Either betrayal or a fight to win Docks delegates face dangers

MR JONES' decision to postpone the strike until the national conference of docks delegates has had time to discuss the employers' new pay offer is an action which will weaken and confuse dockers.

It is true that Mr Jones is not recommending the acceptance of the offer to the delegates' conference, but then neither is he suggesting any rejection of the offer His statement that the offer 'is worth putting to them' and his televised opinion that acceptance of the offer would be a 'contributory factor' to peace on the docks, however, should leave no doubt in dockers' minds as to what are Mr Jones' real feelings on the subject.

Whatever he thinks or believes, it is the dockers who are going to decide the fate of the pay offer.

From the reports pouring in from the ports there is little doubt that 'opinion is hardening and determination growing amongst dockers about the justice of their demand and the impossibility of any reconciliation with a most ruthless group of employers.

This is hardly surprising.

The dockers demanded straight increase of the basic rate from £ll Is 8d to £20 in defiance of their officials who ignored the question of basic rates for fear of prejudicing the early implementation of Devlin Phase Two.

This scheme would mean an end to piece-work and the introduction of shift work which would cut down and abolish overtime on the docks.

Retreat

Their demand has not only been rejected by the employers but, worse still, it was not stuck to by the union negotiators Jones and O'Leary.

The retreat on the fundamental principle of the wage demand is without precedent in the annals of trade union Or, as Ernie Rice, a Royal docks steward described 'the biggest retreat since Napoleon's march from Moscow'.

As usual the capitalist press were exultant about this latest somersault of Mr Jones.

"The first glimmer of a possible settlement (l) came early yesterday when Mr Jones dropped his insistence that there should be some improvement on the basic rate.

'He had proposed, instead, that the modernization bonus might be increased and consolidated to improve dockers' earnings' ('Daily Telegraph', July 14)

This was. only the first stage of the phased withdrawal from the £20 basic.

Unlike Napoleon, Mr Jones did not even make a fighting retreat. The first capitulation led inexorably to the next, and more humiliating, surrender:

PAGE FOUR BY THE EDITOR "no strike' plea PORTWORKERS at Hull, Southal Liverpool, Tilbury and London's Millwall docks yesterday defied f up, down A WORKERS PRESS CORRESPONDENT THE POUND rose on the foreign exchanges with the news of the postponement of the dock strike. During yesterday morning it reached 2.39235 dollars.

But the midday announcement that the June trade deficit had risen to £51 million brought sterling tumbling down below 2.39—the first time this had happened since October.

Although exports had gone up from £633 million to £672 million, imports shot up by £62 million.

The Board of Trade explained that the June import figure£796 million— was 'erratically high'.

These results brought the second quarter average deficit on visible trade to £31 million a month, compared with Ell million in the first quarter. Dockers defy and General Workers' national strike.

Normal working continued at Bristol, Manchester and London's soon-to-be-closed Surrey docks.

But dockers, lightermen, tally-clerks and others from at least three ports are to remain on strike at least until reportback meetings tomorrow from today's docks delegate conference at Transport House in London.

Even dockers at the nonregistered port of Felixstowe, although staying at work, have voted not to handle diverted cargoes.

Jack Jones has just beaten the biggest retreat since Napoleon's march from Moscow, docks delégate Ernie Rice told an angry outside the ROYALS fathering The group remained at its overnight standstill after a series of three early-morning meetings at which T&GWU stewards, officials of the 'Blue' National Amalgamated Steveclerks and Dockers and tally- dores representatives urged rank-and-filers to stay in dispute pending the outcome of today's conferénce.

Another mass meeting has been called for 7.30 a.m. tomorrow to hear reports from the conference.

A group of T&GWU cardholders, spoke many dockers all over the country when they told the Workers Press, before the start of a meeting with their stewards the Royal's Scruttons Maltby muster point :

doesn't seem sort of "legal" for Jones to do this: if the strike's going to be called off, let 80 men do it. Not one!' "This £1-a-week "modernization bonus"—if that's what it is-just isn't on. If they get their Devlin Phase Two it'll probably disappear, anyway.

'All this ducking and diving and running back and forth to the delegates hoping they'll call it off: the employers aré laughing!

Demands that stewards insist on official backing were shouted out continually through the stormy "White' union meeting which followed and a number of men crowded out to join the fringes of the "White' and 'Blue' dockers seen at yesterday's meetings on the Royal Docks, London, apton, Dundee, Glasgow, Royal, West India and the televised pleas i of secretary Jack Jones to NAS&D meeting taking place in steady drizzle some yards away.

