More police powers

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ship, working class strike action is just a secondary tactic: I suspect that from the point of view of Bobby Sands and the provisional leadership, the real development from the hunger strikes was not the strikes or mass• demonstrations but the fact that the British government negotiated with Provisional leadership. Recognition by the enemy has always been a bigger feather in the Provisionals' cap than organised support amongst the trade unions.

The Provisionals have now launched another bombing campaign in Britain-one which will prove as counter-productive to building an anti-imperialist movement as have all previous campaigns.

Tenacity and bravery are indeed the qualities of the republicans in British concentration camps. Yet the outcome of the hunger strikes cannot be separated one whit from the political limitations of a petty bourgeois nationalist movement.

If the British government'did not know before it knows nowthe Provisionals are more pliable than the working class.

Yours fraternally, Peter Mcintyre British policemen, already revelling in their sky-high salaries and the implieit "licence to kill" extended to them by the inquests into the deaths of Blair Peach and Liddle Towers, will be well pleased with the extended powers planned for them by the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure.

Labour Movement Conference / Media Censorship and convened by National Union of Journalists Saturday February 28 Birmingham Details from Ron Knowles, NUJ, 314 Grays Inn Road, London WC1 In particular they would get even wider power to stop people and vehicles, arrest anyone "suspected" of committing an imprisonable offence, and to search them and their homes without warrant for weapons or stolen property.

The police themselves would be put in control of fingerprinting and photographing "suspects" as young as 10 years old.

The only proposed restraint on police handling of suspects is the police internal disciplinary procedure, the farcical existing procedure for complaints ("investigated" by the police themselves!) and the possibility that aggrieved individuals will take complicated and expensive civil court action.

• There is a call for courts to exclude evidence obtained by "inhuman or degrading treatment"-but once again the onus of proof lands up on the accused!

The one small "victory" civil liberties campaigners is that there is no proposal to strip the accused of their existing right to remain silent in custody and in But with the Tories laying the ground to strengthen the apparatus of the state, there can be little doubt that the Royal Commission offers a golden opportunity to further extend police powers.

NATIONAL CHILDCARE CAMPAIGN Constitutional Conference Saturday 24 January 1981 10 am. to 5 pm.

Wolverhampton Poly Students Union Conference fee £1.50 (unwaged 75p)

Further details from NCCC c/o Surrey Docks Child Care Project, Dockland Settlement, Redriff Road, London SE16.

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to Socialist NUPE members from most of the main hospitals in London are supporting the mass picket outside Great Ormond Street on 13 January.

That is the day of the appeal by Conway Xavier-chairman of NUPE's London Divisional Council-against his dismissal by the hospital management.

The ancillary workers at Great Ormond Street itself will be on strike for the day, including IGWU and GMWU members.

• They will be joined in this one day strike by several other The announcement by the EIS, Scotland's biggest teaching union, in its annual review of staffing, that the authorities aim to reduce the number of teachers by 15,000 over the next ten years is anxious news for Scottish teachers.

Using the pretext of talling school rolls in both primary and secondary sectors, their intention is to cut the teaching force by 1,500 every year over the next decade.

It is obviously impossible that this can be achieved without iedundancies and, although Strathclyde and Lothian, the largest regional authorities, have School meals staff in Lancashire are prepared to strike to defend their jobs and the meals service against cuts planned by the Tory county council. • This was made clear at a public meeting on the issue last week in Accrington.

But NUPE official Neville Davies also made it clear that he was not willing to lead such a strike. He argued that they would be isolated-and that they had no experience of strike action.

How they will ever gain such experience was not explained!

It was suggested that they seek support from the trade unions in the industries which supply the schools with food and utensils for preparing school The teachers present saw no hope of the NUT or NAS/UWT Trial sub (UK).

Six issues... • £2.00 Six months. .£8.00 One year .. €14.00 .£9.00 Rest of world:

Six months. . £10.00 Write to: Socialist Press, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX. ' hospitals including Queen Elizabeth, the Homeopathic and the National. Other workers are expected to give their support and an anticipated 1,000 workers will take part.

The membership has been incensed by this blatant attack on union organisation.

Their anger was shown by the spontaneous strike by the Great Ormond Street workers when Conway Xavier was summarily dismissed. This reaction clearly amazed management in the immediate preXmas period.

Although Xavier himself is a key figure in the NUPE health said that there will be no redundancies in 1981, they have made no pledge for the future.

