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One year (50 issues) ! £ 18.00 The 100-day occupation of the Meccano factory on Merseyside came to an abrupt end when last Tuesday (March 11) a squad of 100 police and bailiffs burst into the plant wielding sledge hammers, pick-axes and hatchets.

The handful of workers still sitting in the doomed plant were roughly ejected from the factory and plans put in motion to ship out equipment, materials and stocks of finished toys and Meccano sets:

Though a token picketincluding supporters from other unions on Merseyside--is being maintained on the gates of the plant in a bid to prevent such materials being moved, management succeeded at the weekend in removing the first two lorry loads.

The depressing prospect of an indefinite vigil at the gates of a dead factory seems unlikely to galvanise the enthusiasm of workers: on Merseyside: the fight could much more productively be taken up within the unions whose members. at Meccano were sacked at 40 minutes notice late last year.

The largest union, the GMWU, has lifted not a finger to. mount blacking action against Meccano's owners-the giant Airfix combine-or even to offer strike pay to those in dispute!

Effective blacking of the stocks and machinery, and other forms of solidarity action directed at Airfix nationally offer the only means of pursuing the struggle for the jobs axed at Meccano.

It is precisely such policies that GMWU official Mike Egan and other union leaders in the area have shied away from since the beginning of the work-in.

New buyer With empty factories virtually two a penny now on Merseyside the hopes they once held out of finding a new buyer for Meccano are exposed as a reactionary, utopian diversion from the fight for action.

• It is to be hoped that this lesson wil not be missed by the 400 workers currently occupying the latest Merseyside factory to face the axe-the nearby Massey Ferguson tractor plant at Knowsley:

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