Garners: TGWU leaders must stand and deliver

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(Regular Socialist Press subscribers need only send On 22nd June, twentyone weeks to the day after the beginning of the Garners Steak House strike, a support conference meets at Transport House to discuss further action to win it.

This vital recognition battle is now stronger than ever before with more and more support on the picket line, less and less business for the firm and increasingly active blacking.

The pickets at the Oxford Street, Argyl! Street, Haymarket Whitcombe Street and Trafalgar Square branches are continuous now during the main business period, and the scabs inside need to resort to increasingly desperate measures to win customers.

Physical assault

At most branches, the management has taken to physical assaults on possible customers, and at Haymarket to rows of flowerpots and large anticommunist notices in a vain attempt to attract custom.

Deliveries, post and much else has been turned back and the employer has been forced further afield to get supplies.

More and more union branches and trades councils are appearing on the picket line, though many other unions have been stronger in their attendance than the TGWU.

MP's picket

On Tuesday 13th June, the appearance of four 'left' MPs on the picket at Haymarket for an hour shows that this strike has now really 'arrived' in terms of national prominence and publicity.

MPs Audrey Wise, Jo Richardson, lan Mikardo and Ted Fletcher brought money, and press cameramen appeared like bees round a honeypot. However, such guest appearances alone will do no more than at Grunwicks to guarantee the strikes' success.

The big question being asked by the strikers at this stage is when and whether the TGWU leadership is going to support the struggle with the immense resources it has at its command.

Without the, use of these resources this strike can soon UR ISORISTRENGTH turn the way other similar struggles have done-'drowning in support, and thirsting for action.

On two previous occasions now, the bureaucracy has been forced out into the open in the course of this strike.

At the last Transport House conference on 13th April, Executive Council member Brian Nicholson and Jack Dromey of the SE Region TUC promised a great deal in terms of support for pic.ieting, blacking and much else besides.

And on 20th May Nicholson, former Regional Secretary Ron Todd and many others appeared on the demonstration and congratulated the strikers on their militancy.

But it was less clear what they intended to do themselves, and since 20th May neither they nor Dromey have been seen or heard of around the strike The re-call conference will provide an opportunity for those on strike and their active supporters to call to account the leaders who agree the strike is vital but who do as little as possible to win it.

Why do TGWU members still turn up with deliveries of goods They must now boycott Why is it that the strikers continue to receive oniy £6 a week from the Union?

How is it that no full-time official can be found to devote time to the problems of the strike and its development-with catering officer George Abrahams always 'somerwhere else' and with little sign of interest from elsewhere in the bureaucracy?

Shouted down

At the support committee meeting on 13th June those who said that the conference is needed to discuss such questions as these were shouted down and told that the bureaucracy can only be got to move if everyone is politer to them!

There is no evidence for truth of this statement.

Little proof

We understand that the strikers certainly found little proof of this during a polite conversation with Les Shorter, (Regional Official) on June 14th.

It is not possible to persuade people like extreme right-winger Shorter and 'left' Nicholson to go as far as possible in mobilising support and resources.

But in drawing out their real role it is however possible to force these bureaucrats to go much further than they have gone already and in doing so to win wider support within the TGWU for the endorsement of a levy and to organise a further demonstration accompanied by strike action.

refuse to THE PRINCIPLED stand of the Emergency Bed Services members in continuing to send patients to the

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GARNERS PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL JOUSEST