B.S.R. INQUIRY Blakeman pickets'

INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • PUBLISHED FROM TUESDAY TO SATURDAY • NUMBER 26 SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1969 safe Labour seats. ur supporters should Labour vote drop so previously regarded No matter how the right wing and fake lefts juggle the figures, this conclusion is unavoidable.

There is a simple answer: with the cost of living steadily rising, the purchasing power of wages being slashed and unemployment rising, there is a deep dissatisfaction with a POLLING STATION Tm Yo ny Spano 'candidate in the Sasiadoma la y redi ween on Thursday aler-maml inny ens omarade meetings BIRMINGHAM future for the mot Tuesday, November 4 Three Horse Shoes Coventry Road, Sheldon delegates reject N.C.B. offer MINERS' delegates on Thursday threw out their executive's recommendation to capitulate to the National Coal Board over the wages and hours dispute.

Meeting in London the delegate conference voted by 168,000 votes to 165,000 to reject the NCB's offer to meet the wage claim in full while maintaining the 40hour week exclusive of the 20-minute meal break.

meal break in their eighe our 00 miners travelled fron Il the major coalfields to lobby the conference.

Jeered

They jeered angrily at the conference decision to take the NCB offer to a ballot of 340,000 miners.

Miners know that the ballot, which will take several weeks to complete, is a manoeuvre by the executive to head off and dissipate their militancy.

The executive will not succeed in this because the issue at stake is not just the 20minute meal break.

Miners' • resentment has steadily accumulated over the Labour . government's closures and low wages policy and the continued betrayal of their own leadership.

Miners who lobbied the

ELLESMERE PORT

•Next Steps at Vauxhall, The Fight for Parity, The Crisis In the Motor Sunday, November 10.30 aim.

Railway Hotel Little Sutton Miners conference said that if their recent strike won them one of their biggest wages increases ever, then this was surely the way to defeat the NCB on the hours question.

The outstanding feature of the recent strike was that all the existing leaderships worked to secure a quick return to work and sell out the miners' fight.

Only the forces of the All Trades Unions Alliance and the Socialist Labour League fought and will continue to fight to build an alternative miners' leadership. Dockers black transferred LONDON dockers are to extend the blacking of cargo handled by non-dock labour.

A meeting of shop stewards and rank-and-file delegates on Wednesday night supported the decision of No. 1 docks group committee to extend the ban to ten other employers.

Since the beginning of the week cargo to be handled by the Hay's Wharf group subsidiaries has been blacked. Blackbird Leys (Oxford) tenants say:

rent is wage cut OVER 450 council-house tenants, meeting in the community centre of Blackbird Leys, Oxford's largest hous, estate, voted on Tuesday not to pay rent rises of 3s. to l0s a week, due to come into force in April.

The resolution, which had overwhelming support, was moved by Mrs P. O'Sullivan, whose husband is a paintshop worker at Morris Motors, and seconded by Mr Reg Parsons, also a car worker.

The original resolution Town Hall.

This was amended to delete the demonstration, but to call on the association to contact other tenants' associations for support.

Mrs O'Sullivan told the I will raise the question of the demonstration again at the next meeting. This is the most important thing now. If we don't demonstrate we will be lost. The people must show their feelings on the streets' Mr Reg Parsons, seconding the proposal, linked the rent increases directly with shortwork The whole question of the use of non-dock labour has been brought to a head by the closure of Hays' wharves on the south bank of the Thames.

This is due to take place at the end of the month.

At the same time Hays has opened a coldstore and warehouse in Dagenham where, it The daily organ af the Socialist Wabour League By G. Healy CRISIS IN AS PREVIOUSLY advertised, today's issue of the the fourth article in our series on the motbr This can be found on page two.

In view of Wednesday's vicious attack on carworkers by the Home Secretary, we have also brought forward the fifth article in this series.

(See page four.)

When Callaghan singles out the Midlands carworkers, this clearly heralds a new government-backed attempt to break their.... contlnued resistance to productivity deals.

It is in this context that our industrial correspondent has interviewed workers with 13 months' experience of MeasuredDay Work at Rootes, Linwood.

