Engineers fight on-but leaders limit action

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Confed leaders last week stepped up the partial actions called in support of this year's pay claim, calling for two-day strikes throughout the engineering industry each week on an indefinite basis.

While this is undoubtedly an indication of the growing wages militancy among engineering workers, it falls far short of the all-out indefinite strike action demanded by increasing numbers of shop stewardssome of whom angrily lobbied Duffy the Confed meeting pool on Saturday.

Winning support for repeated two-day strikes poses all of the probiems of calling an all-out strike-and the Confed has done nothing to prepare the membership for action. But the impact of such stoppages on the employers amounts to little more than self-imposed shorttime working.

In the present period of slump in the engineering industry this gives the employers the hope that they can merely sit out the strikes while frustration and demoralisation take their Rirminaham onainsova. toll of the militancy on the shop floor.

Nevertheless AUEW President Terry Duffy and other Confed leaders who have set out to limit and constrict the action taken must be increasingly nervous as they observe the continued overwhelming suppport for the actions they have called.

Handful

With only a tiny handful of exceptions, nearly two million engineering workers have heeded the strike call again this week, and frantic efforts by the press and empioyers to create the impression of a massive shop floor "revolt" have fizzled out ignominiously.

Even the most optimistic employers had only hoped for 250,000 workers to clock in on Monday: but it is clear that the runy cuntu jor un our sirike pAlly nelled faw all ast actual figure was nowhere near this. number.

With the exception of a few Leyland plants, mainly in the Oxford area (see p.11) the strike was virtually solid In BL's giant Longbridge plant, the much-vaunted anti-union revolt collapsed with only a couple of hundred . would-be scabs turning up to face reinforced picket lines.

This response carries an unmistakeable message which the Confed leaders are determined to ignore: were an all-out strike called, the full claim could be won and a major defeat inflicted on the Engineering Employers Federation, a backbone of the Thatcher Union branches and stewards committees must demand their leaders move now from. two day protests to all-out indefinite action. telegrams and pickets of Iranian embassies around the world.

These protests seem to have had an impact on the regime. On Monday Iran's Foreign Minister went onto Tehran radio to proclaim the Islamic Revolutionary Council's condemnation of the disruption of the embassies by "enemies of the Iranian revolution"

No. intention But he went on to declare prisoners. Their trial is now going on, he said, and the protests should cease.

It must be clear to all, however, that the lives of these socialists hangs on a threadthat of the solidarity of socialists and the labour movement internationally.

Trade unionists and Labour Party members should urgently press for their branches to send Hamid Shahrabi

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FUSMNCOREDE Uniter

that the regime 'never had any intention' of executing the HKS