Only strikes can reinstate 28

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Once more a massive police presence thwarted the the 600 pickets at Nottingham on September 1 When the ruling class is hurt-really hurt-it has an ugly anger. peculiar to wounded bullies and outraged tyrants.

The blowing up of Lord Mountbatten and the destruction of 18 Paras at Warrenpoint has stung the British rulers into a frenzy.

For two years. they have been assuring the British public that the IRA was in retreat. Now they themselves have been thrown on their heels.

It is in that light that workers should regard the tirades that have screamed across the pages of the capitalist press for the past week.

Newspaper headlines are carved out at editorial meetings of politically conscious lieutenants whose horizons are defined by rich pay packets, eighty thousand pound houses, tax deductable cars and expense account living.

If the headlines seem to be spontaneous outbursts of anger, then they are carefurly calculSTR 6 soldiers killed Lord Louis killed by IRA bomb noh yiane 19 tour bons tmn grr.itese LORO LOWS WTN IME QUEEN Ai 2 POCO MATCH THE UNCROWNED KING CANTE COMMENT Daily 202 Mail ated to give that effect.

The editorial executives take to themselves the role of portraying a national cross class response to events. In doing so they cannot but make their posturing ridiculous.

Even the. wording is too similar to have been arrived at separately. 'Bastards' appeared on the front page of the Daily Express, the Star, 'the Scottish Daily. Express (supposedly separately edited) and on the inside page of the Sun.

All the gutter press gave over a quarter of the entire newspaper on the day following Mountbatten's death, to denunciations of the iRA and hymns of praise for this 'patriot'.

The Daily Telegraph had the best part of seven broadsheet pages covered with reports and tributes.

‹The obituaries are of course ready written-sitting in filing cabinets complete with superlatives waiting only for the time and place of death to be filled in).

Mountbatten murdered Turning the pages of these papers, workers can only have become less and less convinced by the page after page of myth building, sensing that the press was protesting too much.

Mountbatten was a sworn enemy of the working class through and through.

Former head of the defence staff, head of imperialism in India, and according to the Crossman diaries, a one-time flirter with a military takeover in Britain.

But:

"One of the greatest Englishmen of our time ... he represented and inspired the best in all of us... one of the greatest Englishmen of the 20th century ... a peaceful old man at the close of an honourable life ... one of the country's most distinguished Service-statesmen" were just a sample of the front page epithets.

Yet behind this brave posturing, behind the banner headlines and the daring language what policy did the voice of the ruling class have to put forward?

The richness of the language was perhaps designed to obscure the poverty of their strategy.

Journalists from provincial newspapers, meeting in Birmingham on Saturday 8 September to draw up this year's wage claim will do so under the shadow of their sacked colleagues at Nottingham.

More than seven months after the end of the provincial journalists' strike the leaderships of the NUJ and the NGA have yet to introduce any action likely to win back the jobs of the sacked members or to gain recognition for the NGA and SLADE.

This has prepared the ground for a major diversion at the Digbeth pay meeting, with a motion-backed by the NECdeclaring that the Newspaper Society (employers federation) is not a fit body with which to negotiate!

If carried this would mean that the NUJ would put in no national wage claim-in 'protest' against the Nottingham management.

This would abandon to the charitable wishes of the employers the majority of small provincial weekly chapels around the country.

The motion is supported by fake lefts who want to make a gesture over Nottingham and who also see it as a way of avoiding any decision over fighting on wages this year.

In fact reinstatement and recognition at Nottingham can only be won through. strike action by NGA and NUJ members throughout the provincial press-as the 600 or so trade unionists who supported the mass picket at Nottingham last Saturday are well aware.

As a WSL leaflet put into the march said:

"How the unions respond to the Nottingham Evening Post management attack is an acid test of how they will respond to the legal attacks the Tories are now drafting and the attacks which have already been made and other judges."

The NUJ Executive has called out the handful of members working at the Long Eaton Advertiser-a small weekly recently bought by the Post management.

action This is a correct step but can only be justified if the executive is prepared to lead action to win recognition and reinstatement.

Only now, four months after the annual conference, have chapels been circulated asking them whether they want to support the conference policy for a one-day strike.

NGA leaders Les Dixon and Tony Dubbins trotted out their stock speech on anti-union managements at Saturday's demonstration while not once mentioning any possibility of NGA strike action. • On wages, delegates to the NUJ's Digbeth conference would be well advised to study the Oxford motion for rises to match the rise in the cost of living, a £10 across the board rise and for regular increases next year to protect wages against inflation.

Such a policy-linked to NUj committees to assess the effects of inflation on members-could unite the n em -bership around a clear c aim based in the need to pre tect living standards.

efforts of

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MURDERING BASTARDS