[Cyril Margolis's were protected last Saturday from the…]

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Cyril Margolis's were protected last Saturday from the mass picket which had the Haymarket restaurant.

A huge number of police turned out to harass pickets.

With SPG thugs present and bus loads of police in reserve at the top of the Haymarket, it was clear that the police were determined to stamp out any threat of further mass pickets in Central London.

Without enough forces present to challenge the police on Saturday, pickets dispersed onto most of the Central London Garners restaurants and mounted an effective picket all night.

mirrored The determination of the police was not mirrored by the leadership of Region 1 TGWU who have continually refused to mobilise forces from their 500,000 members onto mass pickets which would threaten the company and challenge police harassment, intimidation and attempts to limit picketing to six at a time.

Further evidence that the TGWU bureaucracy has every intention of killing this strike rather than mobilise the necessary forces to win it, was seen this week with the conference of Hotel and Catering workers called last Thursday to discuss ways of winning the strike.

Abortive

After their failure to bring a single delegation of workers along to last Saturday's mobile picket, Catering Officer George Abrahams and Hotels official John Stephans managed to get a mere two members at what turned out to be an abortive meeting. • We have also learned that the Regional Committee still refuse (after 24 weeks!) to circulate the London membership with the strike committee's policy.

It is essential that the strike committee continue to turn into the mobilisation of the TGWU membership around their policiesby fighting to force Regional Organiser Shorter and Staden to take measures such as circulating the Regional membership.

The result of this fight so far is that Shorter has produced a lengthy list of TGWU-organised factory meetings for the strike committee.

At these meetings the strike committee must fight for resolutions to be poured into the Regional Committee supporting their policies of:

*No return to work without reinstatement and recognition. • . *Full secondary blacking of supplies.

*Mass picketing every Saturday with delegations from the TGWU organised on a regular basis to all Steak Houses.

*Regional Levy to raise a weekly minimum strike pay of £36.

From these meetings the strikers must directly organise factory delegations onto the picket lines.

A major confrontation looms in Sandwell, West Midlands, over the Tory Council's attempts to break the trade union organisation of the direct labour department and give contracts for modernisation and maintenance to private builders.

Question mark

The closed shop agreement was signed just before Labour lost control of the council in May and is due to come into effect on August 1.

The Tories have already forced through the council, a decision to end the agreement, with the statutory six months notice.

But a big question mark hangs over their response to the commitment under the agreement to sack eight non-union members on August 1.

Decisions for strike action if they fail to do so have already been taken.

The Tory policy is to starve the department of work by awarding contracts to private builders but this has met opposition from tenants groups who have previous experience of private builders' workmanship.

But the need for united opposition to the Tories' attack should not allow tenants or building workers to forget that it is precisely the failure of the Labour government and Labour council to defend workers' interests which has allowed this situation to arise.

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ne face of Francoism reappears PHOTO: Dave Evans, IFL SSE ST Asian youth and workers Stetchford last It was the fi ill power and violence of the Francoist state that was unleashed in Euskadi last week.

On Saturday 8 July, the demonstration of Basque nationalists in Pamplona bullring was attacked with characteristic violence by the riot police.

The demand for a political amnesty was answered with smoke grenades and rubber bullets. In subsequent demonstrations and riots, one militant was killed, and more than a hundred injured.

Al . San Sebastian two days later, a demonstration called to protest against the police violence ended in a battle outside the police headquarters.

Here the police assassinated a leader of the LKI (Revolutionary Communist League, the Euskadi section of the USFI to which the British IMG belongs).

Throughout Navarra and the other Basque provinces, 700,000 workers took part in a general strike condemnation of the killings.

Barricades were erected in all the towns and traffic halted as industry was paralysed.

But on Thursday, after the strike had ended, the

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previous week success- fully closed down his

Sandwel looms