The occupation of Mr Kitson's Castle

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Adwest strikers sti used support Convenor Danny Roderick /richt) monor thair mean On. the day before TGWU leader Alex Kitson was joining the TUC lefts' and voting Frank Chapple out of a top job, he was calling the police to the union's Smith Square headquarters and supervising them throwing out a group of strikers and supporters from Reading's Adwest factory who had been occupying. Transport House demanding official support for their struggle.

Kitson (a leading figure in the Chile Solidarity Campaign) together with the union's National Officer Ron Todd, wha has been prominent recently on platforms demanding more democracy in the Labour Party had been embarrassed by this challenge to their carefully cultivated reputations as socialist champions of the oppressed:

The occupation had followed last Monday's mass picket outside the Adwest plant where a minority of workers are in their fifth month of a strike against victimisation.

The mass picket itself was the latest in a series which have repeatedly come up against the Tory/police moves to deny the right to picket effectively, and which have seen scores of arrests in the process.

Smallest

But it was the smallest so far and confirmed the severe problems faced by the strikers in trying to sustain the action without union support.

The small turn-out undoubtedly accounted for the, arrogant decision by the police to pick on two of the pickets they regarded as 'trouble makers' and arrest them for no reason whatsoever.

Immediately after the picket came an announcement that the strike committee were calling on as many as possible to join them in a lobby of the. TGWU's London office to demand meeting with and action from the national leadership.

Sympathy

Time and again the strikers had raised their plight directly with General Secretary Moss Evans, Ron Todd and national official Larry Smith.

Sympathy and promises were received in abundance-but none of them had shown any wilting ness to overturn the bureaucratic decisions of the Southampton Regional Office whose sccretary Ron Ashman had used past financial irregularities and non-payment of dues as a reason for withholding union backing.

Only official Five strikers and twenty-five in all made the journey, and by mid-morning were assembled outside the offices, a stone's throw from the Houses of Parliament. Soon after they were met by Power and Engineering trade group National Officer Fred Howeil, who announced himself as the only senior official in the building, and invited everyone inside for a meeting, a move which he was later no doubt made to regret.

Howell was peturbed to find that no record of the strike had been submitted to him even though the dispute fell within his trade group.

La Wr Police evict occupier by side door UNION /ANY KS When TGWU convenor Danny Broderick outlined the history of the strike and detailed the continued refusal of the union leadership to concede official status (which apart from badly-needed regular finance would provide the conditions for stopping supplies and blacking production) Howell was visibly shaken by the strength of the case.

Another striker, Bashir, told how he and many other Asian workers on the night shift had been personally called out by the local official and told to stay on strike even when this meant risking the loss of their jobs.

Disbelief

When told that all of this had been made known to the TGWU's leading officials, Howell expressed disbelief and undertook to raise it again-with them, though Evans was away sick and the others could not be found.

By afternoon the determination of the strikers and their supporters was such that they agreed to wait as long as necessary for a personal meeting with Evans, since too ofter promises had been given, personal 'inquiries' volunteered and nothing had come from them.

Ron Todd had now been located in negotiations with Ford management on the wage review and arrangements made for him to meet with the delegation.

When he arrived his initial reaction was a good-humoured "tell me all about it; but when it dawned on him that the people he was dealing with were serious and meant business his attitude underwent a dramatic change.

Cornered over his earlier broken promises and pressed abour his record in other Pickets outside Transport House workers' struggles (he had been secretary of London Region 1 for a large part of the marathon union recognition battle at Garners Steak Houses and took personal charge of the even longer running and similarly betrayed strike at Sandersons fork-lift truck plant in Skegness) he screamed that he was being accused of responsibility for selling out every struggle since the Battle of Hastings!

Offers of a meeting with Moss Evans were given and then taken back as Todd was driven frantic by the strikers' persistence.

He badly needed help and found it in the form of Alex Kitson, Evans' number two and an experienced and hardline bureaucrat.

Kitson's last card in getting rid of his awkward visitors was to fix a personal phone call to Evans* himself. Victimised striker Martin Kaufman then spent the next hour trying to pin Evans down on a meeting.

The best he would offer was half an hour in Blackpool at the Labour Party conference a whole week later!

Non-members

When Kaufman reaffirmed their decision to stay in the building until they got both a meeting and official union support Evans ruled that in that case all non-TGWU members would : have to leave the premises.

Not wanting to jeopardise their chances this was agreed and the three remaining members of the TGWU settled in for an overnight stay.

More strikers had come up from Reading by the following morning and some others had responded to the occupation's call for their supporters to mount a demonstration outside the building to publicise their cause.

Bureaucrats coming and going through the doors of Transport House is nothing special but last Tuesday there were rather more of them and many had a rather harassed look.

Others" were crammed anxiously together inside, the doors in the hall outside the room taken over by the protestors.

Throughout the morning hectic negotiations had still failed to bring the meeting with Evans, who had obviously concluded that the occupiers were not going to be put off by smooth talking and to risk a meeting might prove damaging.

The tactic all along of Evans and Todd and the others had been to keep the Adwest strike at arm's length, avoid direct. implication with it and the fact that it was in the forefront of the fight against Prior's anti-union law and allow them to say afterwards that any blame for its betrayal rested with the bureaucracy at regional level.

'The forcing of a confrontation had put an end to that.

It soon became clear how the union leadership had decided to play it when joining Kitson and Todd at lunchtime was Ron Ashman freshly arrived from Southampton.

He had, apparently, by coincidence, been "coming to London anyway" and had called in for a chat!

In fact the purpose of his visit was to put the hard line he had so often put before against any concession on the question of making the strike official.

This was then seized on by Kitson as being the union's final position.

An ultimatum was given to the occupiers-leave or the police would be called. Despite the obvious nervousness of Ron Todd, who was lamenting the 'bad publicity' the occupation was attracting, it was clear that the bureaucracy were absolutely determined to put an end to the action by any means required.

The three remained defiant. They were adamant that they would not compromise on their demands and force would have to be used to remove them.

This point was strongly made in the TV interview given shortly before the police moved in; Martin Kaufman denounced the hypocrisy of those union leaders who declared opposition to legal attacks on the unions and then resorted to the same methods. themselves | against strikers.

Under directions from Kitson they were physically removed by the police, carefully using the side door.

The end of the two-day occupation, bringing together the bosses' policemen and the policemen of the unions in united action against workers fighting on basic rights is an appropriate combination which will become more familiar as the fight. against this Tory government is stepped-up.

TGWU militants " should protest and raise resolutions condemning last week's outrage and press harder for the union •to give official support to the Adwest strikers.

At 9 o'clock an inspector and a sergeant entered the room with Kitson and informed the occupiers that they would have to leave..

When asked upon what legal grounds the police could remove them, the inspector was flummoxed and asked to speak to Kitson in private while the occupiers "considered • their position"

At 9.30 p.m. a more senior officer entered the room with the original inspector and sergeant and with Kitson in tow.

The question of the legality of the police action was again raised.

The. senior officer replied that the occupiers would be removed from the building under "Common Law"

As the officer put it:

"An Englishman's home is his castle and Mr Kitson's building is his castle."!

Todd Kitson:

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The failure of some of the left wing organisations PRESS, Wednesday October 1980 bus which parked in the middle of the road opposite the. City Hall steps while all other traffic The fourth, another youth, pleaded not guilty and his case was adjourned for a week.