T&g Stewards Attacked

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In an unprecedented •xample of bureaucratic rule, he TGWU's No. 5 Regional Committee has withdrawn the hop stewards credentials from he four stewards victimised py management last August in British Leyland's assembly plant in Cowley.

The disciplinary action followed he regional inquiry last December nto the management's attack on he four stewards.

Since that time the Regional bureaucracy has been refusing to declare the results of the inquiry.

This has meant that the stewards have remained unrecognised for the past nine months.

The inquiry was instigated in order to end the strike which had continued for a week and a half, in support of the stewards after the management's action.

It can now be seen that an inquiry called to investigate the actions of management was used to put the stewards on trial.

According to the press-the four stewards have still not seen the Inquiry Report-they were charged with calling a meeting of members "designed to discredit" the District Secretary David Buckle and the Senior Steward Reg Parsons. Cont'd from front page. claim would represent.

It was this same consideration for protecting Phase 2 of the Social Contract which led Reg Birch, Maoist member of the AUEW Executive Committee with responsibility for civil aviation, to repeatedly appeal for a return to work.

Meanwhile officials from 16 other unions on the airport signed the now-infamous "blacklegs charter" in an attempt to maintain British Airway services in the face of the industrial action.

What hostility there is among members of the other unions to the engineers' action is largely artificially cultivated by their leaders while it is evident that the electricians in particular are under pressure to come out in On 21 April a mass meeting of engineers voted to return to work if negotiations set up at the instigation of ACAS between the AUEW and the wages sub-committee resulted in a satisfactory shift pay claim being agreed between the unions.

But the wages sub-committee immeidately reverted to its previous position of no negotiations until the AUEW 'returned to the fold' and the strikers went back to work, and so the talks never took place.

A stewards meeting the following Saturday agreed to recommend a continuation of the stoppage to last Monday's mass meeting, and strengthened the picket on the Monday morning.

FEARS

There had been fears that the day shift, who stand to gain nothing directly from this dispute might begin to drift back to work.

Press reports indicate a substantial shift in the TGWU bureaucracy towards open political witch-hunting.

The report is quoted to the effect that the young Asian worker who the stewards and the 5/293 Branch set out to protect was a pawn used by "politically motivated" people.

It is also clear that the inquiry report contains details of a further attack on the 5/293 Branch and on militant workers in the plant.

According to the local press "radical changes" in the structure of the union at the plant are proposed.

AUTHORISED

The Oxford District Committee is to be authorised to carry through these changes.

The Oxford Mail confidently predicts that all branch officers will in future be elected by ballot vote on the shop floor instead of at branch meetings as at present.

Such moves will be met with bitter hostility amongst workers who well remember the carving up of the 5/55 branch three years ago after Alan Thomett was victimised-a "reorganisation" which resulted in the setting up of the present 5/293 branch.

ISTS PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report cor In the event virtually no-one crossed the picket line and those who did soon decided to come back out again.

At the mass meeting only 20 of the 4,000 strikers voted against a resolution to stay out and send the five negotiators with Reg Birch to a meeting of the union's EC to ask for official backing.

There is no doubt that official backing would strengthen the strike and ease the financial burden as the strike enters its fourth week.

But whether the strike is made otficial or not, the central issue remains the same. With the government now talking of a Phase III where settlements will again average only 5%, the engineers, even if they won their claim from British Airways, would have to wait until at least August 1978 for their money unless they are prepared to take on and defeat the Social Contract.

As a WSL leaflet handed out at last Monday's mass meeting pointed out:

- No return to work until the shift pay "claim is paid in full by British Airways management.

- Demand the AUEW National Executive makes the strike offical immediately; no more promises.

- Dismantle the bureaucratic negotiating committees. For new structures which are answerable to the membership-not mangement.

- Convene the BA Combine Committee to mobilise national strike action. - Call on other workers, in particular the toolmakers who have promised support, to act on their pled

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radar Counter-demonstration against NF march