Fight to save 18 jobs takes new turn Film and TV men force COI retreat

and television technicians' union ACTT has forced the THE FILM union forci Central Office of Information to reveal information about film Their blacking of television commercia s has now been lifted.

In a temporary settlement worked out at the Department of Employment, the COI agreed to let a mutually-acceptable third party investigate the relative costings which decided the COI to close its own film division and put the work out to tender.

The abolition of 18 full-time production jobs is put in abeyance and the 13 actual redundancies which were entailed have been suspended.

ACTT has opposed the closure, claiming that the film work, mainly newsreels for showing overseas, could not be done more cheaply outside unless sweated labour and inferior conditions of work were used.

The 13 Independent television programme companies who secured a National Industrial Relations Court injunction ordering the union to stop its black from today has dropped its action.

The black affected the showing and production of all government and COI adverts--whether made by the threatened film division or not-and was losing the companies revenue from such things as the 'clunk-click' campaign.

It was the first time the union had successfully applied a • total black to television broadcasting, with all three ACTT divisions involved-films, labs and TV.

It was this potentially enormously effective weapon which caused the 13 companies to rush to the NIRC to get the black stopped. But the union decided unanimously to defy the court order.

It was the government's intervention, through the D of E conciliation office, that avoided showdown between the NIRC and a determined union. Heath's wish to goad the unions into a : Three deal, but not push them over the edge into all-out resistance, lay behind both the prosecution and its subsequent withdrawal. JUNE FU Despite the apparent lukewarm response of Victor Feather to €118.05 an AÇTT, request for support, the union held firm and has only WE MUST give a boost to our relented now, still short of total June Fund to pull our total up. victory, because of the false bar- We are now into our second gaining position it adopted in the week and we need to try and first place of asking for costings raise extra amounts. Don't waste instead of rejecting the closure La moment. Do everything you outright. can to give our fund a lift.

The success of the blacking However tough the fight might action, even on this limited de- appear, what drives us forward mand, proves to many ACTT enormous determination to members, how much could be fight back against the Tory govachieved on all issues, particularly ernment and all its attacks. the threat to • close certain film The more employers, encourstudios and laboratories. aged by the government's antiThey can see the way to fight union legislation, press on with the fear of redundancy is by the their plans to rationalize and most determined action on the speed-up industry, the more basis of the confirmed union they feel the wrath of the workpolicy of nationalization of the ing class. whole industry without compen- Use Workers Press to provide sation and under workers' control. a political lead to thousands of ACTT will now be watching workers coming into struggle to see that no further steps to- today. Help us raise everything wards dismantling the COI film you can to complete our June division are taken while the Fund. We know you will do it. assessor does his work. So let's press ahead with the And whatever figures are re- fight. Send all donations immevealed, the whole situation re- diately to: garding the closure is back to square one with the relative June Appeal Fund costings, efficiency and control 186a Clapham High Street as between COI and outside con- London SW4 7UG tractors all still open questions.

All Trades Unions Alliance Conference: To discuss defence of democratic rights BELLE VUE resign!

Kings Hall: Belle Vue 200 Park: Manchester—Sunday July 1: 3 p.m.-9 p.m. Special showing of the Pageant film 'THE ROAD TO WORKERS POWER' and songs and scenes from history Tickets £1: Available sliding double-act by Labour chiefs ITE HAROLD WILSON and James Callaghan did a hypocritical double-act in launching Labour's new policy document yesterday to avoid a commitment to socialist policies and at the same time step up the right-wing's bid to disorient the party.

Callaghan began in the most sycophantic vein by introducing Wilson as the best leader Labour has got who will lead the Party into the next Election successfully and be Prime Minister for a great number of years to come.

Callaghan, whose regard for Wilson is not high, was giving the bankers' approval to the right-wing leader, who they nope will destroy for them any threat of nationalization of major finance or industries.

Wilson himself was on the defensive over his hard-line stance against nationalizing 25 major companies immediately Labour gets into office. A movement is bullding up against his threat to veto conference policy.

He said he • did R. Smith, Wellington Street West, Salford 7, Manchester. Slipping and to alter his previous com ments, but when pressed, he said he could not be certain what would appear in the election manifesto and he accepted that the whole policy document was geared to public ownership as a cure to meet economic ills.

He was all but forced to contradict himself over one remark which claimed that the National Enterprise Board was not meant to do any nationalizing itself. But Wilson was so vague and slippery that his clear disagreement with the nationalization proposals of the document was never pinned down.

This anti-socialist confusion being deliberately sown by Wilson makes the Labour Party hardly distinguishable from the Tories. Working-class voters become apathetic and the middle class will be repelled by the indecisiveness. (See What We Think, page 2.)

Only the most determined socialist policies can deal with the rapidly maturing economic crisis. Such programme will win an enormous response. A special conference is needed to insist on such policies.

MEN FIRM PAGE 190 minutes ay but the is not whole question of arbitrary lay-off.

Said Ken Walton: 'What we're fighting is a situation where management seem to think they have the right to stop the track and send home the whole factory, at will, for the slightest reason.' But the Ryton dispute also falls into a much wider pattern, in which working class is fighting back in a powerful and determined fashion against the attempts of the employers, backed by the Tory government, to extract more and more Profit from a labour force whose living standards are being cut by law.

This drive, which has been seen particularly in the BritishLeyland combine in a direct push for speed-up, is openly sponsored by the government, the Confederation of British Industry, the Engineering Employers Federation and the Fleet Street Press.

Phase Two of the Tory pay laws directly encourages labour-intensive firms to force up the rate of exploitation of their workers, and even more incentives of this kind are expected to be written into Phase Three.

CBI president Michael Clapham, just knighted by the Tories, has insisted that employers must push up the output of each individual worker, and stressed that there must be no return to free collective bargaining on wages. Edward Marsh, director of advisory services at the EEF, wants a 'relentless' productivity drive.

Declared the 'Guardian' on Tuesday: "If investment cannot be raised sufficiently in the short term, more output will have to be squeezed out of the existing labour force-hence the emphasis on productivity deals and worker participation during Stage Three [of the pay laws]'.

This is the face of a new bid to make working-class pay for capitalism's crisis, orchestrated directly by the Tory government. As Ken Walton says, it is not restricted to Ryton. way, in every factory n dock, It is taking place, or on the colliery and warehouse In the country. And the working class, as at Chrysler, is already giving its answer.

This new turn in the Tory attack on the working-class demands two things:

The breaking-off of all talks between the government and TUC leaders, and the mobilization of the entire strength of the labour and trade union movement to create the industrial and political conditions to force the Tories to resign.

• Replacement of the Tories with a Labour government, purged of its treacherous right-wing leadership and committed to the nationalization, without compensation, under workers' control, of all the basic industries and banks, with full workers' control of the nationalized industries These questions will top the agenda for discussion at the All Trades Unions Alliance conference at Belle Vue, Manchester, on July 1. We urge all trade unionists to book now for this vital conference. Transport will be available from every area.

TUC must break

off all talks on Phase 3 Make the Tory governme a transiormithe Socialist] Labor _ eague intortine Revo utionary