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victimised ever. since. Not a urgency amongst BL finger has been lifted by the lead this struggle. ther stand against the run-down of manning levets, which has meant that skilled workers have been called upon to do unskilled work.

Their sacking has led to a determined five week strike by fellow AUEW members at the hospital, whose pickets have been controlling oil supplies.

But a brazen sell out bid and an instruction for strikers to return to work issued by AUEW national officials last week triggered an intensification of picketing, which shut off oil supplies to the 798-bed hospital.

Surrender

AUEW national officials emerged from a meeting with management and proposed what amounted to a plan for complete surrender.

There should be a return to work on the basis of 'status quo' on a 1973 agreement, they said: except that the 'status quo would involve the two sacked shop stewards being reinstated at a different hospital!

The District Committee of the AUEW correctly rejected this miserable formula But, latching on to a hope of smashing another section of resistance to the cuts, hospital management, backed to the hilt by the Tory press and media hacks, have hastened to blame strikers for putting cancer patients at risk.:

A stage army of Charing Cross patients has even been brought down in an attempt to persuade tanker drivers to break the picket line.

12 hospitals closed • Yet where have these angry patients and • newsmen been while successive governments have been savagely axing hospital after hospital in London?

Since July, 12 hospitalswith 2,800 beds-have been closed in London. The total by March will be well over 3,000 beds cut, not by strike action but by government decree:

The cuts know no "special cases": children, the elderly, the resign rather than reinstate The stand taking place is a major part of the Tory government's strategy. Edwardes and the Tories realised that ballots themselves mean nothing, they can only be used for propaganda purposes.

The plants due to receive work from those closed by Edwardes were sticking .o the principled position of not accepting other workers' jobs.

In Cowley, for example, Bob Fryer and the stewards had turned away Castle Bromwich work.

Further sackings

The answer of Edwardes is to move to smash the trade union organisation in BL.

The sacking of Robinson is the action to do this.

If Edwardes is successful, this move will not only be followed by further victimisations in Leyland but throughout industry.

But as we go to press the strike has entered a dangerous stage.

Still over &, week after Robinson was sacked the strike is not made official.

Now the talk is that it may be made official on Tuesday.

But time is on. Edwardes side.

Every day the capitalist press pours out its lies about a "back LI to work movement"' and exagerates the activities of small groups of scabs.

The great weakness of the strike was the failure of the AUEW to promptly call it official at its meeting last Tuesday, the day after Robinson, was sacked, and the failure of the convenors' conference on the same day to give a clear lead to the rest of the combine.

Instead a motion was passed calling on convenors to get "what support was possible"

And convenors were told not even to seek strike action if they thought they might be rejected!

Reinstatement

In addition advice was given to those plants like Rover and Cowley, who are on lay off pay, not to strike, but stay on lay off pay and thus cost BL money!

On Monday, 4,000 workers marched through Birmingham to a rally in the Town Hall, calling for the reinstatment of But despite the obvious militancy and willingness to struggle displayed by the marchers, no clear lead was given.

The most noticeable feature of the mainly TGWU-dominated platform was the absence of any representation from the engineering section of the AUEW-neither union President Terry Duffy nor the Midlands Executive Chairman Ken Cure was in attendance.

The question which hung over the rally was that of official support; not just whether the dispute would be made official, but what would be made official.

Would it simply be backing for those plants currently in dispute? Or would the AUEW and the TGWU take the action necessary to win the dispute which was to call out all their members throughout BL?

If they did this BL would remain closed until the official action was lifted.

But Derek Robinson, as first speaker, hedged on this key issue. He called only in general terms for official support.

He called on "our members to respond in the maximum way possible-give money and respond to our calls".

Grenville Hawley, National Car Industry Officer for the TGWU, made an uncharacteristically militant speech.

He said the TGWU was supporting Robinson "because we are prepared to put our money where our mouths are"

Derek Robinson was elected on the Longbridge works committee to represent TGWU members as well as AUEW.

Hawley stressed that the TGWU had opposed the Edwardes plan and will continue to do so:

"We have said we will support any members who oppose the plan and this will not change."

Robinson, said Hawley, had been victimised "as many people have been in the past' At this point a shout from the floor asked the question "what about Alan Thornett?"

Alan Thornett was victimised in 1974 and has remained Edwardes was looking for on the annual wage review "sets out on the destruction of trade unionism in every industry"

But this struggle will not be won by speeches or standing ovations, of which there were many at the rally.

It will be won by determined all-out strike action, wnich we have to demand be made official.

The rally went on to pass a resolution which avoided this crucial question and Stalinist chairman Jack Adams brushed aside calls from the Leyland Action Committee for a lobby of the AUEW EC the following morning to press for official All of which shows that as BLi management, on behalf of the Tory government; deliberately make Leyland …a battlefield on which trade union strength is to be broken, there are a large body of 'left' talking convenors and union officials who have yet to reveal the full extent of their own class collaboration.

The coming struggles will expose to new layers of workers in struggle the complete inadequacy of the existing reformist and Stalinist union leaders in the struggle to defend even basic trade union rights.

A revolutionary, leadership must be built with workers to