PRESS GANG They shoot foremen
Socialist Press1978 1978-06-14Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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In the week when an unemployed 1 man was sentenced to six months' prison for missing Prince Charles with a lemonade bottle, it took something particulany reachunary cu IDA10 the limelight in the Tory press.
That something was provided by the strike of foremen at Ford's Dagenham works-a strike which called on management to tighten up on disciplinary action against production workers, after allegations that formen had been thumped.
The Daily Mail, anxious to back every reactionary trend inside the trade union movement, went to town on the strike-and is to be reported to the Press Council for its pains.
The front page of the Mail on Wednesday . Jk out headed Foremen wa in fear, came up w: ith the amazing statement that "their strike, at what is agreed to be one of the toughest plants in the world, has racial overtones."
This bald statementthe second paragraph in the front-page lead story-was backed up by the following anonymous evidence:
maint sprayer, who would not give his name, said that 90% of the trouble, involved coloured workers.
'He said: It happens practically every day now, but since the Race Relations Act everybody takes a lot more notice than they used to. . "Fitteen years ago if two white blokes had a punch up one of them got sacked and that was that, but they can't do that now'"
His evidence was supported by another anonymous worker, who said that there were always a tew trouble-makers" among the black workers. "Only a couple of weeks ago one bloke gave the foreman a karate kick in the head."
The Daily Mail's exclusive interviews with what has every appearance of being the entire National Front membership at Dagenham may have given them a stick to beat the working class and black workers at once, but it has nat anne down well in the factory.
By Friday, all Fleet Street papers were reporting strong denials from workers at the plant that black workers had exclusive rights on foreman battering. Convenors at the • plant threatened the Daily Mail with the Press Council-a toothless old dog which will do nothing to stop such racialist reporting being repeated.
The answer to these attacks on black workers lies not in the Press Council but in the hands of the working class itself. The class role played by reporters who write such reports is worth three times any treatment which is handed out to the Fords foremen. READER'S LETTER