Acting 'Blue' general secretary Len Newman reported Cambodia. the decision of his union's sectional committee not to cross any picket-lines and instructed his members from outside Indo-China. equivocally to stay out pending tomorrow's mass meeting.

Then a joint meeting opposite heard speakers from both among states only unions call for continuation of the strike.

Jones's broadcast statement, could equally said T&GWU No. 2 division chairman Maurice Foley, was 'not acceptable'.

Nol.

And Royals' T&GWU delegate Rice pledged that he and in the internal ILL TRADES UNION ALLIANC National Docks of Cambodia.' conference 'Morning Orning Star reported per LIVERPOOL: *crap Devin Phase, Voi Fight She without comment. Torles! For a £20 basic wage and nationalization under workers' control'.

Credentials and further details can be obtained from L. Sihanouk. but maintains Cavanagh, 5, Gamlin St, Birkenhead. Nol.

ALEXANDER DUBCEK'S removal from all Party and government posts and his expulsion from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia have not by any means satisfied the Soviet 'advisers' who are directing members and alternate the current purge there. members left the Central In the words of Slovak Stalinist Josef Lenart:

"The process of the cleansing and consolidation of the organs and the apparatus of the Party goes on?

Lenart's words to the Slovak Party Central Com- and districts'. mittee last week were echoed by leading Stalinist Alois Indra in a speech in N Moravia.

He boasted to an audience of Party activists that 'some 40 per cent of the 'My relations with Moscow' -Sihanouk London August fares are to come int REFINERY PICKETS ARRESTED FOUR pickets at Burmah Oil's Cheshire refinery construction site were arrested yesterday after scuffles with police.

Some 2,000 contracting workers employed by the Usowned Kellogg International at the Shell Chemicals site at Carrington, near Manchester, and the Shell UK and Burmah Oil sites at Ellesmere Port have been on strike since Friday for a 4san-hour 'no strings' increase.

JULY 25- AUGUST 8 Situated in surroundings on the Essex coast.

'But they [the employers] remained firm that there should be no increase in the basic rate of £ll ls 8d and refused to accept a union demand that the modernization bonus should be consolidated into the basic rate for the calculation of piecework, overtime and other extra payments.' ("Daily Tele graph, July 14., All that the unions have secured from 36 hours of 'bargaining' is a weekly increase of f3 in the fall-back pay (£4 in the provinces) and a fl-a-week increase in modernization bonus. And Mr Feather calls this a 'courageous decision'!

The 'Financial Times' editorial, 'Two Provisional Cheers', tempered its optimism with a note of caution and in doing so clearly revealed the source of Mr Jones's equivocal attitude in these negotiations and the real issue for the employers.

'It ought not to be assumed that no dock strike will now take place.

'The fundamental issue at stake in this whole affair has been the future of port modernization.

'Mr Carr [Employment and Productivity Minister] and the employers were firm last night that the settlement offered would not jeopardize modernization; the refusal of the employers to consider an increase in the basic rate, on the other hand, has been due to their conviction that this would bring about an escalation of piece-rates that would make the men reluctant to accept the second stage of the Devlin programme.

'No doubt it has suited the leaders uf T&GWU, who have no very firm control over their members in the docks and are subject to the competition of a smaller rival union-to walk carefully and fudge the point really claim. involved in their pay (Financial Times, July 14.)

Decision The 'Financial Times' knows that in a few days' time the final decision to implement Devlin Phase Two will have to be taken.

ALL TRADES MEETINGS CROYDON: Thursday July to resign!'.

Hass can deeat Se SUBSCRIBE NOW elegates They • hope that somehow the strike will be called off so the scheme can go throughso do the union leaders, the employers and the Tory government.

Mr Carr was quite explicit when he expressed the opinion that agreement on wages would allow • 'modernization' to go forward with a new determination'.

This then is what the dockers are fighting.

There is only one thing the dockers can do with the employers' offer: reject it completely and prepare to build a new leadership against Jones, O'Leary and the officialdom of the Transport and General Workers' Union.

The strike (if it comes) as we pointed out, will cause hardship all round and the Tories will strive desperately to drive a wedge into the unity of the working class anc isolate the dockers by blaming unemployment on them.

The only way to unite the whole trade union movement is to fight the Tories all down the line by posing the socialist alternative: the nationalization of all industry, banking and land without and under workermpensation and fighting to bring down the Tory government and its replacement by a socialist government.

There is no other way to win this strike.

In conclusion we make special appeal to Communist Party members on the docks to demand of their leaders to end their scandalous silence on the role of Jack Jones in this dispute and unequivocally support the dockers in the struggle against Phase Two of Devlin and the Tory governTripoli last month.

• Smash Devlin!

• Force the Tories to