Act Now to Stop Steel Scabbing

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Nine weeks into the National steel strike-and after weeks of bitter clashes as pickets have battled to stop strikebreaking supplies of steel moving in and out of stockholders and major steel users-London dockers last week finally decided to black steel shipments!

This is a fair example of the way in which the steel strike has been left to soldier on without any serious attempt by union officials to use the colossal power that they have to seal off scab supplies on a local and a national level.

After the initial fanfare about international solidarity from metalworkers' and transport unions, the utmost confusion has been allowed to fester over the shipment and handling of steel by TGWU and other union members within Britain itself.

In some areas lorry drivers have eventually extracted official TGWU instructions not to cross picket lines: elsewhere matters are nowhere near so clear-cut. And so diverse is the huge network of steel stockholders that to picket them all effectively is nigh on impossible for the steel strikers.

In addition the failure of the dock unions to seal off imported. steel has clearly contributed to a situation where, after nine weeks of strike action and picketing, scarcely any workers in manufacturing industry are laid off as a result of the dispute, stocks in many areas have been replenished and production has scarcely been affected.

The scale of the scabbing on this vital dispute is clearly enormous-and extends even to the NUM, whose members' jobs are also at risk from BSC closures.

There, are widespread angry claims that scab steel is being used by Yorkshire miners: and in the absence of any firm official directives this is no doubt also true in almost every Such cases must be publicised and the union leaders responsible forced to answer for their failure to black scab steel.

Leaders of the main striking unions are due to meet tomorrow (Tuesday), supposedly to discuss further measures to halt the movement of steel.

Such steps, however belated, should of course be welcomed.

But steel workers should also be suspicious of such a gathering: these leaders, who have „done so little to strengthen the strike and so much to stop it spreading to other sections in a General Strike against the Tories, must now be examining the prospects for a new and more detemined move to bring this embarassing dispute to an end-no matter what the cost.

To combat such tendencies and give renewed impetus to the strike, steelworkers should send urgent resolutions and mobilise a mass lobby of the BL convenors' meeting at Radford in Coventry on Friday calling for strike action by BL workers alongside the steel strike.

And other public sector unions fighting Tory attacks must also be called upon to mobilise in strike action.

Even BSC's latest ploy to weaken the strike has been met by a ludicrously inept response from ISTC leaders.

The management 'ballot about a ballot" is a transparent fraud, since it is obvious that workers who do not think there should be a ballot on the 14% with-strings-and-redundancies offer will simply throw away the form.

But instead of simply calling on members not to vote, the ISTC leaders have asked them to spoil their ballot papers by writing "pay the steel workers" on the bottom.

When only a small number of trade unionists respond to this pathetic call, this will undoubtedly be exploited by BSC management as "proof" that the union bureaucracy are "unrepresentative".