Nut Crackdown

Scan page 10

The storm over the appointment of leading, 'Militant' group member Andy Bevan as Labour Party Youth Officer is an indication of the general nervousness of the Labour right wing rather than any serious Militant prospect group taking up the fight against the Callaghan-Healey leadership.

Indeed the Militant's position is the same as that of the Tribunites - that the Labour government must be kept in office to keep the Tories out:

"It would be a serious mistake, as the "Tribune' group recognises, to vote in such a way as to bring down the government.

(Militant, 6th August)

They have taken a similar stance on the fight to throw out Healey and Callaghan, refusing to expose the "left' MPs who verbally protest against Tory policies but do nothing to remove their advocates.

And on November 17th the Militant appeared sporting completely uncritically, a tront page article by NUPE bureaucrat Alan Fisher - who has consciously restricted the entire cuts campaign to empty protest gestures.

The witch-hunt against Bevan is therefore aimed not so much at him but against all militants within the Labour Party. But for this very reason it must be fought by every Labour Party and union branch. The demand must be for an end to all bans and proscriptions - and the removal of the Callaghan-Healey The savage crackdown by the bureaucratic leadership of the National Union of Teachers against their rank and file members now seems to be leading towards the disciplining of two NUT Executive members.

They addressed a group of over 300 teachers who had lobbied the Executive meeting at the Union's headquarters, in support of teachers at Little lord school, Newham, who are under threat of suspension from the union.

The Executive refused to meet a delegation from the teachers, and a large number of lobbyers replied by invading the meeting room -eventually causing the meeting to be abandoned.

It was after this that the two Executive members spoke to the crowd gathered outside.

The basic cause of this struggle has been the use of disciplinary action by the NUT leadership to prevent Little Ilford teachers carrying out a decision to implement action to enforce union policy -refusing to cover classes from which the teacher is absent for more than three days.

The teachers were immediately Strikes at two of the biggest hotels in Oxford hang in the balance after the start of a major drive for union recognition in the town.

Determination by workers in both hotels has transformed what first appeared as a desperate situation into a united struggle with a major chance of success.

The hotels - the Randolph and the Linton Lodge - boast seven stars between them and pay wages that would have seemed an insult ten years ago.

VICIOUS

For a 60 hour week some workers take home as little as £20 a week.

The strike at the Linton Lodge won official recognition from the T&GWU after just four days - a measure of the viciousness of the management position - but the too little, too late policy of the full time official Geoff Hulett has since become clear.

In six weeks at the Randolph -the four star prestige hotel of Trust Houses Forte - he failed to call a single mass meeting of workers, or to see that a single shop steward was elected. During this time, while union membership allegedly reached 60%, the management cleared the decks for action.

SACK

They brought in a new, tougher manager, threatened union members at face to face meetings with the sack and loss of their rooms, and gave written warning to the worker who had been handing out union forms.

They even chose the date of the action - giving six chamber maids an ultimatum - either work weekends for no extra pay or be sacked.

The chambermaids, most of whom have families and took the instructed by Fred Jarvis, NUT General Secretary, to cease "unofficial" action. When this was not done, the entire membership at the school were suspended, until they sign a form undertaking not to carry out unofficial action.

In other words, while education is savaged by government cuts and thousands of trained teachers join lengthening dole queues, Jarvis' LIT Part of Saturday's lobby of jobs becausé they did not involve weekend work, walked out taking with them all their colleagues bar two.

This attack on the strongest section of workers was deliberately aimed to test the strength of the union.

Despite advance warning Hulett had been away for the weekend and attended a routine meeting in Banbury while the women were being sacked. The 'war' he had declared on the hotel started without him.

By the time he turned up the women had rejected any compromise and Hulett had no choice but to call all the workers out.

It was for this that workers at the Linton Lodge have waited impatiently for two weeks. In that time they had built up enormous support for 16 workers who were sacked for asking for union recognition.

In response to calls from the strike committee and the Oxford Student-Trade Union Liaison Committee pickets of up to 200 workers and students massed on the hotel forecourt at peak times and up to twenty police were called in to pilot blackleg labour and scab guests into the foyer.

Linton Lodge workers even went to the extent of going into the Randolph Hotel and begging workers to come out and unite the actions.

The strikes are a major step forward for some of the most repressed workers in the town. The actions are being fought with deadly seriousness by the managements.

The emergence of this struggle amongst hotel workers in Oxford is just part of the national picture of main preoccupation is to stop militant "unofficial" action by his membership.

The Little Ilford teachers must be absolutely defended against these bureaucratic attacks - and an offensive must begin against the reactionary NUT leaders who gang up with management against their own members.

FORD

Executive Birenda Singh, one of the suspende Little ford teachers. new layers of workers coming forward into struggle.

All over the country workers are turning to the unions as their only means of beginning to meet the attacks on wages and conditions, and they are finding that these aims throw them immediately into The Randolph in particular has demonstrated that among these new workers are a high proportion of women workers beginning to play their full role in the trade union movement.

The call now must be for the T&GWU to make the Randolph dispute official and to treat both disputes as part of the same battle.

Certainly the workers involved see clearly that in fighting different employers they are fighting the same faces, and in extracting support from their own official they must fight every inch of the way.

BINGO STRIKE SOLID THE WOMEN STRIKERS demanding union recognition at the Club One bingo and cinema chain in Coventry remain solid in their official dispute.

Pickets are still outside the firm's premises every day, winning considerabie response from would-be customers, though the local T&GWU bureaucracy seems to be doing little to broaden the action and ensure a rapid victory:

A fund-raising social has been organised in support of the strikers to be held on Friday December 10th at Transport House, Coventry.