Region 5 snubs Buckle
Socialist Press1978 1978-11-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 4
The long running efforts of right wingers in the TGWU Oxford District and Midlands Regional Committee to establish a right wing dominated TGWU branch in Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant have met a further Officials of IGWU Region 5 have been pressed into a response to mounting calls for the removal of Oxford District Secretary David Buckle from his present responsibility for BL's Cowley Assembly Plant.
Two of the three IGWU branches in the plantrepresenting a clear majority of members-and the IGWU shop stewards committee (which voted 150-3 for the replacement of Buckle) had against any damages they might suffer through strikes arising from their operation of the check-off system!
Untenable
Mathers' decision last revealed his isolation from the membership.
And his relentless witch-hunting campaign against the elected leadership of the plant means that nine leading stewards, including three deputy convenors and the TGWU convenor himself still face trumped-up disciplinary charges with recommendations that some be banned from office for life or expelled from the union.
At a meeting last week with Regional Secretary Brian Mathers and Regional Chairman • Arthur Davis, officers of the two branches -5/293 and 5/55-accompanied by Assembly Plant convenor Bob Fryer were told that a "Divisional Officer" is to be drafted in to Oxford.
The official concerned will, be Coventry District Secretary Bill Lapworth. His terms of reference will be to "resolve the problems in the Oxford area"
The refusal of Regional officials to give unconditional support to Buckle's conduct over the last period and the introduction of a new official who will become Buckle's senior, will be widely recognised as a blow to his authority.