DOCK STEWARDS WANT FRESH CAMPAIGN TO SAFEGUARD JOBS

APRIL FUND £139.11 STEP UP THE PACE IT IS beginning to slow down. After a good start don't let us slip back. We know that over the next two months we have asked you, dear readers, to help us with two funds. It is a tough assignment, but we are sure you Will agree that the political situation demands it.

We have always set our sights high. And you have never let us down. Now, as the trade union leaders begin to back down even from a one-day stoppage on May Day, the struggle to build an alternative revolutionary leadership becomes more Important than ever.

build such a leadership throughout the working class.

Our paper Is Invaluable in reaching out to new layers of workers as they join the fight. We have many plans to expand. Help us therefore with a very great effort for April's Fund.

Give extra this month if you can and give our Fund a boost. Post every donation immediately 186a Clapham High Street London SW4 7UG ENOCH POWELL went racebaiting again in London at the weekend. In a crude appeal to colour prejudice, the former Tory Minister spoke of the 'national peril' due to immigrant concentrations in the. centre of big cities. He attacked official records for concealing the number of black faces in schools through dropping the title immigrant' from families who have been here more than ten years. Powell was speaking in support of George Young, the Tory Party candidate for East Brent and candidate for the chairmanship of the ultra right-wing Monday Club. • See pages Union must repudiate THE ENGINEERS' national committee starts its two-week annual policy-making meeting in Torquay today in the middle of the biggest crisis of leadership the British trade union movement has ever gone through.

The Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers' president Hugh Scanlon is very much at the centre of this crisis.

Last week he betrayed three crucial principles of the working-class fight to resist the Tories' desperate measures to prop up their dying capitalist system.

He told the reactionary gentlemen of the Parliamentary Press Gallery luncheon: I HOPE we shall be going into Europe?

Food prices are rocketing on the High Street to pay for Tory industrialists' entry to the EEC where they hope to make better profits. 'WE [the TUC leaders] offered the government to limit wages at a fixed level' This is the starting out point of corporatism, which in turn is the road to fascism or 'national socialism'. 'TWO AMENDMENTS to the Industrial Relations Act could offer the way forward for co-operation with the Tory government.' 13th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF YOUNG SOCIALISTS BLACKPOOL APRIL 14/15 1973 SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, APRIL 14 & 15, WINTER GARDENS, B DOCK SHOP stewards want a new campaign to safeguard jobs and outlaw the use of low-paid labour in ports. outside the National Dock Labour Scheme. The national ports shop stewards' committee decided to demand a recall of the policymaking docks delegates committee at their meeting in Birmingham on Saturday.

If union leaders refuse to the delegate conference, official strike action may The stewards are the recent National cil finding on the Lankesters outside the Kingston depot.

RESOLUTIONS condemning Scanlon's offer of a deal to the Tory government over the Industrial Relations Act are flooding into AUEW headquarters. The latest from the Erith district committee and shop stewards' quarterly says the Scanlon Neither amendment will make the slightest difference to the Act's powers and central purpose: to fine and imprison trade unionists if they go too far in challenging the rule of the bosses.

Scanlon must be repudiated on these points at Torquay.

Scanlon's talk of his remarks being 'exaggerated' the excuse supported by the Communist Party's 'Morning Star'. , is a lot of nonsense.

Scanlon and the Stalinists have had every opportunity to repudiate the Press Gallery reports and have never done so.

In two major pieces in the capitalist Press last week, Scanlon did not retract from his position.

Last Friday in the 'Daily Express', that favourite paper call unbe Pros whiche more to or re of the protection of the National Dock Labour Scheme. The NPC did not recommend the unregistered ports come into the scheme as rank-and-file dockers were demanding.

CHARTER Now angry over vived Ports Coun- charter unregistered registra AU.

PLEASE statement is a 'betrayal of the union struggle against the Act and its policy on Erith calls for a repudiation of the statement and a 'principles struggle' to destroy the anti-union laws and the Tory government.

of all socialists and champion of the working-class interest, he wrote that if compulsory registration of unions was dropped from the Act, and if individuals had to get prior Ministerial approval before complaining to the NIRC, then he would cooperate with the government in more talks about the economy.

