Steel Strike Challenges

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Get your Socialist Press delivered each week by pos Six months (25 issues). . £10.00 One year (50 issues) ... £18.00 Steel pickets jo lobby ATTIN of BL convenors The 11-week old steel strike continues to shake up some of the most apparently entrenched and conservative layers of the bureaucracy.

Within a fortnight of the strike beginning, strike committees in Stocksbridge and Scunthorpe had cleared off all but one of the full time District Officials who had obstructed effective picketing.

Throughout the ISTC, new forces have emerged to elbow aside the old timer servers and bring the militant voice of the rank and file into the union's committees including the negotiating committee.

"Cool it"

Calis for general strike action have grown, as the struggle has been isolated by TUC sabotage.

But at each stage the old guard has attempted to restrain the fight. Bill Sirs warned the Stocksbridge Joint Strike Committee to "cool it" , after they had taken the initiative on a fundraising trip by delegates to trade unions in France and Germany-which returned with over £3,000.

Despite Sirs' warnings, successful appeals have since been addressed to engineers on Fleet Street, raising cash that has been used to finance extended picketing at docks in Poole and Boston.

Last Tuesday saw an anguished telephone call from the managing director of the Six issues..

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REST OF THE WORLD giant Metal Box combine to the strike committee, appealing for the lifting of pickets.

The response was immediate: on Wednesday the committee sent twice as many pickets!

Blockade

Meanwhile other steel pickets had chosen a really sensitive spot for their attentions-Transport House. They blockaded the entrance to the TGWU headquarters, where the General Executive Council was in session-but were denied a meeting with Moss Evans.

Eventually their determined obstruction of the removal of office equipment and furniture SUBSCRIPTIO Bill Sirs to the Labour Party's new head office-combined with a threat to set fire to Transport House and if need be face arrest on its steps-forced Evans to come out, and pressured him into producing a fresh and explicit "historic" instruction for TGWU members not to cross picket lines.

Thursday brought a mass picket on three gates at Boston to stop steel shipments.

Connivance

Yet laden 30-ton lorries were being allowed out over a 5-ton weight-restricted bridge through a back exit-with the active connivance of local police.

Pickets promptly appealed to the TGWU District Official to implement the union's national instruction not to cross picket lines and to observe the requests of steel pickets.

A mass meeting of Boston dockers was then called at 10.30 a.m. which led to a vote to unload the scab steel from the ships, but not to load it onto lorries.

Friday saw a turn-out of 130 steelworkers from Scunthorpe, Corby and Birmingham for a Leyland Action Committee lobby of the BL convenors' meeting called to decide action on the pay review.

But that lobby took place in spite of the frantic efforts of Longbridge TGWU convenor Jack Adams, a Communist Party member, who phoned to request Stocksbridge strikers not to participate, telling them there would be no vote at the meeting for immediate strike action.

In the event, Adams drove angrily through the lobbyers yelling "You've got no chance!"

Yet as Stocksbridge crane driver Dave Watson, who has been on strike since December 3 over the sacking of IŞTC convenor Brian Molyneux pointed out:

"The only way forward for the working class is to strike together and force the Tories out of office."

The last few weeks have shown that if such a united struggle does not take place it will not be for want of trying by the steel strikers, but the result of the conservatism and sabotage of the right wing and Stalinist union bureaucracy.

For a PRESS struggle against lead in the Aware control, cests and redundancias London WCIV 6XX.

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