TGWU must save dock jobs!

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Royal docks banner at Grunwick picket arshall osha 300 workers from Newham's docklands gathered at East Ham Town Hall on Thursday 28 June to discuss the Port of London Authority decision to close London's upper docks.

The closure will destroy 4,250 jobs in the docks with massive repercussions throughout the East End which may account for as many as 30,000 more jobs. The Newham Forum' group, representing the 'community as a whole', , did nothing to build a fight which can defeat the planned closures.

They based their approach on a call for more subsidies from the government to make the upper docks more attractive to the employers.

Cabinet

This theme was taken up and amplified by Jack Hart, leader of Newham Council, and Nigel Spearing, MP for Newham South, both of whom argued that the real decisions' would be made by the Cabinet. Any thought of industrial action to save jobs should be banished, they said.

What is needed is a "new marketing strategy for the docks" based on more government money.

The precedent of British Leyland was quoted.

1,00m TGWU leaders from the docks predictably failed to reply to this by explaining the effects of government noney on •o. with «workel participation" • aiding 'the closure of Speke and a wholesale drive towards speed-up on the shop floor, with 12,500 jobs to be abolished.

Not good enough The barrage of heckling, however, made it clear that the dockers did not think their leaders' position was good enough.

However, no policies were proposed on which a fight could be based.

There will be a series' of meetings of this kind throughout East London in the next few weeks, with a major rally on 15 July, planned to show the strength of the campaign.

It is clear that the reformists and Stalinists have nothing to say in this situation.

It is up to revolutionaries to spell out a clear programme of demandsstarting from the fight to open the books of the PLA and the National Ports Council to elected trade union committees.

Such an exposure would reveal the clear case for the nationalisation without compensation of the docks as a whole and a planned MAN AT THE TOP development these of facilities under workers' management, in which available work would be shared, without loss of pay or jobs, between the whole workforce.

In the preparation for this fight the massive indusNUM, O' FISHALL SPEAKING...

trial power of the Transport and General Workers Union to be put in a state of readiness to defend every job on the docks.

Those officials and stewards that obstruct such a course must be removed. YOU WANT A contingent of members of the TGWU 'Tunnel Miners branch picketed the Old Bailey on Monday on the first day of the trial of tunnel miners. They face charges arising from their sit-in strike at Finsbury Park last year.

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STEWAROS KONKER

MINERS ON TRIAL