NUJ appeal for print union solidarit

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JENS The thousands of jobs being lost in the newspaper, printing and publishing industry were clearly linked at last week's annual conference in Norwich of the National Union of Journalists to the growing "gap between verbal opposition to redundancies and the performance in practice of all leading print unions.

Delegates passed a resolution that called for public statements of support from other print unions and for a print union picketing pact.

Amalgamation

These steps must be the basis of the discussions agreed for amalgamation with the NGA.

With current disputes in which this issue is crucial to victory at Pergamon, Camden Journal, and Eastern Counties Newspapers, conference committed the NUJ to support action against unemploymentcompulsory, - "voluntary" or natural wastage.

Such industrial action is to include the spreading of action to all operations of a company and occupations to ensure continuous production.

A reception given by ECN was called off after delegates voted to boycott it.

Bully boy

And the conference condemned millionaire Labour Party and ASTMS member Robert Maxwell, (hailed by the Financial Times as the "bully boy of the unions" after he had stepped in to sack thousands at MERSEYSIDE FACTORY CLOSURES Fisher Berdin Leyland Dunlop Meccano Why campaiges vore lost & "how they can be SHEE A WSL Pamphlet Price 27p including postage from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIV 6XX the British Printing Corporation) for sacking NUJ members at Pergamon Press.

The NUJ executive was instructed in a motion from Book Branch to campaign in the TUC for non cooperation and action against the government.

The Oxford branch moved for the campaign to be built around a call for the general strike necessary to avoid turther defeats for the working class.

The NEC and "lefts" said this would upset the General Council and a Communist Party member asked sarcastically why the proposer had forgotten to call for "all power to the Soviets"

Despite these attacks the Oxford motion secured some 50 out of 250-300 possible votes.

The union's TUC delegation was censured, again on a move from Oxford, for failing to move reference. back at the 1980 TUC of the section of the annual report covering disaffiliation of Tameside Trades Council, and for talling to carry out policy on Poland. Delgates instructed the NEC to give assistance to Solidarity.

Disarmament

Delegates overturned efforts to prevent discussion of nuclear weapons, and opposed the Trident programme and the siting of Cruise missiles in the British Isles. It voted in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Ireland again featured prominently in the debate. Following February's NUJ-organised conference on censorship of the Irish war, delegates called for the lifting of Radio Telefis Eireann's censorship of Provisional Sinn Fein and others under section 31 of the Broadcasting Acts.

A motion calling for an NEC delegation to investigate censorship in the north and for the preparation of a code of conduct for those reporting on the area was remitted to the NEC for action.

So, on a technicality, was a motion demanding the same media coverage for Provisional Sinn Fein hunger striker Bobby Sands, in his capacity as candi date in the Fermanagh/South Tyrone byelection, as his Loyalist election opponent Harry West.

Representations to the Republic's Minister of Posts and Telegraphs were made immediately.

In an important debate, the move to exclude the Irish Republic from the union's abortion policy was defeated, the courageous Irish Women's Right to Choose Campaign 3, Belvedere Piace, Dublin) backed, and the NEC failure to implement union abortion policy in the North of Ireland deplored.

The permanence of the union's Equality Working Party was secured, but a proposal for an annual women's conference to follow that held in 1980 was thrown out.

The liveliest fringe meeting was addressed by speakers on racist media coverage of the Deptford fire and on the oppres sion of black journalists in South Africa.