30: WHAT WE HA Am AT other struggle linking up General Strike Defending basic union

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which legis- bubbleRelations Act, government itself would prevent the workforce. side the Adwest strikers, fightand social services. workers angered by the abstract Jul he-eventually unsuccessful it wing candidates in on Ireland. They declared that if leadership elections the conference went ahead, the levland's Cowlev Trades Council would be dislaws irkets or break up the -struggle her, which was ended mentation inns to • • police. - was an closed shop. on the necessity for uniu.. laws by Septemu.. Kitson called in the + determined by militants construction trouble ammed ti-union get * the unions. a Chix een sold lation. the futile the Communist Party which had Members and supporters of the Workers Socialist.

League have fought consistThe ently within the labour movement for opposition to British imperialism in Ireland-and as such have faced and fought a succession of witch-hunts. , defy • the 1980 began with a scurrilous attempt by Communist Party was the pute. labour tility to left wing candidates in the TGWU leadership elections at British Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant. The CP chose to witch-hunt deputy convenor Alan Thornett and convenor Bob Fryer for the principled stand they had taken in defence of a Provisional Sinn Fein demonstration through the town the previous autumn.

The witch-hunt misfired as shop stewards' meetings voted unanimously on the night shift and 120-7 on the day shift to condemn it, and Thornett and Fryer strengthened their position in the shop floor ballot. By March the witch-hunt against anyone raising the issue of Ireland had been taken up in earnest by the TUC.

TUC bureaucrats moved in to lend their weight to a massive press witch-hunt against a Tameside Trades Council conference (T a0000o =affiliated.

The Trades Council correctly rejected this blackmail, and their stand has won wide endorsement from other trades councils. WSL members and supporters have played an important role in mobilising support for this struggle in trades councils to convene similar conferences.

The issue of censorship and biased media coverage of the war in Ireland has also been taken up by WSL members and supporters, with the successtul fight for a resolution at annual conference committing the NUJ with other media unions to convene a national labour movement conference on the issuenow scheduled for February 1981.

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SOCIALISȚ PRESS, Wednesday December 17, 1980.

The past tweive months have brought a significant strengthening in the political work of the Workers Socialist League, as workers increasingly recognise the need for firm action to combat the Tories. JOHN LISTER looks at some of the most important contributions made by our movement during 1980.

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government with even less were battling tooth and nail to

refusal of union leaders to fight fought as part of the wholesale from police rehearsing for the

of the Meeting of the NUJ. site fought consistently against the action and mobilise the Scottish While the courts attempted Tory offensive.