Selling glass plant for land value

ROCKWARE GLASS have admitted they are closing their Greenford, Middlesex, factory in order to lay hands on cash from the sale of the 35 valuable acres of land which the plant occupies.

The company, now a quarter owned by Jim Slater, of Slater Cables sit-in wins wide IN A large picket yesterday the 180 General and Municipal Workers Union members in their third week of sit-in at Aberdare Cables, Glamorgan, were joined by workers from Helliwell's Engineering, Girling Brakes and the CWS Creamery Thei picket was a response to the management's instruction to workers who had not joined the sit-in to turn up at the factory at 8 30 a.m. yesterday.

The few who arrived were told by personnel manager Anthony Hunt to go home and come back at 3 p.m. today to collect their wages.

THE EDITORIAL board of Workers Press sends its deepest condolences to the family and friends of Tommy Atkins whose funeral takes place today.

Tommy died of cancer on Wednesday, April 18, in St Stephen's Hospital, Fulham, west London. He was 55.

He will always be remembered for his lively, cheerful and extremely generous nature.

Delegates and visitors to the All Trades Unions Alliance conference in October last year will recollect Tommy's speech on the issues which confronted him and his fellow transport workers' union members in the fight against the new Brocklehurst Company which had taken over transport control at the Manbré Sugar Company in Hammersmith.

He had worked at Manbré for 16 years and was instrumental in the fight to build a strong union organization at the refinery. For many years he was leading shop steward.

For over six months plans to spend 14m streamlining their lass container operations.

Chairman Mr Peter Parker commented on Greenford closure:

*The technology at the disposal of an enterprising management has forced us inevitably to the conclusion that we can fulfil our marketing plans with four not five plants' union support John jenkins, shop steward and chairman of the G&MWU branch at the factory told Workers Press that the average cuts resulting from management attacks on bonus rates and shift work were £S a week, but some men were earning £9 a week less than this time last year.

Mr Jenkins said that support was growing from trade unionists in the valleys. A meeting of the Neath, Aberdare and Swansea joint unions held in Glyneath last Tuesday heard a delegate from Aberdare Cables and decided to appeal to individual had been in and out of hospital suffering from extremely bad stomach pains yet he took an active and leading part in the dispute which followed the Brocklehurst take-over.

I first met Tommy Atkins on Friday August 18 last year. He had been trying for a number of days to win publicity for the dispute and rang Workers Press while in fact trying to contact another newspaper.

Although he had Just come out of hospital, he was a tireless worker throughout When the men returned to work, he kept his arduous job doing the extremely long runs which he had been used to as a liquid vehicle driver for Manbré.

He did this because he became convinced that a fight must be waged for a new leadership inside the union.

After the strike, he became a regular Workers Press reader and joined the All Trades Unions Alliance. He gave unstintingly of his time in helping with the campaign for the ATUA conference on October 22, 1972.

WARE CLASS Inside the Rockware plant at Greenford CORRESPONDENT union branches financial backing.

The three National Union of Mineworkers' branches represented at the meeting are to write to the South Wales NUM executive for clarification on the blacking of Aberdare Cables products. Aberdare Cables is part of the Pirelli combine and the South Wales workers are contacting the Southampton Pirelli factories for support.

They are also writing to Jack Jones because the Southampton factories are organized by the T&GWU.

Tommy later decided to join the Socialist Labour League. Only severe ill health, which forced him to return to hospital just before Christmas, prevented him from doing so.

The Clapham branch of the SLL have asked Workers Press to express their deepest sympathies to Tommy's relatives.

Tommy did not make his political development easily.

For the greater part of his The had no political affiliations whatsoever.

But his experiences with the T&GWU transport section leadership during the Manbré-Brocklehurst fight convinced him of the necessity to build an alternative leadership to the reformist bureaucracy.

Once he had made the decision, however, he went forward with his characteristic determination. Even while recuperating after operations en interest in the took a keen us une struggles of every section of workers against the Tory government. for the workers' sad blow His death is movement.