From Ulster to the N.E. coast CS riot gas in South Shields

STOCKPILES OF the anti-personnel gas CS are being maintained by the Tory government in potential riot areas in England. Lucas lay-offs fail to scare strikers BY A WORKERS PRESS REPORTER MORE PLEAS for a return to work will be heard from union officials at tomorrow's mass meeting of striking die-casters and plastics workers from Lucas's Formans Road factory in Birmingham.

But 'it is impossible to tell what will happen'.

This was the verdict of General and Municipal Workers' national officer Ken Baker following Tuesday night's deadlock in talks between management, union and Department of Employment and Productivity representatives in London.

And the 650 strikers—most of them G&MWU membersremained solid yesterday despite threats of further massive motor industry lay-offs.

Talks refused

Lucas's, who have now laid off all but a handful of the 10,000 workers from the six factories dependent on supplies from Formans Road, are refusing to negotiate further on their £2 5s-£2 10s offer unless the strike is called off.

The strikers are demanding a pay increase of £9 a week along with changes in their bonus system.

They have now been • out for more than three weeks.

Just over a fortnight ago, the strikers returned to work on the advice of their officials to allow negotiations on their claim to take place.

Management refusal to up their offer forced a further walk-out four days later.

It is unlikely that with this experience behind them they call off their struggle on promises tomorrow. TALKS IN LONDON BOTH the Lucas strike and British - Leyland's plans for a joint combine industrial relations council were believed to be high on the agenda at yesterday's separate meetings of top motor industry union officials One such area is South Shields, Co Durham, where high unemployment and lack of youth facilities sparked off fighting between police and youth last year.

On Tuesday night, canisters of CS gas, which could only have come from official stockpiles, were exploded in the men's lavatory of a local public house. Twelve people were taken to hospital suffering from the effects of exposure to the CS fumes.

CS gas has been widely used in Vietnam and N Ireland. It is officially described as a 'non-toxic irritant', though its use has caused a number of wellattested deaths in Vietnam.

Recent experiments with investigation branch officers the gas showed that it pro- wato, westerday, geaking tarcem duced large blisters on skin youths who, they believe, may surfaces exposed to the have planted the South Shields fumes, drawing from one CS canister. scientist the comment:

If it does that to the st does branes.' Hospital After Tuesday's incident, four firemen, two police officers and six civilians, were taken to the Ingram Infirmary after fighting an hourlong battle to reach and neutralize the canisters.

Their clothes are to be deccntaminated.

An army bomb disposal squad from Catterick Camp, Yorkshire, arrived in South Shields yesterday.

Police and firemen were overcome as they tried to reach the lavatory of the Nook Hotel to get at the capsules.

Part of the hotel had to be evacuated because of the fumes.

Superintendent Robert Stewart, South Shields police chief, said yesterday:

'We are taking a very serious view of this. If it was a joke it was in very bad taste. This could have been very serious and we are investigating where the capsules came from.' Standard issue Superintendent Stewart may not have to look very far.

CS gas is now standard issue to all police forces in Britain - a measure approved by Labour Home Secretary James Callaghan, and heartily applauded by the Tories.

Now that the Tory law-and-order brigade are back in office, they will undoubtedly maintain and strengthen this particular arm of the law in preparation for major class battles in the coming years.

FOUR' CAR and executives of the 'big four' car manufacturers.

Among those attending afternoon ' conclaves were the Transport and General Workers' Moss Evans, the Amalgamated Engineers and Foundryworkers' Arthur Hearsey and the National Union of Vehicle Builders' Alf Roberts. POLICE and Army special Split threat emerges as Docks strike deadline nears A MAJOR threat to dockers' the £20 minimum pay claim Transport and General Workers' Union yesterday, just ten days before the scheduled national strike.

Docks official Peter Shea told London docks shop stewards yesterday that US MINERS OUT ON SAFETY MEASURES 15,000 US coal miners are on strike in protest against delays in enforcing the latest Mines Safety Act which became partly effective in April this year.

There are long - standing anderstaffed Bureau of Mines allegations that the allows mine owners to proceed with little heed for government safety regulations.

About ten per cent of America's coal miners are involved. The strike is likely to General and Municipal Workers' national officer Ken Baker, who has been responsible for negotiating with Lucas's over the unofficial Birmingham • carcomponents workers' strike, was also in attendance.

- On the employers side, the talks were attended by representatives of Ford, British - Leyland, Chrysler, Vauxhall and Joseph Lucas.

One meeting was in a Westminster hotel, the other at T&GWU headquarters.

BRAN nears unity in support of emerged from the the union would implement the second-phase modernization scheme on Monday 'despite the problems.

The 'problems' include lack of agreement from the 'Blue' stevedores and dockers union, and this week's T&GWU No 1 docks group decision against implementing phase two without 'Blue' support.

As the No 1 docks group went into emergency session last night the issues involved were becoming clearer and clearer.

Behind the wages question lies a very specific and open threat to working conditions and jobs.

