Fighting for trade union solidaritj

Scan page 11

Violent scenes on the Oxford Mail picket line Cheers as the NATSOPA telegram arrives at the Oxford Mail There was little special about the Oxford Mail and Times.

Like other provincial papers up and down the country it had been hit by sporadic strike action during the NGA pay dispute.

The Oxford Mail had been stopped on four separate days (for the first time in the paper's history) and the weekly Oxford Times had been delayed and stopped.

The lock out began with the NGA members ill-prepared for what was to come. They had been given an assurance that nothing would be produced dring the lock out and on the first Monday they urged other workers in the building to go in to work and draw wage packets.

Within an hour the management had called journalists together and told them that they would be expected to work on a single duplicated sheet to be published daily under the Oxford Mail's masthead.

This pathetic sheet (confined to TV times, the weather and one sentence news items) was clearly a propaganda attempt to demonstrate the ability of the company to publish without the NGA.

It was exacerbated by the decision to publish once a week a two sided printed "paper' produced on a small jobbing press by scab labour.

An immediate NUJ chapel meeting was called. I moved a resolution that we refuse to work on either sheet (a move which would mean immediate suspension).

• Out of a chapel of 55 only seven were prepared to vote for that. Inevitably arguments included the fact that the NGA had crossed our picket lines for seven weeks in 1978/9 and that since the scab sheets had no advertising and no cover price, we were not commercially aiding the company.

From this point, those of us who were clear that by staying at work we were siding with the company against the NGA, had a choice.

Majority

Either we could clear our own 'consciences' by taking individual decisions to get ourselves suspended or we could fight to bring out a majority or a substantial proportion of the chapel. Correctly we chose the latter.

The following day had produced a sharp change in the NGA. For the first time they set up a picket and asked our members not to cross.

While every other: union went in to work the NUJ stayed out for two hours. Then a resolution that we refuse to cross the printers' picket lines was heavily lost.

Out of nine members who voted to stay out, six stayed on the picket to discuss what we should do. There was no unanimity even among this section of the chapel.

It was clear to all of us that given the right approach more members could be persuaded to come out.

But some of the six argued that to split the chapel decisively at this stage could cement those waverers inside the building.

After explaining to the NGA where we stood and why we were going in we then crossed the NGA picket line.

Sectarians who see in this a FoC NUJ, Oxford Mail and Times.

class betrayal would have found themselves siding in effect with an influential section of the chapel leadership which was determined to stay at work.

It was their wish to present the choice as being one for individuals to take. They defended our right to 'do our own thing' and stay out, so long as that meant that we too accepted their right to stay in at work and scab on the dispute.

We did not see it as a question of individual 'principles' but as a question of a class response from the whole chapel.

The following day, the Provincial Newspapers Industrial Council (on which I am a delegate) confirmed that the criteria for refusing to work on scab publications was not whether journalists thought that they undermined the dispute, but whether the NGA members believed that they did.

Armed with this instruction a fresh chapel meeting was called and again the vote to stay out was heavily lost.

Picket By now the work we had been doing was having an effect on a largish section of the chapel.

There seemed little point in allowing a routine to develop of chapel meetings which consistently voted to stay at work and from the Friday morning the original six (all now convinced that this point had been reached) set up an NUJ picket line, alongside the printers.

On that day we stood alone. On the next working day (the following Tuesday) we handed out a leaflet to our members, Eight bad reasons for going to work and eight good ones for staying out' Numbers grew first to nine, then 11 and finally 12.

At this point, with support for the NGA visibly growing, the company announced that they intended going ahead with a full scale 16 page scab publication produced on the main printing press.

Because of the consistent work that had been done in the chapel a large majority of the remaining NUJ members then voted to come out.

By the end of Wednesday just 10 NUJ members, most of them in isolated district offices, were still at work.

The SLADE chapel met and refused to process plates for the scab paper and were suspended.

Two outside scabs had been brought into the building to fill NGA jobs on the printing press and the NATSOPA chapel of machine minders refused to away in handcuffs had reduced the active picket to about 80. Police numbers had grown to 150.

The scene was set for a massacre. As the seconds ticked away to the delivery time, the cavalry arrived in the nick of time, in the shape of a Post Office despatch rider bearing a telegram from NATSOPA head office, instructing the van drivers to refuse to deliver the paper. In dead silence the drivers slowly left the building and joined the picket.

Late that night the managing director himself drove a van loaded with 17,000 scab papers out of the building, past a small picket.

meeting Although the papers were distributed among newsagents (two days later than planned) the management offensive had clearly taken a blow.

Two years of urging had not been sufficient to convene a joint meeting of chapel officers from all unions in the building. Yet a mere nine days of Newspaper Society aggression forced all union leaderships into a joint meeting to plan how the scab paper should be brought to a halt!

Before these fresh plans could be put into effect the lockout was over.

Groundwork

The NGA leadership put their names to a deal, which though inadequate, was an almost complete victory on the terms that the NGA had been seeking.

In one newspaper office for the first time in its history one craft union had stood up for another and members of all four unions had been on the streets together.

This solidarity, repeated patchily through the Newspaper Society, has laid the groundwork for a new deal between the unions.

Instead of crossing each other's picket lines, the unions must now confirm a mutual defence pact which will defend all trade union rights against the Newspaper Society and their handpicked scabs.