NUJ vote to withdraw tro

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Steelworkers on March 9 TUC demonstration Any hopes the NUJ bureaucracy may have entertained that the union's Annual Delegate Meeting in Portrush could escape discussion on the Irish war of liberation were rudely dashed at the weekend.

Again and again the issue rose to the fore, and the union found itself committed to a COLD STEEL TOR ia D IRON LADY COLD Pressed on by their mem. bership to take at least token action against the Tory government, a growing list of local and national union bodies are finding themselves forced to sanction or organise one-day strike action on May 14the day Len Murray and the TUC first talked of as a day The size and distribution of the pay awards to teachers from the Clegg comparability commission have been shrewdly calculated.

Employers hope they are large enough to prevent an immediate outcry and demands for strike action.

But they are small enough to ensure that teachers remain relatively worse off, with the smallest increases for the most exploited layers of teachers and the largest (up to £3,147) for well-paid headmasters in large secondary schools.

Stageing

Indeed no teacher on the bottom scales 1-4 receives more than a 19% increase as against an NUT claim of 38.5% to restore the relative values estab lished under the Houghton award.

The stageing of tbe. Clegg increaseg which are supposedly to settle the 1979 pay claimamomats to a crule manoeuvre to deprive teachers of money they are judged to have been entitled fo: the delays have cost a teacher on average pay in excess of €1,000!

But of course the Clegg fgures themselves are completely spurious. The protracted investigations into "comseries of anti-imperialist policies on Ireland, all of which were carried by respectable majorities.

Resolutions • were passsed that:

*called for an end to censorship of news from Ireland;

*called for access by journalists to the republican prisoners engaged in the blanket' protest in the 'H' Blocks of Long Kesh concentration camp to facilitate STEELWORKERS a full investigation;

*called for the repeal of Prevention of Terrorism Act;

*called for the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland.

In addition the ADM specifically placed on record the fact that holding the conference in Portrush in the six counties în no way signified NUJ recognition of the Northern Ireland statelet.

And a resolution tabled by the Oxford branch calling upon the NEC to organise a national conference open to the labour movement on media censorship of the Irish war was also carried despite opposition from the NEC.

But it was perhaps outside of the formalities of the order paper that the question of Ireland arose most sharply at the conference.

It turned out that the NUJ leadership had invited Councillor White, a local Official Unionist councillor and member of the Orange Order, to give a welcoming address to the conference. ..Socialist Press supporters responded by handing out a leaflet condemning the invitation, and demanding that the union did not provide a platform for White's loyalist views.

A walkout planned by the left, flopped however, when the Elections for the CPSA President and National Executive Committee are taking place in the three weeks period between 11 April and 2 May.

The elections are being run according to a new system of individual voting in branch/ workplace meetings.

Block vote

The election system replaces one under which a majority vote at branch meetings committed the whole branch block vote.

The new method of voting is more democratic and results from a rule change put forward large contingent of SWP members and supporters remained firmly in their seats-to hear White praise the "maligned" RUC and declare his view that holding the NUJ, conference in Northern Ireland 'proved' that things were 'now" "normal".

Banner

After this, however, the remainder of the conference took place under a banner proclaiming for Troops Out Now, Self Determination for the Irish People, and Smash H Blocks. NUJ President. Jake Ecclestone ruled that the banner could remain.

Attempts victimise Oxford delegate Peter Mcintyre for tearing down a banner in support of the RUC put up by two individuals from the Belfast branch proved unsuccessful.

But in the last two hours of by the left and passed at last year's conference.

Each candidate is entitled to circulate a 500 word election address.

However, not content with a democratic internal procedure the right-wing group have seen fit to launch a full-scale anti-communist election campaign in the capitalist press.

They have been ably assisted in this by Bernard Levin in an article in The Times last week entitled "The civil way to run a union election"

Levin believes that the new system will bring a victory for Kate Losinska and the "moderates" who will then be able to bring in the reactionary system Ecclestone the conference a majority was obtained for the removal of "all political banners" and the Troops Out banner was taken down.

A fuller report of the conference-which also saw a decision to withdraw the NUt from the Press Council and a step towatds the election of union officials will appear in next week's Socialist Press. of postal balloting favoured by. the Thatcher government.

'More representative".

He also claims that the "moderates" are more repres entative of CPSA members than the present Broad Left NEC which he describes as "a coalition of Communists, Trotskyists, adherents of the Militant Tendency and fellow travellers"

Levin goes on to give his readers a check list of the 28 right wing candidates, and quotes minutes of a CPSA NEC meeting where the Broad Left voted against a right wing resolution that condemned both the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the treatment of Soviet dissident Sakharov.

The right wing have been

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STEELWORNERS O1ST09 Tp-' VAY !