[strike action over it. The effect of this…]

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strike action over it.

The effect of this is to side with management against the NGA while buying off opposition within his own union.

Both NATSOPA and SOGAT have told their members they are not to get involved in any The NGA leadership, while talking tough, is permitting local settlements on a hopelessly inadequate basis with the majority of the strings still attached.

Moreover despite sporadic supporting action hitting one Fleet Street paper after another Joe Wade and the NGA executive have turned their backs on the most obvious and badly needed action-the complete close down of Fleet Street.

The employers would be unlikely to stand up to this action for more than a few days. Fleet street printers must be called out to bring this lockout to its knees.

A national lockout committee must be elected to control the officials but in most areas this will' first mean establishing local committees independent of the union bureaucrats who are doing so little to win the dispute.

Members of the NUJ and other print unions must give maximum backing. The long history of scabbing between print unions-most recently by the NGA in the journalists' strike -has enabled the employers to launch this attack.

It the employers are not decisively defeated the closed shop itself is at risk. All print unions must unite in a determined and physical confrontation with scab publications.

THE UNCERTAINTY of the employers can be seen from the fact that the Birmingham Post and Mail management-one of the toughest in the Newspaper Society -cancelled its lockout within five days after fears that the Wolverhampton scab paper would hit its circulation.

Wolverhampton has seen the biggest clashes on picket lines with massive police violence against pickets and determined scab drivers charging through the lines. NGA officials have been among those arrested.

In some areas policeincluding special forces-have also turned out in strength and the level of violence by police is already noticeably higher than during the journalists strike in the winter of 1978/9.

In Portsmouth management has hired helicopters to bring scab papers through the pickets. This echo of the attack on print unions in the USA is a symbolic challenge to the NGA, which the union must meet. The local chapel occupied the print room for 24 hours but left when a court order was obtained.

LEYLAND VICTORY!