These two wretched amendments, which in no way alter the corporatist control of unions under the Act, are precisely the ones which have cost Scanlon's union £62,000 in fines and industrial court costs.

That this weighs heavily on Scanlon's mind is clear from the start of his 'Express' article, which goes straight to this point:

"The policy of our union the stewards have retheir original nine-point which demands the tion of all ports and STRIK De NoT CROSS LINE.

CORRESPONDENT

wharfs, the 'stuffing and stripDing' of all containers to be done by registered workers and the nationalization of the dustry under workerslocks inwithout compensation.

In last year's strikes the ninepoint charter was cut to sixnationalization being one of the issues dropped.

The Jones-Aldington only secured one of the mands-the abolition of porary pool for dockers work. is complete opposition to the Industrial Relations Act ... and is binding on the executive council, the president, etc • • Nowhere does Scanlon say unequivocally that it is also HIS policy.

In fact, he raises grave doubts in the very next paragraph.

"This policy ... lost us £200,000 in income tax concessions, and resulted in £60,000 in fines 'By any standards this is a high but worthwhile price to pay to maintain our independence ... etc.' How long before the 'but worthwhile' is dropped off?

Scanlon's corporatist views burst through all restraints by the end of the article.

Without comment, he quotes Maurice Macmillan moaning on about the strike 'problem', 'far from blameless record', etc. etc., and then asks:

'Is it not likely that they [laws] would cause more discord and trouble where trade unions have enjoyed their freedom for close on The point is not to worry about the middle-class concern at days lost in strikes, but to arm the working class with an understanding to force the resignation of the Tory government, elect a Labour government and demand it carries out socialist policies.

report nine dethe temwith no union crossed the line.

repairs.

strike is being led.

Three levelled ship in 'OR DETAILS TEI EPHONE 01- 522 7029 Car depot SOUTH LONDON garage workers have becon latest group of workers to suffer from the Twenty-six employees of Lankesters, the British-Leyland distributors in Kingston Thames, have been on strike for over a Management had refused to recognize their in negotiations for a new pay structure.

Phil Penn, a panel beater, was arrested for obstruction' last Friday as he was talking to a Despite this harassment, the picketing has been very effective. Most customers and workers bringing supplies to the strike-bound depot have not The garage and repairs industry is plagued by poor organization. the strikers can force Lankesters to recognize the union, many men in the 'We want the union to get proper wage rates, especially for the apprentices,' one mechanic said.

They pay an apprentice 24p an hour to do a man's work, yet they charge £3.20 an hour for HOSPITAL workers all over the country will hold mass meetings this week to take a long hard look at the progress of their dispute.

In the most militant Roland Shaw, Transareas in the north and port and General WorkLondon anger is grow- ers' Union steward at ing at the way the the city's Middleton campaign against picketing. customer entering the depot. firm's seven other depots will join.

accusations are at the leader• The failure to call all-out strike action. • The failure 1° TUC demand that the honours its promises and backs the • strike with solidarity action, including strikes. • The hints from union leaders that they may go to the Tory Pay Board if the 'terms are right.

PUBLIC criticism will be voiced today at SHEFFIELD when workers from the city's hospitals will hold a mass meeting.

But this has only achieved through a of labour from the Delegations at the meeting included stewards from Hull, London, Liverpool, Ellesmere Port, Manchester and Southampton.

EXPLAIN

London delegates explained they had called off th eir strike over the government's pay laws, because the northern 1 orts had accepted rises dictated by Phase Two controls, leaving London isolated.

hospital will call for a national stoppage.

Like many other hospital workers» intimidafaced • police tion on the picket line.

On Thursday a 30strong force of police attempted to break up the Middleton picket.

Mr Shaw said: 'The laundry women have been out for five weeks here and all transport has been out a tortnight. 'The National Union of Public Employees asked us to go back after a fortnight, but we refused. 'Even non-union members at this hospital are backing us 100 per cent.

We should make the Tories squeal and we shouldn't have anything to do with the Pay Board.' HOSPITAL staffs in the north-west region • have no intention of 'chickening out' of the fight now that they have been left to confront the government alone.

Colin Barnett, NUPE's north-west officer, said his members would decide on Monday hether to call out hoilerhouse workers and force "selected hospitals varassar to close altogether. been loss upon union he