An Epitaph for a Stooge

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...BLIMEY! EVEN ASHTONS CAUGHT THIS "SOLIDARITY BUG NOW-HE ALWHYS SEEMED A REASONABLE BLOKE...

One time right wing convenor and darling of the Daily Mail, Reg Parsons, lett the BL Cowley Assembly Plant last Friday, isolated, discredited and defeated.

He had been given voluntary redundancy payment by BL management.

It is understood that he is to join the management of Rank Hovis McDougall under . Geoff Whallen, formerly Industrial Relations Director of BL, ánd now a director of RHM. •Parsóns was a renegade from the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League. He became a noted witchhunter and strike breaker. He climbed to notoriety in 1974 when TGWU NOIN Deputy Convenor • Alan Thornett was victimised by BL management.

When Thornett's section struck, Parsons called a meeting of the paint shop, where he was steward, and denounced Thornett in an anti-communist speech -soon to become a familiar theme.

After supporting the reactionary "Cowley wives" strike breaking stunt, Parsons- penned the witch-hunting letter to Jack Jones which triggered a chain of events leading to a Regional Inquiry and the calling of fresh convenors' elections under the spotlight of a national press campaign against Thornett and the plant convenor Bob Fryer.

Parsons, the chosen Catall AT THE nominee of the press, the TGWU bureaucracy and the company, was elected convenor and became the idol of the reactionary gutter press and thę television channels.

Enjoying the full support of TGWU General Secretary Jack Jones, Region 5 Secretary Brian Mathers and Oxford District Secretary David Buckle, he set out to "drive the Trotskyists out of the plant"

In the summer of 1976 he victimised four stewards and claimed that ..he had put the Trots to bed for good"

A year later, and yet another Regional Inquiry later, Parsons set up another new TGWU branch in the plant in an attempt to destroy the 5/293 which (SOLIDARITY?! LOOK, THIS IS A UNION- NOT A BUNCH OF REDS... I'VE TOLD YOU BEFORE - SET THAT TYPE AND STOP QUIBBLING!..

9716 • NUJ our pickets. Ken Quaky, was now chaired by Thornett But since 1974 things had changed. The majority of members refused to move.

When Parsons banned Alan Thornett from stewards' meetings he was heavily discredited as Thornett's whole section struck and turned up for the meeting.

Shortly afterwards, in December last year Parsons found himself voted out of office.

Fryer was re-elected convenor and Alan Thornett his deputy.

The reply of Parsons and the TGWU bureaucracy was to trump up charges against them and. seven other militants (the Cowley 9) and recommend that they TO BE be barred from office expelled from the union.

Parsons' departure from the factory comes at a time when it has become clear that the victimisation campaign has floundered and action against Thornett or Fryer near impossible because of the mass support they retain in the plant.

Involved is not the demise of an individual antiParsons' departure symbolises the end of a determined attempt. by the TGWU bureaucracy together with management over 4½ years to destroy the principled leadership built in the Cowley Assembly Plant, an attempt which has failed.

WELL YES, BUT IN A RESPONSIBLE WAY, OR NEGOTIATIONS WILL BE CHAOTIC!

ship to easily sell this strike out. All militants in the TGWU must now take up the campaign through the branches and shop stewards committees for a national TGWU delegate conference mandated to support strike committee policies.

All trade unionists should send resolutions condemning Staden's agreement with the police through branches to Trades Councils and the TGWU Regional Committee.

LEAGUE Public Meeting 'he Fight Against Phase 4' NUJ speaker Friday 15 December 8.00 p.m.

East Oxford Community Centre, Princes St.

LOOK BROTHER -I DONY CARE WHAT FANCY NAME YOU CALL IT... DELIVER THEM!!

A LETTER FOR YOU O'FISHALL. .)

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SOCIALIST SOLIDARITY MARCH CALLED BY The Association of Eritrean Students in the UK The Association of Eritrean Workers in the UK Assemble 12.00 at Speakers Corner The strike by provincial journalists for a t20 a week pay rise tirmed up last week as several We say: to the Soviet Embassy Saturday 16 December

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Dear O'fishall, can you ask your members to stop driving over

AND YOU-START LOADING THOSE PAPERS.!. (HUT AN HAS POST