Standard-Triumph vote to stay out THE ten-week-old strike of the struggle to defend the at Standard - Triumph, ers in the British-Leyland Liverpool, is still solid. combine, who are now comThe 1,150 strikers voted the management. at a mass meeting on Thursday to stay out.

They were not impressed by Mrs Barbara Castle's decision to set up a court of inquiry into the dispute.

Mr Bill Moore, the factory's AEF convenor, said that the court of inquiry would make no difference at all to the men's attitude.

"Show money'

He told the meeting:

'What we want is what we have always wanted — something tangible.

"The management must show the colour of their money before we return.' The men are not expected to meet again until next Thursday.

The court of inquiry can, of course, have no purpose except to provide a cover for a sell-out of the strike.

Talks failure

Repeated attempts by the TUC and the Department of Employment and Productivity have failed to find any prospects of compromise which could bring management and unions together for talks.

A victory in this fight is particularly important.

The Standard - Triumph workers are in the vanguard is claimed, non-dock labour being used.

Dockers all over the country are having to fight redundancies caused by this type of transfer of work.

The employers are building cargo-handling depots away from the docks so as to be able to employ weakly organized non-dock labour.

The No. 1 group committee is seeking to have the ban extended throughout the London docks. THE COMMISSION on Industrial Relations inquiry into the eleven-week-old recognition strike at the Better Sound Reproductions factory, East Kilbride, is being completed this weekend.

Mr Leslie Blakeman, the ex-labour relations director at Fords, is heading the inquiry.

He spent Wednesday in talks with union officials and local management, including the factory manager, Mr. John England.

His remarks after seeing films of the police provocations against pickets indicate what can be expected from the inquiry.

'PUT OFF'

He thought that the scab labour still maintaining limited production in the factory would be antagonized by the violence:

It has rather put them off trade unions for a long time.' Mr Blakeman said that the students who joined the pickets 'should have stayed away. They exacerbated the situation.

The CIR inquiry findings will be presented to Mr John Ferguson, BSR chairman, and Mr John Boyd, Scottish malzamated Union of h gineering and Foundryworkers (AEF), early next This makes it very urgent that the labour movement gives support to the East Kilbride strikers.

The indefinite postponement of the one-day strike called by the AEF district committee was a serious jobs and wages of all working under heavy attack from uar покс пкасс ORDER 1 Pull subecription (Posted daily) 210 a year £2 10s. for three months I would like to Name Address ›st to: CIrculation Organizer, Workers' Press, 18 apham High Street, London, SW4. (Tel: 01-720-200 PRICE 6d. retreat.

It has opened the way for AEF oficials to co-operate in a sell-out based on the Commission's findings.

BSR workers must not be left to fight alone.

The strike will only be won by the mobilization of mass support from the trade unions • push the struggle through • final victory.

DAILY NOW Two editions (For any two daye OR you select)

E4 a year £1 for three months subscribe Workers' Press for

allowance. Immediately this was accepted they tried to impose the conditions.

They've shifted the lockers right to the end of the shop so we can't put our coats on early and we have to work right to the horn. Now we've got the new absence and lateness procedure.

This is a big strain on a man's nerves.

I had a bloke next to me on the bus the other day and he was in a blue funk when the thing broke down. No doubt he was on a final warning or something.

Trade union organization's time working, wage-cutting, wage freezing and unemployThese questions hit home articularly hard on Blackbirc Leys where most of the tenants work in the nearby motor factories.

'The same crisis which is responsible for short-time is responsible for rent increases,' Mr Parsons said.

'This crisis is the crisis of the leeches of society, the bankers.

"They created the high interest rates and all the other measures they have taken to make us pay for their crisis.

'Rent increases are a way of cutting. . wages without trouble in the factories. They take advantage of the fact that wages struggles and rent struggles are conducted separately.' Everyone involved in the meeting was taken by surprise by the sudden development of this struggle.

The size of the meeting itself showed that at least one household in every three was represented.

The question of linking the struggle on rents with the fight in the factories is now being • considered by some Oxford workers.