Nottingham picket holds up police

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INUJ contingent arrives at 'Post' offices ickets outside STL: basic rates vary from 28p an 7p an hour. Top rate with bonus is 71p an hour. s-rike Yet another attack on Colin Carty, the convenor, already has TGWU No: 5 Regional Committee inquiry hanging over his head.

Now he has been suspended by the management while they carry out an enquiry into his so called stopping of maintenance men moving into part of the site.

The case has arisen trom a sit-in strike which Colin Carty's own section have been holding for the past week.

This started as an action in support of a group of members who refused to move into another section because they still had work in their own section and also they considered the other section was unsafe to work in.

The safety of this other es move issue. Indeed even safety inspector called in by the company said that changes should be made.

The incident with the maintenance men arose when they went to enter the section. Colin Carty told them it was blacked and they went away.

Now the company is trying to build a case, saying that they had been "threatened"

But there are many witnesses on Colin Carty's side; and one of the two maintenance men has declared that all he was told was that the section was blacked.

Most important of all, Colin Carty has the backing of his section (the only packing section left on the site).

They made it clear in a vote at a meeting on Wednesday that if Carty was stopped from entering the site because of his suspension then they would stay out with him.

Meanwhile the Several hundred police took 40 minutes to clear the road in front of the Nottingham Evening Post at the weekend, after pickets refused to allow scab vans into the building.

Reinforcements were called after a police charge on the picket line was repulsed and the police and vans were pushed backwards down Foreman St. It took several further charges before the vans were ushered through.

But the strength of the picket comprised of about 400 printers and journalists, is in sharp contrast to the disastrous state of the dispute.

The demonstration had been cailed by the NGA and NUJ bureaucracies and a march to the newspaper building was timed to arrive after the scab vans had already gone in.

A succession of meaningiess speeches from NGA and Slade officials threatened that 'next time' the Nottingham Evening Post-which has refused all union recognition for six years and sacked 28 journalists for striking over pay-would be shut down and that if the battle took "another six years" the T.

Bailey Foreman management would be defeated.

WSL members demanded that Ken Ashton, NUJ General Secretary state when the decision taken by the union's annual conference to cait a one-day strike of provincial journalists in support of the 28 would be put into eftect.

Ashton was forced to return to the official NGA soapbox to lecture his hecklers on the 'appropriate time' for industrial action.

NGA deputy general secretary Les Dixon loftily refused to answer to demands to know where the NGA stood on supBUT SIR, HE'S JUST BEEN CHURNING OUT THE USUAL OLD STUFF ABOUT BRINGING DOWN THE TORIES - AH THAT'S IT!!!

VV DON'T FRET JOE- JUST THE USUAL STUFF... FOR INCREASED OUTPUT... LESS STRIKES... FOR TALKS WITH TORIES. NO MORE FAILING TO APPLY SAFETY STANDARDS. - MEETING PRODUCTION TARGETS. PLUS THE USUAL ANTI-TORY VERBIAGES ww porting strikes.

But worse than that the SWP members and supporters, who had been in the forefront of the physical resistance to the police, abstained completely from chaltenging the road to disaster that was being spelled out by the union leaders.

Indeed the special edition of the Rank and File paper Journalists Charter; produced for the picket, spoke in terms of abject demoralisation over the call for strike action, saying that the mood in the rank and file had to be rebuilt for the strike.

In fact only by calling the strike will the conditions be created to take up the struggle in the rank and file of the union, who know from their own recent experience of the treachery of the leadership.

Challenge Again it was only WSL members and supporters on the march who attempted to challenge the official slogan of 'Boycott the Post' All official activity is now centred on building up the sacked journalists' alternative paper The Nottingham News towards a workers cooperative.

This disastrous step, which completely removes the cutting edge of the demands for reinstatement and recognition, as well as being doomed to abject failure, must be strongly challenged.

It is a mark of the distance between this end and the correct demands for reinstatement that the edition of the Nottingham News on sale at the picket did not even mention the fact that the picket was taking place, and in fact did not mention the dispute on any one of its 28 pages!

Example

The NGA are now intent on keeping the dispute rumbling along exactiy as at present so that they can hold out Nottingham to members • on other papers as an example of failing to negotiate a settlement on new technology.

To this end they have called a new picket on September1more than two months away, at which the same speakers will no doubt trot out the same demagogic speeches.

All those in the NUJ, NGA, and Slade who are serious about chailenging the anti-union management at the Post, winning back the jobs of the sacked NUJ members and gaining union recognition for all print unions there, must put maximum pressure on their leaderships for strikes to be called Those who are not serious about this fight should stop saying they are supporting the Nottingham cause.

YE GODS!. THE C.P. HAVE GONE RAVING MAD!!!' tHEL ENO 8 NUM (HUH...TYPICAL TYPICAL HOW THE MEDIA MEDIA) DISTORTS THE AUTHENTIC VOICE OF THE WORKING CLASS!

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the union organisation is taking place at Export Pack- ing Services, Banbury.

MICK HAS REALLY BLOWN HIS RESPECTABLE COVER! PROFIT