[SHUT After sixteen gruelling weeks on strike the…]

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SHUT After sixteen gruelling weeks on strike the courage ous women workers at the Trico Folberth factory in Brentford, North London have registered two important successes.

They have forced management to shut down both their Brentford and their Northampton factories, and abandon the elaborately cult vated pretence that production was being maintained in defiance of the stnite.

EMPTY BOXES

Indeed so far did management go in their efforts to demoralise the pickets and create the impression that output was continuing, that they on repeated occasions sent lorries carrying empty boxes through the picket lines, and spent an estimated £500,000 on wages and overheads keeping the factories "open"

The second success of the Trico strikers was that at long last they forced the Greater London Association of Trades Councils to meet and discuss the question of support - a mere sixteen weeks after the start of a key struggle on the equal pay issue!

The GLAIC has issued a fines call both for the blacking of Tric products and for assistance on the picket as well 25 3n 302e2 1 for funds.

The reluctance oi the Sonal AUEW District Commiter. aid is giving official supper: to the strike, to broader out ite ise is shown by the fact thai car provnetion has continued 2I British Leyland and Chrysier despate the fat the Tito neutatue 907 of Brissa minister Fet convenors in general and of come AUEW convenors in particular. -In view of this refusal by the AUEW officials to go onto the offensive it is hard to see their latest call - for the blacking of all windscreen wipers, whether Irico or not - as anything more than a verbal token to cover their inaction.

If an initiative is not taken by the Southall officials, together with the strike committee, to tour the motor industry district committees stewards committees and unior branches and fight for the practica imposition of the blacking, ther the Trico battle stands in grea danger.