[Three strikes for union recognition now being fought…]

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Three strikes for union recognition now being fought out have major problems in common. They all face employers who have openly challenged not just the right of their own workers to organise, but trade unionism itself, and who are all supported - openly or otherwise-by other sections of the capitalist class in the National Association For Freedom.

All have been extremely protracted strikes: the dispute at Grunwicks North London factory has now been going for 18 months; that at Sandersons Forklift plant in Skegness is approaching its first anniversary and the strike at Garners Steak Houses in London's West End is into its third month.

But in fact, the real common denominator is that all three strikes involve members in, and are officially backed by, the Transport and General Workers Union, whose local and national leaders have through a combination of inaction and deliberate sabotage brought them dangerously near to defeat.

Ban As attacks on basic rights increase all round (and demonstrations by Garners Strike supporters have themselves been hit by the ban on London marches) the centre of this offensive is inevitably within the trade unions.

The right to organise within a workplace has never been something which could be taken for Evans granted, and the winning of every democratic right within capitalism has demanded struggle and sacrifice.

But now the sharpening of the bosses' crisis of profitability and therefore the drive to weaker workers resistance has coincided with a turn to unionisation by more and more sections of the working class.

The Sanderson's struggle confirms that this movement is not simply confined to immigrants and low paid workers.

The recent rapid growth of the TGWU to beyond the 2m mark reflects the involvement of that union in this process.

But those same forces of inflation and increasing unemployment which have forced on this recruitment, also drive bureaucratic union officials increasingly to the right and into an even more vigourous defence of the system Jones which gives rise to these symptoms.

In the case of the TGWU under Jack Jones, this has culminated in actually assuming direct responsibility for drawing up and forcing through the Labour Government's wage-cutting Social Contract.

Class collaboration

This commitment by the union bureaucracy to class collaboration demands a strategy for the supression of every trace of the membership's independent organisation and mobilisation.

It is no accident that the ACAS apparatus, which sets out to subordinate the class struggle to 'arbitration' and 'conciliation' procedures was, also predominately the prodigy of Jack Jones.

And ACAS figures prominently in the current recognition PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report strikes.

In Sandersons and Garners, the employers had sheltered behind ACAS for a year or more.

They had benefited from the breathing space they had been given, not only through the growth of complacency and unpreparedness which reliance on the state produces within the union membership, but also through the chance to prepare elaborate strike breaking measures.

Confrontation

Finally they were able to choose the most suitable time to provoke the inevitable confrontation.

In l Grunwicks, as is common knowledge, ACAS has been and is being used not just to direct and defuse the fight at key points, but even at this moment to find a 'settlement' which can serve as a suitable burial place for the strikers.

The respective union bureaucracies are more concerned about patching up the credibility of this bankrupt body for their future use than anything else.

The real treachery of the TGWU leadership, however, is over the blacking of supplies and services on which to some extent, the victory of all three rests and without which in some cases defeat is almost inevitable.

In Grunwicks where TGWU members have been involved since July last year, the blacking of services to Ward's factory rests primarily on action by workers in other unions.

But pledges of support from the TGWU for any union which cuts off supplies would clearly provide the basis for the renewal

Garners

and effective.

ruled, no initiatives of this, or any other kind have been taken.

attitude to Diacking is crystal clear.

As with the Trust Houses Forte strikes, the General Executive Council has ruled that blacking of Sandersons is "illegal"

In other words, the mere threat of legal action by NAFF's lawyers land the Sanderson management employ the same firm as George Ward) has meant the leaders of the biggest union in the country have voluntarily surrendered one of the most important weapons in the arsenal of trade union solidarity.

Blacking

Laws to prevent blacking were in fact a significant part of the defeated Tory industrial Relations Act of the early '70s which these same bureaucrats claimed to oppose.

No-one can be in any doubt about the importance of blacking in the Sandersons strike-three quarters of all the factory output goes to the giant Wimpey building contractors and are handled therefore by large numbers of trade unionists-and the chassis on which the trucks are made are actually produced by the TGWU organised Ford plant in Basildon!

Despite this, Cairns, the strikers Regional Secretary last difficult to see what the iwo women are meant to have in common at all.

In fact it is unfortunate that there will never be a film based upon 'Julia's' recollections of Hellman -which could well be a much sparser, less warm and affectionate affair altogether.

Contempt

Steak

TOTTENHAM GIv LT BUS GARAGE Transport & General Uvorkers Union 1/373 A decisive contribution to the This has meant for instance, that even the Sandersons strikers thain salla far minnort Grunwicks In Grunwicks it has ensured that the division of labour between open right-wing officials and the Communist Party's favourite 'left progressive' jack-ofall-unions Dromey has kept the action within the bounds of the Strikers in Garners, however, have begun to raise the possibility of a real fight against these same obstacles-in many cases represented by the same individuals!

This gives them the opportunity of decisively breaking from the bureaucratic stronghold and mobilising the action needed to win the strike.

in conclusion, two points should be stressed.

First, there is no doubt whatsoever, that all of these strikes can be won.

Second, that the dangers of defeat are not so much an indictment of the TGWU in particular as an exposure of the limits of all individuals and organisations who seek to hang the working class with the rope of reformism.

The lessons for the building of new leaderships can still be learnt by every section of workers.

Zinnerman's directing nevertheless means that the cinema-goer is presented with a well executed piece.

The hectic conclusion in which Hellman is unable to make a single contact with anyone who knew the deceased Julia sharply underlines the unique character of their relationship.

"Flashback' technique is cleverly with child