[valwo of the Act. This means. that any…]

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valwo of the Act.

This means. that any journalist who interviews even at second hand, a member of a proscribed organisation Ireland, faces prosecution!

Formalise

This is an attempt by the government to formalise their massive censorship on the war in There is only lone way in which such attacks can be met. The trade unions involved in TV and the press-notably the NUJ must commit themselves to strike action in defence of any journalists who are prosecuted under the Prevention of Orism Act or to any jou alist jailed for refusing to reveal a source.

Only the strength of the organised working class can resist these attacks.

The Law Lords ruling. on British Steel was underlined by two other rulings on the same day.

The journalists' union, the NUJ, is still to be subjected to a state ban on disciplining scabs who broke the 1978/9 provincial newspapers pay strike:

•The Law Lords have declared that the matter must go to trial and that an injunction in favour of the proposition that the strike was unconstitutional must stand.

NUJ rules are crystal clear. A ballot must be held ( members if a majority of men bers are affected by a strikr The provincial journalists are minority and a ballot was nc necessary.

But because other journalist were ordered not to break th strike, by giving elemențar blacking support, the court: approached by scabs, has rule that a majority were affected.

The effect of this rulin could be that a strike by te journalists in one newspape office could be unconstitutiona unless there had been a secre ballot, if other journalists ar told not to sumply copy to th The union, by • havin provision in its rule book fo secret ballots; has opened th way for the courts to force secret ballot down its throat of every occasion.

The union must now lear its lesson. The long road through the courts has crippler the NUJ financially and ler nowhere.

The scabs should be expeller and the TUC called on tr defend the union.

It was another union-thi Post Office Engineers (POEU that highlighted the lying government circles over thi extent of phone tapping.

Although prevented by law from giving full details, pamphlet produced by unior member Roger Darlington say: that tapping is much more wide. spread than admitted.

Darlington leading moderate, who was special dvisor to Kees wher he was abour Home Secrefary He is himself almost certain ty underplaying the amount of Individuals Nevertheless the pamphlet points out that political organisations, individuals, trade unions and strike leaders have their phones tapped.

It called for an inquiry which would allow union members the right to give evidence free from the threat of prosecution.

The names of those engineers who carry out the tapping are removed from all official lists-including the union's own lists.

Again a solution is demanded which point to the independent interests of the working class.

A workers' inquiry is needed with evidence freely given and a guarantee of protection from prosecution by the TUC Democratic rights are always trumpeted by governments and press as being particularly related to the British way of life' and as a distinction between 'democracy' and a 'communist, totalitarian state'.

But the existence of such rights is merely a tactical question for the employers.

To defend them, a workers' solution is needed. Only the working class using its independent strength can force back these attacks, and secure a genuine guarantee of democratic rights by overthrowing the system of exploitation which requires their extinction.

Rees