TRIES TO SPLIT

Merseyside plants since Monday, returned to work staff would be withdrawn from maintenance work.

The company is also trying to convince them that its threat to make 3,000 workers redundant is not so serious after all. Joint talks aimed at ending the overtime ban which has been in force since August will take place today.

A GEC spokesman said on Wednesday: 'We are hoping that AEF members will now understand that they are striking about a situation where none of them are affected by redundancy, following the announcements'.

The announcements were to the effect that the 1,000 workers at the Napier plant, due tor closure, now had a choice of three Jobs.

They would be offered 117 jobs in the combine's domestic appliance and fuse gear THREE MORE building workers were sacked on Wednesday at the Crudens redevelopment site in School Street, Hebburn, Tyneside.

The sackings follow 13 days of trouble at the site, which began after 60 workers voted solidly to strike against the sacking of two of their mates.

Crudens immediately retaliated by sacking 21 of the men. The strike broke up because of inadequate leadership and 12 of the 21 were left outside the gate.

In the background to the failure of the strike and the consequent sackings is the acute unemployment in the Tyneside area.

As the dole queues lengthen, the employers become more high-handed.

Un this part of the NorthEast coast there are 21 men waiting for every available job on the building sites, according to official figures.

On the whole of Tyneside there are only 14 vacancies for labourers and 2,358 are unemployed.

Many workers are incensed by union leaders' failure to act against the sackings at School Street.

AUBTW officials told the sacked men there was nothing they could do. They were advised to go and 100k for jobs elsewhere.

members reversed BIRMINGHAM University Socialist Society voted on Wednesday to reverse the ban placed on all Socialist Labour League members at the previous meeting. This followed a full campaign waged by the Young Socialist Student Society against the ban. plants.

Other employers in Merseyside had told GEC of 286 suitable vacancies.

Take over

Lastly there were prospects of a take-over of the Napier factory by a big British engineering firm and the consequent employment of some of the men.

The management also said that there would be no redundancies among hourlypaid workers at the East Lancs. Road factory, thus reprieving 150 of threatened jobs.

It is, of course, nonsense to suggest that the whole dispute arose over a misunderstanding or that the management has changed its mind.

The management's statement is an open attempt to divide those threatened with redundancy by offering jobs to certain sections.

But GEC workers will not be divided by these tactics.

Nor should they be deceived by illusory promises of alternative employment.

The GEC strikers should not be left to fight the threat of unemployment alone and must be supported, by industrial action if necessary, by the rest of Merseyside.

In the course of the campaign the nationalization without compensation and under workers' control of GEC-EE should be a central demand. MERSEYSIDE port employers failed to get agreement with the Transport and General Workers' Union on Wednesday on a new deal for 10,500 dockers.

A statement issued after a four-hour meeting of the local modernization committee said simply that the employers' £21-a-week offer had been rejected.

No further meeting was arranged.

For the f21 basic rate. which is intended as an interim offer during discussion of the Devlin 'modernization' scheme's second phase, employers want to buy out all the existing bonuses and commodity difterential payments.

There have been over 120 strikes over pay awards on Merseyside this year and the employers' offer was designed to keep dockers quiet while the real carve-up goes on around the Phase Two negotiating table.

Refused demand

also hoped to get their wyers old on new container work lifted.

The employers have refused raising the basic data to for from £ll Is. 8d., together with proportional increases in the existing piece-rates.

They have said this would add 44 per cent to the wages bill.

FRANK WILLIS, Young Socialist prospective parliaBy Dav Maude FIVE HUNDRED striking miners demonstrated on Thursday outside the Manvers, Yorkshire, headquarters of the National Coal Board.

They were supporting the three-week-old strike at Cadeby Main colliery. Despite the refusal of NCB officials to meet the demonstrators, miners from two more pits joined the strike after the meeting.

Ten pits are now out in support of the Cadeby market men's claim:

Cadeby Main itself, Maltby, Kilnhurst, Manvers wood and Wath Main.

At the Yorkshire area council meeting on Monday, which was lobbied by a large contingent of striking miners, Cadeby put forward the resolution that if there was no settlement within 96 hours the whole Yorkshire area should be brought out in support.

This was defeated by 54 votes to 22 with a number of abstentions.

NO RETURN The platform then proposed that the men should go back to work and that they would call the area out if no settlement was reached by the end of the week.

This was carried, but the strikers refused to return.

A strike proposal from the Yorkshire leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers is unheard of, and is sign of the determination comon problems of arbitrary lay-ofis, short-time working and redundancy.

The first effects of the recession are being felt most directly in this industry and the question of leadership for the big struggles now beginof an alternative revolutionary leadership and the programme to meet the deepening problems facing car workers.

Only the building of this leadership can open the way to resolving the crisis in the motor industry, which is part of Michelin, Renault and Citroen will be coming to take part in the discussion.

The provisional agenda is : 1. Reports on the position of car workers in England and West Europe. 2. The campaign against unin parity betwen Ford and Vauxhall workers and, the Midlands. 4. The setting up of a national car workers' advisory committee affiliated to the All Trades Unions Alliance.

All car, car components and delivery workers are invited to the conference which will be held at the Digbeth