Dockers must be on guard Pearson inquiry is suspect

Whow thirl:

strike?

ORY HOME SecretaryReginald Maudling's meed inten the i docks by matum that troops will be weekend dockers themselves refuse to move perishable cargoes réceived and unmistakable snub yesterday from Southampton dockers.

But, as with the calling of the strike in the first place, the union leaders are way out of line with their members. A mass meeting at Southampton, reported on this page, gave a unanimous 'No!' requests port's government - backed • emergency committee that the Transport General Workers' Union organize the shifting of such goods. the only objective interpreof the use of troops has already been given this week by meat-porters London's Smithfield market. As in 1926, and again in 1948, it is legalized strike-breaking.

why has the T&GWU leadership now recommended dockers to move perishable cargoes?

The only purpose in calling strike action is to bring the maximum pressure to bear on employers to settle workers' demands.

If trade unions are going recommend their members to break their own strike to meet the convenience of the employers what is the purpose of striking?

And since the employers provoked the strike by refusing to settle the unions' fullyiustified and long-standing claim for a basic rate.

responsibility for the spoiling of any cargoes must rest entirely with them. If the shipowners are so concernéd about this, why do they not march minster to demand the government forces the port em ployers to pay up ?

Dockers Liverpool, howhave alréady given their opinion of this kind of thing.

Only a tiny handful of men turned up for work 'agreed' by them, according some newspapers, Saturday — on ships carrying supplies to the Isle of But since this so-called denouncement from a T&GWU cision was simply official at Saturday's Stad ium mass meeting, this is hardly surprising Jobless soars HULL'S jobless total rose to 7,467 — 4.3 per cent of the working population - this month. This is a rise of 532 since June.

Unemployment normally falls to its lowest point during the summer month, then starts to rise again in autumn and winter. LORD PEARSON'S committee of the national docks strike is the sp Tory attempt to strangle the dock a £20 basic wage.

Those dockers who have lingering illusions about the inquiry's purpose, or who think it is enough to 'wait and see' what comes out of it, must think again.

The inquiry was satur to examine 'the causes and circumstances' of the dispute. But it can only give a judicial gloss to the government's anti-working- class strategy against the dockers.

This strategy will certainly be reinforced by the union leaders' decision yesterday recommending dockers to move perishable food cargoes. This retreat in front of the Tories can only strengthen their hand.

Like Lord Pearson's inquest into the seamen's strike four years ago, the committee is a reactionary body.

It brings together a lav lord, a renegade former Stalinist trade union leader, a and a leading engineering employer.

Pearson's 1966 report, as "The Newsletter' pointed out at the time, 'was not in fact, a genuine inquiry into the wages and working conditions seamen, but one propaganda seamen within the working-class movement. That is the reason why it condemned the seamen'.

Clear

Pearson made the starting point of his present inquiry abundantly clear in the course of his cross-examination of the union side on Tuesday.

It was common ground between the two sides, he said, 'that these modernization agreements'-the second stage of the Devlin speed-up scheme —'are vitally important and necessary. The ports must be modernized'.

Later, he added that it seemed unreasonable if these vitally important modernization agreements are going to be held up by negotiations over an old-fashioned timerate'The court, then, will begin from the need to push through Devlin on the docks 'in the national interest'.

This position, by a strange coincidence, forms the foundation of the employers' case against a basic rate increase.

As employers' chairman George Tonge told the court on Tuesday. inquiry into earhead of a ers' fight for DOCKS PROFITS SLUMP BRITAIN'S 19 • rationallyowned ports—now at a standstill because of the dockers' strike-sufiered a big slump in profits last year.

The British Transport Docks Board, which controls them, reported today that its 1969 revenue surplus was £161,367 compared with • £2 million the year before.

he operating surplus wa £6.7 million but this wa slashed by 'historic depreciation' and interest on capital debt, the Board said.

BURMAH OIL We won't move perishable goods-S'hampton dockers