Renewed violence from Garners scabs

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• Police arrest pickets during the day of mass picketing in December The premeditated violence dished out to pickets by Margolis's scabs over the Christmas holidays signals a new and important development in the Garners struggle for union recognition.

On Christmas Day, pickets at the Haymarket Branch of Garners, had to run a gauntlet of abuse and intimidation from fourteen scab managers and hired thugs.

When the police arrived, this scab force dispersed-some going to the Oxford Street branch where striker Choudri was beaten so severely that he had to be taken to hospital. • It has been clear throughout the strike that Margolis and his henchmen have been encouraging individual scabs to provoke and intimidate strikers.

The attacks over Christmas, were, however, a carefully planned attempt by the company to physically smash the picket line.

This violence is the latest tactic in an offensive waged by Margolis since the beginning of December, when on the basis of a fraudulent ballot of scabs which went against the union, he declared that as far as he was concerned the strike was now over.

Witch-hunting

As the desperation of the organised thuggery of his scabs shows, he cannot merely wish away the strike like that.

As well as this descent into the gangster violence of London's West End he has also engineered a carefully timed series of witch-hunting articles in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express.

These have directed their fire against the decision by the government eight months ago not to issue new work permits for those applying for work at They are an attempt to build a campaign against the solidarity blacking action by the CPSA and SCPS at government Job Centres, who for nine months have been refusing to handle job advertisements for Garners.

This connects with the campaign directed against the legal status of secondary blacking. The involvement of the notorious John Gorst arouses more than a suspicion that NAFF and the right wing of the Tory Party are now heavily involved in this struggle.

They have chosen this moment to launch such an attack not only to meet Margolis's desperate requirements for new scab staff; but to sharpen the pressure on the TGWU leadership to ditch this strike during the holiday period NION DUES when the independent strength of the strikers is at its most vulnerable.

It is now obvious that on this last point Margolis has failed in his offensive.

The strikers and supporters in the WSL have courageously manned _the picket lines throughout the holiday period withstanding the violent assaults by the scabs.

The sight of Cyril Margolis standing outside the Haymarket branch on Christmas Day doing the Nazi salute to strikers was testimony to his frustration at failing to smash the picket line.

The strikers are more determined than even to win this strike. They know that the press campaign around an issue which (unlike the postal blacking at Grunwicks) is not the main axis of the strike has simply helped to transform the struggle into a national issue.

The 2-1 ballot vote to accept a package of policies put forward by British Leyland management is the result of a long period of bureaucratic manoeuvre.

The 'yes' vote was recommended by the vast majority of convenors. In fact, with the exception of the Oxford area, Jaguars in Coventry and the Drews Lane plant, every factory AT THE The violence on the picket lines has made the strike committee's campaign against Regional Secretary Staden's agreement with the police limits on picketing more powerful and embarassing for the bureaucracy than ever.

Staden is now in a position where he has to acknowledge scab brutality and state that the strike committee is running the strike with the full backing of the union.

This makes it increasingly difficult for him to resist strike committee demands for the end of all agreements with the police and the building of mass pickets on Garners.

Equally compromised, the Communist Party were forced in a face-saving move, to send General Secretary MacLennan and National Organiser Dave Cook on to the picket line on Christmas Day. leadership was: campaigning acceptance.

Longbridge convenor and leading Communist Party member Derek Robinson was one of the first to welcome the result and urge that the rationalisation should now proceed.

The convenors efforts were backed up by a press campaign designed to suggest that the package offered a 16% increase.

Yet even then abstentions on the ballot rose to 20,000 as against only 5,000 on the first HOLD IT EVERYBODY!

GOING TO MAKE A SPEECH no WELL IT WASN'T EASY. AT ONE POINT THOSE TOOLMAKERS NEARLY WRECKED EVERYTHING!

For these reasons, no matter how much Staden would like to end the strike the pressure from the strike committee and the national focus this strike has now become for the working class is greater than Margolis's vain campaign in the press.

From January 2 the strike committee intends to intensify the fight for Regional backing for the Day of Action on 27 January, and for the calling of a national TGWU delegate conference to organise support for their policies.

In the meantime plans to picket Bow Street court on 10 January at 10 a.m. in defence of Brent Trades Council President Tom Durkin must be the basis for demanding that Durkin himself fight for support for Garners on the London District Committee of the Communist Party-of which he is a member. such ballot.

What does the result mean?

All that the company has really ¡ OWE IT ALL TO YOU, LEN...

WITHOUT THE EFFORTS OF THE ..SO I TOLD THEM, LAW OR NO LAW, WERE I JOINED US? ...THEN MY SPEECH WENT DOWN A BOMB WITH THE _BUT JIM SEEMED TO BELIEVE ME !!!.

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WELL TERRY, HERE'S TO THE NEW YEAR— LET'S HOPE THERE'S NOT TOO MUCH RINGING OUT THE OLD! LORD BROADLEFT IS CONGRATULATIONS

GENERAL COUNCIL LADS, WHO NOT HAVING BLACKING IKNOWS WHO WOULD HAVE IN THIS UNION!..