Fight legal war on unions

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SUBSCRIBE to Socialist One reason why the Thatcher government is not proceeding immediately to introduce more laws against the unions is because the Tories are well aware that the law as it stands is a powerful weapon against the trade union movement.

This is borne out by two sets of events occurring right now in Scotland.

Sit-in One case concerns a group of 62 laggers employed by Bestobell Insulation at Whiteinch in Glasgow who staged a sit-in at the company offices over a demarcation dispute.

The workers are members of the TGWU and are in dispute over the use of boilermakers' union members on a lagging job.

After refusing to obey a court order to appear to meet charges of trespass, the men were eventually escorted from the premises under police guard to appear before Lord Brand who fined them a total of £5150 for a *grave" contempt of This growing determination of employers and judges to make criminals of workers involved in industrial action was seen again last week in the trial at Irvine, Ayrshire, of pickets arrested during the lock out at Ayrshire Marine Construction at Hunterston last September.

The first five of the 48 men charged were fined £100 each on a charge of breach of the peace. The substance ot the charge was that they were deliberately obstructing and blocking a private access road to the site.

But no proof was presented that the men had physically tried to prevent anyone from going to work.

"Alarming"

Sheriff D.B. Smith's concern was that the presence of the pickets was ¡potentially alarming". • This is an extraordinary Judgement with possibly far-reaching implications.

To claim that what group of workers is doing is "potentially" dangerous gives the lawmen a green light to proceed to arrest workers on the flimsiest of pretexts.

By that measure, almost any action or even opinion the employing class dislike could be labelled as "potentially" dangerous and the people involved then have criminal charges placed against them.

When the fines were announced in court there was an uproar and a shout of "that's political" to which remark the Sheriff objected.

As in the case of the Bestobell workers, total fines will be in the region of £5,000. In both cases workers have declared that they will fight the judgement.

way at Bestobeus, sau. no way we can or will pay the fines. We must appeal and we are doing this through our lawyers" and Dominic Sullivan, former shop steward at Hunterston said, "This decision has far reaching implications for the trade union movementand we will be looking for their support to continue the Six months. One year ..

Six months. fight"

Whatever the outcome of the legal wrangling that will ensue, it is essential in both cases that the workers involved . turn out to the trade union and labour movement explaining the implications of the fines and rallying support for their Lapdogs The Tories, employers and their lapdogs are out to crim ise workers involved industrial disputes and cannot allow them to away with that.

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