[NATSOPA workers on the march in defence of…]

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NATSOPA workers on the march in defence of jobs at the Times last year Even while TUC leaders fiddled with their speeches for their half-hearted Day of unions calling strike action on that day underlined once again the need for an all-out mobilisation to bring down this Tory government.

Yet instead of defying the Courts and redoubling the fight for action to defend union rights, the union leaders allowed themselves to remain sitting ducks for an orchestrated and massive press campaign designed to minimise the scale of the May 14 stoppages and thus inflict a setback on the anti-Tory Forging ahead There must be no mistake: the Thatcher government is forging ahead on all fronts with its coordinated offensive against the unions at every level.

While James Prior's Employment Bill, containing a battery of new anti-union laws, is passed through Parliament, Tory judges and employers have been combining to create a body of precedents in existing legisla tion, designed to hamstring basic union activity.

And at shopfloor level Michael Edwardes and the British Leyland management have spearheaded an anti-union offensive designed to outflank, isolate, discredit and defeat trade union bodies and the shop stewards movement in order to create conditions for a full-scale onslaught on jobs and working conditions.

In implementing this attack the Tories and the employers continue to rely on the cowardice and, collaboration of the trade union leaders, and their hostility to any form of full-scale action by their membership.

But with workers in every industry increasingly recognising the threat to their jobs, living standards and basic rights that is posed by the policies of this government, the union bureaucrats themselves are under pressure to stand firm against such attacks.

So while NGA and SOGAT leaders climbed down at once before last week's court injunction, the right wing leadership of NATSOPA took an unexpectedly defiant stand, refusing to withdraw circular pronounced illegal by the court, and thereby theoretically risking jail for contempt.

Precedent

It seems unlikely that either the government or the management of Express Newspapers, who brought the original court actión, will press the case to such a level of confrontation.

And it seems certain that Fleet Street papers will produced on May 14-court no court.

But the ruling by Mr Justice urmilns inat unions nave no legal right to call their members out on a political strikę against be government now stands Ermly established as a precedent i law. None of the four unions i even going to appeal against Their offer new circulars to their members stressing that the May. 14 stoppage was a purely voluntary affair was rejected as unacceptable by both the employers and the High Court: the issue at stake was to declare it against the law even to call for a political strike.

This latest legal precedent follows on court rulings that in 1977 declared it illegal for the UPW to black mail to South Africa in solidarity with the struggle against apartheid, or to black post to the strike-bound Grunwick management in solidarity with the marathon unionisation struggle in Britain.

The NUJ is next month to appeal in the House of Lords against the 1979 court ruling that its seven week pay strike against provincial newspaper employers was called illegally -and that therefore scabs cannot be disciplined for strikebreaking.

During the lorry drivers' strike of 1979 TGWU militant Reg Fall was barred by a court injunction from picketing James Prior's old firm United Biscuits to seek solidarity from fellow lorry drivers.

And the NGA was last year fined a savage £80,000 damages for blacking firms that continued to advertise in the anti-union Nottingham Evening Post.

The steel strike saw a renewed attempt by Lord Denning to strengthen the body of precedent making solidarity action illegal, when he ordered the ISTC to withdraw its strike call to workers in private steel firms.

Combined A full-scale confrontation was only avoided by an almost immediate decision • by the House of Lords to overturn Denning's ruling-but the Tory Employment Bill now contains specific provisions to illegalise most forms of solidarity action, as well as mass picketing.

The Tories are thus combining economic attacks on the working class-cuts, closures, runaway inflation-with attacks on workers' basic organisations designed to prevent the likelihood of united class action to stop the government in its tracks.

Thatcher's anti-union strategy differs therefore from that of the ill-fated Heath goverpment in that it does not revolve around the imposition of one comprehensive Industrial Relations Act.

Rather they are setting out tois, *create the legal basis for unions to be picked off one by one:

*weaken the closed shop a prelude to allout effons strikebreaking:

*establish the satess : secret baikis se ita iodmers union members cze easily manipulated 9! [* employers and the mass media:

*whip up a climate of witchhunt in which militants can be vilified and victimised;

*and, by putting union leaders firmly on the defensive at a time when their members are seeking action to defend themselves, utilise the obvious weaknesses of the leadership of the working class to demoralise, split and divide the resistance.

'Foolhardy'

As Prior cynically told Scottish Tories last weekend, it would be foolhardy simply to pass a barrage of draconian anti-union laws.

"To do so would unite the whole of the trade union movement 100% against the Conservative government.

"The unions are in a state of flux. They are divided about their future. While the division is going on there is the possability of change, and that is what we want."

Prior overstates the oppos D: 02100:52050m 5 R3PSa := =Dee * 3: : be lora 3ze ie i favour oi that.

The only tactical disagres. ment within the TUC is whether some show of opposition should be made in one-off protests like May 14, or whether, like EETPU leader Chapple and Prior should simply thkso in the towel and wait for the next election.

For the working class the answer is that both positions are extremely dangerous: basic union rights, jobs, social services and living standards are under an attack unprecedented since the war. They can only be defended through the defeat of this government.

This calls for united class action-a general strike to bring down Thatcher, and to create conditions to drive out the anti-working class leaders of the Last week's High Court judgement declares such a general strike illegal. In any event it is opposed by union bureaucrats and Labouite =b:

zonkd FriE:

This is at saam readership must be car: io mobilise and lead such a struggle to defend workers' interests through the fight for a workers' government and a planned socialist economy.

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"DRAFT OR Growing opposition to Carter's war mor DAFT NO NO WAR CHAR A field full of unsold Cadillacs

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Action, the High Court ruling against the print

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report dad fan.

NOT AT ANY TRICE

NATSOPA NAP - THE GRIMINAL RAPE OF NEWSPAPERS

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