The Order of the Scab

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scooped one of the biggest rats of all this New Year by awarding a to Jack Jones.

The order was instituted by King George V to reward 'conspicuous natior al service and Jones will rub shoulders with Tory and Labour politicians most of them peers.

Jones has been rewarded with the highest honour inat 11 . 1 the bourgeoisie can give without the embarrassment of having to take a title. There are only • 65 Companions of Honour in the whole country.

Embarassment

News of his elevation was relayed to Cuba where Jones was spending his Christmas break.

More than anyone Jones has been responsible for holding three years of wage controls against the will of the working class and inflicting the bosses' policy on his members. Through such an open admission of his role Jones will no doubt suffer a few moments of embarassment as he hangs the golden bauble around his neck.

Camel

But as he swallowed the gnat of the MBE, as he took a job as Crown Agent and as he pocketed Quango salaries on quasi Governmental posts, SO Jones has eventually swallowed the camel of the Companion of Honour.

In doing so he has found his true place in societyshoulder to shoulder with the bosses against the working class.

But if Jones is the king rat, the list includes othe rs whom the capitalist class wish to regard.

George Smith, General Secretary of UCATT, has become a knight-surrounded in the list by big capitalists, and police chiefs.

While Jones was the mother and father of the social contract then Sir George- as he will no doubt demand to be addressed by members-was the midwife.

It was Smith who refused to accept a • vote of the UCATT Conference against the Social Contract, saying that it was 'undemocratic" so bulldozing "support' for Phase 2 through the union.

Small wonder then that this policeman of the working class is given the same award as among other, Kenneth Newman, the Chief Constable of the RUC torture brigade in Northern Ireland, and David MacNee, London police chief of Grunwick and Lewisham fame.

Ken Morgan, who retired General Secretary of the NUJ in September after a ten year history of betrayals becomes an Officer of the British Empire.

Jack Jones CH MBE & Crown Agent His recent record includes his services to East Midland Allied Press in isolating and sabotaging a six month strike by journalists at Kettering and striving-albeit failing-to wrap up the Darlington strike for a closed shop before he left.

So, in a list camoutlaged by nearly 900 nonentities, the Lib-Lab government has singled out a few loyal servants-to encourage the others still waiting in the wings. Hugh Scanlon should not have long to wait. is dictated entirely by CallIn the old days newspaper pundits used to test public opinion by going to the end of the street and asking the first half dozen people wearing the right school tie what they thought.

The technique has been refined for the computer powered 70's but the principle remains the same and nowhere has it been put to better effect than in the pages of the Daily Mail.

On the day that the FBU executive met to discuss the future of the strike the Mail decided to run an opinion poll among firemen to find out what should happen next.

Which firemen-or indeed how many firemen-Daily Mail reporters spoke to is not at all clear, indeed it is not so much hinted at, except that they are divided into two categories "The North' and "The In a strike which was supported by 98% of the membership voting with their feet and a 2-l vote at the delegates conference the Daily Mail pollsters managed to find only 49% who were in favour of the strike to begin with.

This total they divide into 85% in favour among the wild

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At the time the Act of Union with Britain in 1801, Ireland was economically poor and backward in relation to much of Western Europe, which was The vast majority of Irish people were poor pea sants farming tiny holdings with the most primitive techniques. Their main food crop was potatoes.

But this was not the main production of Irish agriaaua.u..- mn: ii ni.

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Honour Companion of