Tories scuttle docks jobs

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Stration and an offer to take two strikers back anyway (as well as reinstating other he had 'sacked' for taking supporting action) has been seen as a climb-down from his arrogant attitude.

Glimpse

That it certainly is. But the climbdown is not a victory for the union, which had set out to defend all the jobs and prevent the paper closing.

Rather it is a tantalising glimpse of what such a victory might have been. The After two months they were joined on strike by NUJ members at Nuneaton, Rugby, Leamington and Haverfordwest. in Wales.

Members in all these centres came out because they saw that the only way to defend their own interests was to defeat Clarke on his first attack. The unity of journalists was sometimes fragile and was achieved at

Whip hand

The NGA leadership knows it has the whip hand when dealing with the NUT. Dubbins fixed a meeting between Clarke and the NUJ at which he acted as joint chair and broker with the Newspaper Society.

When this failed to produce an expected token shift settles on the dispute the NGA and NUJ are talking about amalgamation within a year. Süch talk is hogwash.

The fight in both unions is for class solidarity; for support in action on picket lines as a precondition for serious unity talks.

Anything less is an insult to the self sacrifice of the members who actually fight for wages and jobs.

Tory sceptics-except those with naval dockyard constituencieswere delighted.

The Thatcher government had managed to cut defence spending: while retaining an even more lethal nuclear force, and thrusting the main burden of cuts onto the Defence Ministry's civilian workforce.

15-20,000 civilian jobs face the axe, with the closure of the Chatham naval base and dockyards, the rundown of the Portsmouth dockyards, and a cut administration.

Meanwhile the Trident . submarine missile programme will remain intact as the focal point of an imperialist military strategy based almost exclusively on nuclear weaponty:

New deadly technology in the death Industry is even phasing out rank and file soldiers, sailors and aircrew with a cut of 10,000 in the Navy, 7,000 in the army and 2,500 in the RAF Socialists hold no brief for the defence of jobs in the armed forces.

We do not argue for the continuation of arms contracts or the completion of warships.

Public works We argue for a workers" government which will end military spending by British imperialism, disband the standing army, and arm the working class to defend Britain against imperialist attack, while giving material assistance to anti-capitalist struggles around the world.

But we do not remain ' indifferent to mass redundancies of workers employed by the Defence Ministrywhich in Medway will push unemployment to: 17% and bring a disaster to the workforce in Portsmouth.

Our call for a cut in arms spending runs alongside a call for a programme of useful public works to create jobs not only for workers redeployed from: defence contracts but also for some of the 3 million unemployed thrown on the scrap heap by this bankrupt bloody social system.

A very different attitude was expressed by Communist Party member Ken Gill, General Secretary of TASS.

Attacking the Tory decision to order the American version of the Harrier jump-jet, he launched into a vigorous nationalist tirade that would have pleased any Tory backwoodsman.

"Instead of ordering the British plane which would have kept vital design teams intact and retained Britain's independent manufacturing capacity, the government has sold our birthright (! to the Americans."

Morning Star, June 26 Nationalism Gill's brazen nationalism and his accepfance of the arms trade must be firmly rejected by the workers' ' 4 Jobs must be defended movement: through redeployment and public works, not through protectionist: measures: to "British" a death merchants in opposition to prop up their "foreign" rivals: