COWLEY 9: July crunch

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Published by Folrose Ltd. for the Workers Socialist League, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR. Printed by Anvil Printers (TU), London. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

The Midlands Regional Committee of the TGWU which is attempting to ignore the Alan Law ballot-rigging scandal and press disciplinary charges against nine members at Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant, meets on July 12 to consider the results of its inquiry.

Holidays

If that committee meeting decides to act in line with recommendations made by the Oxford District Finance and General Purposes Committee then the nine Cowley workers could find themselves victimised by union officialsbarred from office or even expelled from the unionRegional Secretary Mathers only two days before the annual holiday shutdown.

Among those accused of such ridiculous charges as walking out of a TGWU District Committee meeting and revealing the size of the 888• Thornett branch secretary's commission are the Assembly Plant convenor and three deputy convenors only recently elected by shop floor ballot.

A full meeting of all 170 TGWU stewards on the plant recently registered a near-unanimous vote to support the Cowley 9, demand the dropping of the charges by the Regional Committee and call for TGWU national officials to act to procure company recognition of elected deputy convenor Alan Thornett.

Thornett faces the threat of expulsion from the union at the hands of the Regional inquiry.

As a precaution against the prospect of a sudden attack by the TGWU bureaucracy, the Cowley 9 Defence Campaign-which has rallied the support of hundreds of leading TGWU members for the victimshas called a meeting of campaign supporters on the evening of the Regional Committee meeting-Wednesday July 12, 7.30pm at the Digbeth Institute, Birmingham.

Those few 'left' Labour MPs who have' voiced timid liberal protests against repression in Ireland have lifted not a finger to remove this gang of torturemasters from the Labour leadership.

Every union branch Labour Party ward and GMC must be mobilised in solidarity with the Irish socialist and republican prisoners and for the removal of the coalition ist Callaghan-Healey leadership.

Scargill

The Yorkshire NUM in particular, whose 'loft' President Arthur Scargill allows butcher Roy Mason to stand as Labour MP for Barnsley must be called upon to act.

And all those opposed to British imperialism in Ireland should join the PAC demonstration on 9 July.

We call for:

*P.O.W. status for political prisoners as guaranteed by the Geneva Convention.

*Support for the war of liberation in Ireland. Self-determination for the Irish people!

*Troops out now. An amnesty for all political prisoners!

*Kick out Mason and coalition cabinet!