Solidarity with Garners strike

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Instead he merely warned treacherous leadership which is inst "confrontation with the the main barrier to carrying out HETIGHT BUNDFOLDand redundancies After 14 months on strike Garners workers battling for union recognition were supported last Saturday by 800 who marched through London in solidarity with their fight.

Delegations included shop stewards from Jarrow and a group from Liverpool Trades The lone Communist Party contingent numbered half a dozen, while certain self-styled "Trotskyist" groups-particularly the IMG and the WRP-were conspicuous by their absence.

The police were well prepared. Vanloads of cops guarded the key Garners restaurants and imposed a march route that passed the busy Oxford St. centre and meandered round the plush bourgeois Mayfair area.

Back to picket lines, But once again the demonstration ended on a militant note. Rather than wander down towards the pleasant scenery on the banks of the River Thames, the mass of the march followed the 150-strong Workers Socialist League contingent back to the picket lines.

There they turned away potential customers • sporting special 'cheap meal' vouchers issued by the employer in a bid to break the picket lines.

Outside Whitcomb St. Garners, the crowd chanted for mass pickets and the action necessary to win the strike.

Arrests A couple of arrests were made, and it was not possible to actually hold a mass picket directly outside the restaurant due to the heavy police presence.

the problem of the 'scabs blue' could be overcome.

The main danger to the strike comes not from them, but from within the union.

During the speeches in Hyde Park at the beginning of the march TGWU National Organiser Ron Todd claimed that mass pickets "wouldn't help the strike"

He attacked the membership of the union for "failing to respond" to Garners.

Then he put forward the ludicrous notion of a 600strong picketing rota that could cover all Garners restaurants 24 hours a day-no doubt hoping that failure to meet these impossible targets would create further demoralisation and thus bring the end of the strike closer.

Met with jeers from the crowd Todd claimed that "those people shouting at me don't know the structure of the union"

The situation was not helped when Habib Rahman-chairman of the Strike Committee-failed to put forward a single demand of the Strike Committee which he purports to represent.

www.. WSL supporters on the police" and bemoaned the "failure" of the rank and file of the unions to respond.

Racist Tribunite MP. Sid Bidwell was greeted with derision and hostility by the crowd and was unable to finish his speech. His Parliamentary colleague Jo Richardson had nothing to say at all.

Central problem

The central problem for the Garners strikers remains the March 24 demonstration NAL the correct demands of the strike committee and mobilising mass support.

The union leaders had made it clear they would use a failure of the Day of Action to attempt to call off the strike.

The Day of Action could hardly be called a failure, but the words of Todd about "lack of support" had an ominous ring.

The bureaucracy is clearly searching for any excuse to break the heroic fighters at Under: these conditions the policies of a WL leaflet distributed last Saturday are r ore rupporters on siruu wi proicar †det urgent than ever:

"*No more deals with the police! For mass pickets on the Days of Action and regular delegations from all sections to the picket lines. Set the date for the next Day of Action now.

*No to starvation strike pay! For: a realistic wage after 14 months.

*Fult blacking now! An end to the scandalous deliveries by TGWU-organised firms.

*A national TGWU delegate conference to organise the victory of the strike! The call must go to the whole TGWU membership."

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•CAPITAL For a clear lead in the