STUC demands concessions to Sands

Socialist Press no. 245, 30 April 1981 · scan p. 10 · about 666 words

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(TORY The STUC Congress in Rothesay passed an emergency resolution urging" ... immediate government action to ensure the hunger strike in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland is ended and the life of Bobby Sands MP is saved Hugh Wyper, Scottish secretary of the IGWU, in moving the resolution stated that the prisoners' demands on prison clothing and prison work had wide support amongst many sections of the trade union movement and wider sections of society who see them as humane demands.

He called for unanimous support for the emergency resolution and asked that there should be no debate on it in order that other questions be put aside and the life of Bobby Sands MP be seen as the single issue at stake.

Edinburgh and District Trades Council and Stirling and District Trades Council, who were seconding, waived their right to speak and the resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority.

Despite such an important statement of support for Bobby Sands from a major trade union congress this resolution went largely unreported in the bourgeois press.

In an carlier debate on Ireland Alex Kitson, deputy general secretary of the TGWU, pointed out that the Derry workers walk out in TGWU had 130,000 members in Northern Ireland and it was now time that the trade union movement took a stand on the conflict in Both he and Hugh Wyper pointed out that the main sufferers in any escalation of the conflict would be ordinary working people.

Alex Kitson stated that as chairman of the Northern Ireland Study Group in the Labour Party he had visited the Maze prison (Long Kesh) and what had most struck him was the youthfulness of the prisoners. Most of them were under 30.

He called for a conference of trade unionists from Britain and Ireland to discuss a solution to the differences support of Bobby Sands and saw education, housing and unemployment as the questions that had to be tackled.

Kitson didn't mention the national question and dismissed the demand for withdrawal of troops.

Despite this, these statements from senior officials of the TGWU show the pressure • building up from the election of Bobby Sands as an MP. It is up to activists in the Labour Party and trade unions to mobilise support for the demands of political status, withdrawal of British troops and self determination for Irish people. The small step taken by Scottish trade unionists at the STUC is something which has to be built upon.

On the first day of the Annual Conference of the Scottish TUC at Rothesay last week, the General Council was confronted with sharp criticisms of some aspects of its conduct over the last year.

The first of these canie from lan Wyles, speaking in his capacity as Chairman of Stirling and District Trades Questioning the Council Minutes, he asked the leadership to explain why the projected march of unemployed youth from Glasgow to Perth, scheduled to culminate in a rally outside the Tory Party Conference on May 9, had been cancelled less than two weeks before the STUC gathering.

"Problems" prior to Xmas by the Youth Advisory Committee. Dougie Harrison, on behalf of the Committee, came to Perth Trades Council and asked us to : organise accomodation and food for 100 marchers, all of which was done by mid-February..