PRESS GANG Sirs shows his mettle
Socialist Press1978 1978-07-05Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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For a moment there the steel union leaders really had them worried.
Threats of a complete shutdown of the steel industry put the boldness back into the headlines of the national capitalist papers and fire back into the "tomachs of the industrial correspondents.
How long has it been since they were able to boldly declare that an all-out national strike of dramatic importance was going to be called by union leaders?
It was enough to bring back the nostalgia of days long gone.
The Times presented the news with a sense of history, declaring that the threatened strike over the closure of Bilston steelworks was the first national steel strike since 1926.
It was not of course that the union leaders could not swallow the loss of 2,400 jobs and another closure.
It was just that just after their successful closure of the Shelton works, the ISTC leaders had been publicly humiliated, thrown aside by the British Steel Corporation-as if the spirit of class collaboration was dead.
The Times pointed to the emotive scenes at the Scarborough delegate conference of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation.
"Most of the 140 delegates stood and cheered when he said: 'We have told the corporation that if this instruction has not been removed by then, the industry will stop.
If this industry does stop let me say clearly I will stop all steel moving in this country. There will not be an ounce of it moving"
But as the battle lines were drawn up and the union leaders dusted off their battle gear it was left unusually to the Daily Mirror to put the angry outbursts into proportion.
Its editorial (Steel glove, ham fist) said:
"Any organisation as many enemies as the British Steel Corporation' can il afford to lose its friends.
"Three days ago Sir Charles Villiers, chairman of BSC publicly promised the steel workers that he would consult them about future plant closures.
«Yesterday without consultation BSC suddenly announced proposals to shut down the works at Bilston, Staffordshire, which actually made profit last year.
Some 2,400 men will lose their jobs. And BSC will lose its best friends-the union leaders who have cooperated in the painful closure of so many steelworks"
They said it, not us. But the Mirror can be confident that unless workers take determined steps now, the 'best friends' of the TUC and BSC will kiss and make up-in good time to close| down the steelworks without a cross word on either side.