Postal ballot to knife strike

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Price 45p includin postage from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WC1N 3XX desginated Rovers as growth area and transferred the TR7 from the doomed Assembly Plant at Canley in Coventry!

Every cut Edwardes makes is a step towards the complete closure of BL.

Whatever BL's present strategy, how can two car assembly plants plus Jaguar and Rover compete in the world car manufacturing industry today?

But, true to form, the trade union officials are doing nothing to oppose the closure. They were given the information by management last Tuesday, but as CAR INDUSTRY CRISIS A SOCIALIST PRESS Г'А# H Brian Mathers, Midlands Regional Secretary of the TGWU has been busy in the last few weeks.

It took him a great deal of effort to ensure the collapse of the solid three month strike in defence of 1,000 jobs at the Ansell's brewery.

Failed

All his previous efforts had failed. So Mathers organised his own postal ballot, over the heads of the Ansells shop stewards, telling individual TGWU members that 'the time has come to make a decision" and urging them to end the dispute and accept redundancy payments.

Stewards fought for a boycott but after months of TGWU sabotage, Mathers' manoeuvre was the final straw for many workers, and uGM em 2" —en iw nt mors w procured a sufficient number of votes to collapse the strike.

Fresh from these labours, Mathers then began to turn his attention to forestalling any action in defence of jobs at the threatened BL caI plants.

Small wonder then, that Mathers got a rough ride from militants when he got up to speak at a rally to greet the Peoples March for Jobs when it arrived in Sandwell last Saturday.

Anselis strikers and others inined in hons and JULIVE jeers that drowned out his voice.

Having personally assisted in the massacre of 1,000 jobs that week, Mathers could speak at first hand of unemploymentfrom the other side of the fence!

Mathers, however, remains one of the darlings of the Morning Star. So, while the Star shrank modestly from criticising the Mathers betrayed Ansells strikers, it condemned those who joined in their barracking of Mathers as "ultra-left" elements.

Of course for the class struggle to make its presence so rudely felt in a "people's" gathering was an acute embarrassment for both the Stalinists and for Mathers.

But it is high time that the hypocrisy of union leaders whining about unemployment while assisting the employers to axe jobs by the thousand was roundly and loudly exposed.

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SOCIALIST PRESS * The Edinburgh Court of Session last week fined 54 TGWU members £100 each and their steward £150 for taking part in a sit-in strike.

They had defied a warrant of ejection issued by a sheriff's officer, and twice ignored orders to appear Bond, to an er the infurd before the Lord tion.

The dispute, at Bestobell Insulation in Glasgow, centres on management attempts to weaken union organisation. They have been giving lagging work, normally done by TGWU members from the 7/162 branch, Prior is a sinister development.

It comes only a few days to challenge the co Irts 01 the Tory government , every such legal attack stre: igthens the employers.

Defence

The Scottish labour movement must rally to the defence of these workers. They have made it clear that they want to defend all jobs, and that they simply want the boilermakers redeployed off lagging work.

Their willingness to fight the employers has now brought them into conflict with the law -the same law which restricts the rights of every trade unionist.

The TGWU. must back a A tim crew • trom ' ITV's TV Eye' has been touring union conferences following the fight for the deputy leadership of the Labour party.

But they have run into a real problem of balance. While Benn has held well-publicised and well-attended fringe meetings, Healey's campaign has been largely behind the scenes, remote from any rank and file involvement.

Here Healey is caugh: leaving the EETPU con ference, where he was roundly heckled, but picked up the endorsement of the extreme right wing Chapple Benn, meanwhile has won the support of ASTMS and SOGAT.

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A POLICY FOR : BL WORKERS