Five regions have still not announced their intentions for the year ahead and this must also put teachers on their guard.

A major strategy in any campaign against such redundancies must be the demand for smaller class sizes, thus not only saving jobs but also promoting better education for the pupils.

Demands for such changes in the contract of service have been advanced at conferences of the union over recent years but have been firmly resisted by a section of the leadership, including the increasingly promanagement chief negotiator, Keir Bloomer.

The most insistent campaign bureaucrats supporting the school meals staff, but suggested approaching teachers individually.

The problem of how to get the support of parents was posed-but most parents are also trade unionists, so to expand the campaign through the trades counci and Labour Parties would have that effect.

Margaret Jones, member of the Campaign Committee, suggested a strike of school meals staff to show the parents, teachers and trade unionists in supplying firms what it would be like without a school meals service.

The meeting agreed to petition against the cuts.

Neville Davis agreed to let the Campaign use NUPE facilities for sending out letters and to help the Campaign with publicity-but completely avoided the question of strike action.

PRESS XAVIER! CONWAY DIDIRE Longbridge: new sell-out Strike now to stop Edwardes! workers in London-he is chairman of the Area Health Committee-this is not just an attack on him.

This sacking follows the attempt to completely disregard the grievance procedure at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The porters had to strike for three weeks to demand that the management honour the grievance procedure.

These porters are in the same union branch as those at Great Ormond Street who very correctly decided to take solidarity action.

It was following this principled stand that management for smaller class sizes, aiming at official endorsement at this year's AGM, can provide the focus for a fight against redundancies. Any such resolution cannot be open-ended but must demand unilateral implementation by the union of smaller classes by a definite date.

In the meantime any redundancies must be fiercely resisted with industrial action on a national scale to ensure effective opposition. No one region should be left to conduct its campaign against redundancies in isolation.

The improbability of any such fight by the present leadership is encapsulated in the recent response by John Pollock, the union's general secretary, to the Tories' reactionary Education Bill.

Pollock called for protest action by Scottish teachers.

What huge campaign did the man have in mind, you may ask. Wait for it ... a two minute silence in each classroom to show the depth of our feelings!

Despite the problem of enforcing such a silence upon the pupils, the likelihood of the Tories retreating before such a forceful demonstration is rather slim.

"Rigged 'inquiry' won't reinstate the eight" insisted last week's Socialist Press' lead article, underlining the sell-out terms on which the strike at BL's Longbridge plant had been brought to an end.

Since then the tortuous proceedings of the "independent" inquiry have borne out our prediction to the letter.

In the one week they were in theory granted to complete their "'investigations" • the inquiry panel has seen only three of the eight workers victimised by management after a militant stoppage on the Two poorly attended marches took place last Saturday to oppose the closure of Scunthorpe's Normanby Park steelworks.

The first, organised by the Scunthorpe Steelworkers Action Committee heard Stan Sheridan of the South Yorkshire steel strike committee and John Lee from the Consett Action Committee warn of the effect the closure would have on other plants in the area-turning Scunthorpe into a ghost town.

Corin Redgrave of the WRP pointed out to the 200-strong rally that the blame for such a At least one of those disciplining Xavier, Fionna Colquhoun, Group Personnel Officer, has experience of this type of work' through being a member of the AHA when NUPE militant Bill Geddes was As well as repeating their attack on trade union organisation in the run-up to the wage claim, management is also concerned about the undermining' of lower levels of management by those involved in union activity.

Xavier, for example is a gworth After six weeks of workin action, staff at Longworth in Oxfordshire are solid in their determination to defeat AHA plans to close the 35-bed hospital.

yet despite the tact that their action is currently the only occupation in progress against the NHS cuts, COHSE leaders have gone no further than formally declaring the struggle official.

They have done nothing to help publicise the struggle nationally, and failed to comply with requests from the occupaMetro track.

Management have taken the precaution of completely switching the charges and "evidence" against one of the accused workers.

But they needn't have bothered: the evidence is irrelevant.

The inquiry is completely fixed. It consists of two BL managers, one AUEW officialWhose union is committed to smashing the strike-and one TGWU official, and is presided over by an ACAS official.

Nor is this ACAS man any impartial observer. The 'Arbitration Service' is now run by Pat Lowry, for many_years personnel director of British closure must be nailed firmly on the union leaders who make people think that nothing can be done.

