Buckle, was acquitted in Oxford Crown Court of maliciously wounding Frank Corti-Secretary of the 5/293 TGWU branch.

Quinn was found guilty of common assault and fined £100 with £100 costs.

Corti received 15 stitches in his face when, according to over a dozen witnesses, Quinn walked over to him at a union organised social in the works canteen and shattered a pint mug on his jaw.

Mr Louis Barrett, prosecuting said:

"There was no provocation of any kind and nothing done to give rise to this very nasty and vicious assault"

Corti said he was standing up talking to the dance organiser, Cy Blake, when he saw Quinn approaching him from the bar.

"He had won some money that evening and I assumed that as I knew him quite well he was going to come over and invite me to have a drink" , said Mr. Corti.

•Then without any warning I felt his presence on my left hand side, I saw the mug and he brought it up and hit me in the face.

"It shattered on my jaw bone. There was blood and glass everywhere and I was in a bit of a state"

Cy Blake, a deputy senior shop steward and a supporter of Parsons said he was talking to Corti when Quinn approached.

"I though he was coming up to talk to me. He then hit Frank in the face with a glass' , he said. 'I got splattered with glass and blood"

The defence counsel turned the trial into a political witchhunt.

The first question he asked Corti was "Are you Alan Thornett's secretary?': Alan Thornett, well known as a Trotskyist, is chairman of the 5/293 branch.

Quinn said in his defence that because of the "hysteria" "whipped up by militants in the plant" he had though Corti was about to punch him and therefore he decided to hit first.

Although witness after witness had testified to the use of the glass, the judge in his summing up directed the jury to acquit Quinn of malicious wounding if they had any doubts about the use of the glass.

The outcome-an acquittal on the more serious charge and a fine for assault-is tantamount to an encouragement to right wingers to launch brutal physical attacks on militants.

It stands in sharp contrast to punitive sentences meted out by the courts to pickets and antifascist demonstrators.

Nor is there any sign that the right wing TGWU bureaucracy will take any disciplinary action against Quinn for this admitted violent attack at a trade union function-though Corti and eight left wing Cowley workers are currently subject of a TGWU Regional Inquiry, accused of infinitely more trivial acts.

Resistance to •speed-up and company pressure on the shop floor brought about a strike last week by 2,000 workers at Ford's Halewood plant in defence of a victimised workmate.

The worker was sacked after allegedly assaulting a foreman, but strikers pointed out that he had been in conflict with the foreman over the speed of operating a machine.

A mass meeting of the transmission plant saw a unanimous vote for strike action last Thursday, and pickets manned the gates of the plant.

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