'There is a strong militant element which believes that this may be the last opportunity to. shoot piece-work earnings up to more than £50 a week,' claims national employers' chairman G. E. Tonge in a statement which accurately reflects the fears of most port bosses.

'This would seriously imperil and jeopardize our policy of bringing up to date the working of the industry.' The employers, who now also face a new crisis in London over implementation of second-phase "modernization' plans, are refusing to meet the dockers' demand for an increase in their £l1 1s 8d basic rate to £20.

They fear that such an incould scotch their plans for productivity dealing at local level.

Their offer to raise dockers' £16-£17 minimum earnings fall-back to £20, which comes nowhere near answering the claim, is believed to have arisen in behind-the-scenes talks between Tonge and the T&GWU's O'Leary on Monday.

But while O'Leary may try to get union-employer talks reopened on this basis, T&GWU general secretary Jack Jones describes the offer as 'an insufficient answer to our claim' and says it does not warrant re-calling the national docks delegate conference-the only body which could call off the July 14 strike threat.

Foreign Office scuffle over S African arms deal A scuffle broke out yesterday when S Africa Foreign Minister Dr Hilgard Muller entered the Foreign Office in London.

Two demonstrations had overlapped as Sir Alec Douglas Home met two of his overseas opposite numbers. theid eld atam astrators Apare Israel's Foreign Minister Aba their nearby Eban entered and left the government offices. Later Muller, • Africa oreign Minister, also enter he buildins poke to thome a out the u Peace plan for the Middle of th embargo, imposed by Wilson' Tales to the Voster reaime sales FIREMEN 'PAID TOO MUCH' IN A REPOrTe Mr Henry services in England and Wa National Point are authori Tint Council of Malaya massacre probe AN INVESTIGATION into an alleged massacre by British soldiers of 25 Chinese plantation workers a Malayan village in 1948 has been dropped.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Norman Skelhorn, QC, decided that there was no justification for further inquiries _after receiving Scotland Yard's preliminary report.

The new Attorney-GenSecond liberation front in Oman AT A PRESS conference in Beirut earlier this week the formation of a second liberation front in the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman was announced.

Liberation forces have been at war with British occupation troops, nominally under the control of the Sultan, for five years in Dhofar, southern part of the country.

RAF Canberra bombers have strafed villages and herdsmen and bombed agricultural areas in attempts to force the people into submission.

The opening of the second front (the National Democratic Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf) brings nearer the struggle tor the possession of the offshore oil drillings of Oman and the rich oilfields of the Trucial States, presently exploited almost entirely by American and European capitalism.

The Tories have not yet declared their policy on the Golf However they are expected, despite pressure from Iran to withdraw, to maintain strengthen the British military 'presence' there. mongoles has stronal tried The Nixon them to do so.

STEEL

STRIKE OFFICIAL THE fortnight-old strike by tricians at the British Steel Corporation plant in Corby, Northants, was made by the ETU and AEF yesterday. has been referred to the Department of Employment and Productivity.

is dropped eral, Sir Peter Rawlinson, against the communists in QC, agreed. Malaya. The allegations appeared The Ministry of Defence in a Sunday newspaper.

They claimed the incident• the matter to the DPP. occurred when men from Four former guardsmen the second Battalion Scots had made sworn statements Guards entered the village that the villagers were shot on December 12, 1948, at after being held prisoner the height of the campaign overnight.

BY A WORKERS PRESS REPORTER It is up to the British labour movement, fighting for an end to the Tory government, to demand the withdrawal of all British forces, official and 'unofficial', from the area. Comprehensives axed-warning of more cuts TORY BACKWOODSMEN have certainly wasted time in the first few days of Following hard on the heels of Sir Alec Douglas Home's offer to sell arms to Vorster's apartheid regime and the Housing Minister's encouragement of the selling of council houses into private ownership, the Tories have moved swiftly on secondary education.

Without so much as bothering with the customary consultans, the bucation Sheretary Mrs Margaret Thatcher has withdrawn the Labourites' Circular 10/65 which requested education authorities to submit plans for reorganizing secondary schooling on comprehensive lines.

Given the dominant control of the Tories on the local authorities, this measure puts a very effective damper on the development of comprehensive began inquiries and handed the Heath government.

Compréhensive schools have grown in number from 262 in 1965 to an estimated 1,200 in January this year.

But with their rate of introduction slowing recently -most probably in anticipation of a Tory return to power-it would have taken another 15 years of Labour administration before the comprehensive system became universal.

Under Mrs Thatcher's Circular there are no longer restrictions on the character of secondary school building and education authorities may reverse previous reorganization The go-ahead has also been given to £3 million worth of building plans for which the Labour government had been withholding approval because tha nrancala trara mati in lina With Pocal comprehensive schemes.

Mrs Thatcher tried to justify these reactionary steps in terms of bowing to. "local wishes.

If these measures have been implemented in the first days of the Heath government, it is a warning of the scale of future attacks on the education system being planned by the 'Black Paper' Tory educationalists with all their anti-working-class conceptions of education for the 'elite'.