But all Redgrave could propose was the setting up of one of the WRP's cross-class "Community Councils"

Socialist Press supporter Dave Ayrton stressed the betrayal of union leaders who last year deliberately isolated the steelworkers and refused to fight to bring the Tories down.

United action should be fought for now around the demand for a General Strike to bring down the Thatcher government, he argued. deputy head porter. The DHSS, in fact, sent out a secret memo last November, following the arrest of a unit administrator on the picket line at St. Benedicts. He is also the local COHSE branch chairman.

Personnel Officers were asked to send information about the involvement of managerial staff in union activities.

Despite the media witchhunt against the Great Ormond Street workers, union membership has increased over the last couple of weeks.

Where leadership is given, workers have responded. Xavier has very much based himself on tion committee to guarantee full strike pay to sections that take supporting action to defend the work-in.

But locally the work-in has provided at long last a focus for action against the cuts, and won broad backing in the labour movement.

Motions of support from trade unions and Labour Parties are particularly important, and donations are needed to the occupation funds. They should be sent to Barbara Russell, Whitebread Cottage, Farringdon Road, Longworth, Abingdon, Oxon.

Leyland!

It was Lowry who supervised the victimisation of Alan Thornett at Cowley in 1974, John Power at BL Service Division in 1979, and Derek Robinson at Longbridge last year!

Meanwhile Longbridge convenor, Communist Party member Jack Adams, sits back hoping that the "inquiry" lasts long enough to defuse the anger of Metro workers at the sacking of their stewards.

The only answer to this betrayal is a fight within the stewards' movement and union branches at Longbridge and throughout BL to prepare all out action to reinstate the eight.

No such call to action came from the platform of the "official" march called in the afternoon by the Labour and ISTC bureaucrats.

An impatient audience of some 400 called the bureaucrats negotiations on redundancy payments "Judas money" and there were calls for occupation.

John Lee from Consett was refused access to the platform despite cheers from the crowd: but he used the mike from the floor to proclaim the need for a new union leadership-to rousing cheers and applause.

the mobilisation of members and not on either the 'good sense' of the appeal board or on things like industrial tribunals.

He has been a successful union negotiator and has been part of winning better conditions there than at many other hospitals.

He will campaign for extended strike action in Great Ormond Street if his appeal fails.

It was a weakness that no vote was put at the Health Area Committee either for strike action on 13 January or to support the Great Ormond Street workers should they take strike action after Xavier's appeal.

This must put right next meeting.

65 journalists in struggle to prevent redundancies in MacDonald Futura, a subsidiary of the giant BPC publishing combine, continue with their occupation of a sixth floor office.

The tight, officially backed by the NUJ, needs financial and moral support. Contributions and messages should be sent to the BPC Chapel, c/o NUJ Book Branch, Acorn House, 314 Grays Inn Road, London WCI. Cheques should be made payable to MacDonald Educational NUJ Chapel.

Meanwhile there was a boost for occupations last week when the determined action by members of the NUS who occupied the P&O ferry Ulster Queen in Liverpool brought an agreement to restore the Liverpool-Belfast ferry servicebringing a reprieve for 600 jobs. living and the claims submitted by the unions.

Both groups of workers are strongly placed to take strike action. But both face union leaders terrified of defying the Tory government.

Amid a display of 'left' rhetoric, these bureaucrats are hoping against hope that some "compromise" increase will be offered by the employers.

And in Fords, where tenacious strike against Callaghan's pay limits headed a wave of wage struggles in 197879, union negotiators have set out to keep their hands "clean" while doing their best to dissuade members from action.

By themselves rejecting the wage-cutting 9.5% offer but making no call to action and stressing the problems, they have cleared the decks for a disgruntled but leaderless workforce to accept the money on the table.

But none of these retreats will halt or even ease the Tory offensive. Redundancies are once again running at 1,000 per day; cuts in social services and health continue to escalate; and living standards continue to fall.

To fight back, the working class needs a leadership that will start not from the problems of the employers or their own fear of the Tories, but from the strength and independent needs of the working class.

Socialist Press will continue to seek every avenue to pursue the fight for such a leadership.

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SOCIALIST PRESS Socialist Press pamphlet outlining programme of action against the Tory offensive.

Price 45p including postage from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX. EITHIS WINTER!

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ress SOCIALIST REINSTATE

RIGGED 'INQUIRY' WON'T REINSTATE THE EIGHT!

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