Attempt to Stifle Report

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"An unjustified attempt to seize a march leader and grab the lead banner makes no sense unless the aim is to break up the march, discredit the marchers' cause, and stifle their protest"

This was the conclusion of the report of the Independent Trade Union Inquiry into the events which occurred during the Kight-to• Work march on March 19 at Staples Corner in North London.

The theme of excessive police violence runs throughout the report. Earlier in the day in question the police had tried to take one of the march leaders from the march and failed, so repeated the attempt with renewed vigour at Staples Corner, right outside the Hendon Police Station.

The police arrested 44 of the less than one hundred marchers. They więlded their truncheons with abandon, injuring many marchers as those at the Albert Hall rally next day saw:

Barnet Borough Trades Council set up the Trade Union Inquiry Committee, composed prominent labour leaders such as Sydney Bidwell of the Tribune group of MPs and Jack Collins, the Kent miners' leader.

The Committee examined statements from 90 witnesses, none of which were police - in spite of attempts to get their view.

The Committee's approaches to the police were rewarded with a cautionary letter from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions warning them not to 'prejudice' the trials of the 43 who were charged after the incident.

The Committee allowed the State to. shackle them with the chains of hundreds of years of anti-working class legislation - with a result that the report is framed in only the most general and abstract of terms.

And whilst the State has been keeping watch on the progress of the Inquiry, its collaborators in the working class in the shape of the Trade Union bureaucracy have done their best to stifle it.

The Committee acknowledges the weakness of the report imposed by the sub-judice legislation and calls, on the, basis of its tentative tindings, tor a full public inquiry.

But ın spite ot tne nostlity Irom the bureaucracy, many trade unions and Labour Party branches and Trades Councils have passed motions of support, while the Tribune group have fully supported it.

The Inquiry Report, in spite of its limitations and with the support it already has, can now form the basis of a campaign in the whole labour movement to break the chains of the capitalist law to defend the 43 and other victims of the State. from: Barnet "o and the Report Donations Trades Council 19 March Committee, C/o . J. R. Connoily, POEU Branch Secretary, 80-108 The Broadway, West Hendon. London NW9