Steel Strike Strengthen Bring Out Bl

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GENERAL STRIKE! TORIES OUT! graph this werkend-pointing to the growing strength of ISTC strike cormittees the seven week-long nike misibly weakers, so the capitalists' hopes of securing a mocrable sell-out settlement have faded.

Instead they have been forced to look on as mass pickets-drawing on important NUM support mobilised by Arthur Scargill-successfully shut down the Hadfields steel plant in Sheffield, and laid plans to repeat the procedure at Manchester Steel and Sheerness.

With engineering firms now beginning to feel the pinch of restricted supplies of steel, this tightening of the dispute and the moves in many areas to secure lorry drivers' support for picket lines will have an increased effect.

Meanwhile a delegate meeting from the BSC craft unions voted 2-1 to throw out the miserable pay deal recommended by their negotiators, and thus to remain out alongside their brothers and sisters in the NUB and the ISTC.

Beyond wages

Nor have the Tories failed to noté the menacing signs that the struggle has now escalated beyond the wages issue, to take in the even more. explosive question of the defence of 52,000 jobs threatened by BSC management's closure plan.

Already in Port Talbot an ali-union strike committee has declared that even if the pay claim is settled they will remain on strike until they establish job security. Llanwern strikers seem likely to take a similar stand: and the chances are that they will be backed up by strike action from the 30,000 strong South Wales NUM.

Welsh: miners' President Emlyn Williams has also announced that-regardless of the efforts of the British and Welsh TUC to restrict action to protest levels-he will fight to spread such a strike to other nataonal poticy is to fight pie areas whose closures. Joseph Meanwhile steelworkers' shouts of "Thatcher Out!" gaining in volume alongside "20%-no strings!", , have found more physical expression in the humiliation of Industry Secretary Sir Keith Joseph, pelted and hounded out of South Wales by hundreds of angry strikers last week.

But while the steelworkers seem to be escaping from the grip of Bill Sirs and the steel union bureaucrats, other union leaders are doing everything in their power to isolate the strike and to reassert their control over their own members. VIVE LICH-UWII MICIUCES.

Last week saw a brazen move by GMWU General Secretary David Basnett to sabotage workers.

The delegates had thrown out a 19.2% management pay offer recommended by GMWU officials, and called for an all-out strike, beginning February 25, to secure their demand of pay parity with gas workers.

Knifed

But Basnett last Friday intervened to knife this correct policy by preventing the delegates' proposal going to the GWU Executive until after renewed talks with the employers.

Basnett's treachery could at least parade under cover of the fact that management are almost certain to increase their offer this còming Thursday.

But no such excuse could be seriously put forward by negotiators for 85,000 British Leyland carworkers, in the wake of the 6-4 ballot vote to reject management's derisory 5%-withstrings offer.

Edwardes and a barrage of media propaganda had stressed that to reject the offer meant to VUItIOT a SITIKe. vote for a strike.

Despite this a clear majority still voted to throw out the 5% and the 92 pages of strings: yet sooner than call the necessary all-out action alongside the steelworkers, union leaders trailed along for further futile talks with Edwardes, and offered the company another two weeks to come up with an improved offer for the pay review -due for settlement last November!

There is plainly no chance . any such improved offer being made by BL. But every day that slips by allows the Tory press and the employers to work on bolstering up the fears, frustrations and demoralisation of BL workers-who have been betrayed time and again in recent years by their own negotiators.

Yet with inflation now headed rapidly towards 20%; and with management still firmly on the offensive at BLwhere Combine Committee Chairman Derek Robinson remains victimised-only the most determined, united stand can defend jobs and living standards: against this Tofy Now that the LJNC has delayed action for two weeks, resolutions trom shop stewards committees, mass meetings and " ment. committees, mass meetings and from steelworkers' strike committees-should pour in to the negotiators demanding that all-out action be called from Monday March 3.

The 'dynamic of the steel strike is still towards more generalised action to defend jobs in both BSC and related industries: BL workers, who face a parallel Tory-backed attack must strike now and play their par which must be developed into an all-out General Strike, with the demand for the removal of the Tory government.

In every area strikers must •fight for the building of councils of action to draw delegates' from every section of the labour movement into spreading the fight to bring down the Tories, and to remove those right wing Labour traitors that paved their path to office.

The struggle must be taken up throughout the workers movement for a principled leadership prepared to carry through socialist policies in the interests of the working class.

The slackening grip of Bill Sirs on the steel strike is its best hope of success: the task now is to develop a conscious alternative to Sirs and his fellow bureaucrats throughout the Labour and trade union movement.

Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, was put under martial law this weekend as :Prime Minister Demirel instructed army commanders to launch an all-out offensive against left wing organisations.

This latest 'crackdown took shape following a factory occupation in protest at the victimisation of 790 left-wing trade management attempted new establish recognition of the fascist trade union confederation MISK.

10,000 troops, with tanks and armoured cars, stormed the occupied factory on Thursdaybut even after the occupiers were evicted resistance continued leading to running gun battles between workers and a 2,500-strong police task force.

As bourgeois opposition leader Ecevit denounced Demirel's actions-comparing him to Uganda's Amin-army chief General Keran Evren angrily demanded increased powers and punishments to: "'overcome anarchy"

Such: increased repression will - continue to be directed exclusively at the left-leaving fascist bands free to maintain their campaign of violent provocations.

But workers' refusal to submit to such intimidation brings increasingly close the danger of a fascist-backed military coup as a last-ditch bid to crush the Turkish labour movement.

This poses more sharply than ever the need for a workers' united front to resist such an

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ter: FSL pcper 20, 1980

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steel strike," headlined a panic-stricken Sunday Tele-

a strike call by delegates repres- enting over 20,000 water

coup danger grows