Union leaders refreat before Tories
By David Maude
1970David MaudeTrade union leaders and the TUCTory government Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
£803 6s 50 SIX DAYS to gO and £446 13s 7d to find. This is the kind of challenge which demands immediate action.
The Workers Press, has, from the very first day it was published, enjoyed the wholehearted support of its readers.
Month after month you have completed the target.
Ve know you will not ta ow. Don't dela!
Post your donation at once 186a Condon, SwA S A DANGEROUS and cold-blooded strategy for retreat before the Tory government's unionshackling plans is now in daily operation. State airlines halts BOAC ROUTE TRANSFERS A MASS meeting of air-transport workers about the proposed transfer of state airline routes to CaledonianBUA delayed three BOAC jet airliners at London's Heathrow airport yesterday.
Aircraft workers later lobbied MPs at Westminster in advance of last night's House of Commons debate on the subjęct.
Part of the lobby's 60-strong Welsh delegation is pictured above.
If the nationalized industry loses these routes it will mean loss of contracts at our factory', said Tom Kilby, shop stewards' chairman at the 1,200-strong British Engineer1ng Overhaul plant in Treforest, S • Wales.
BEO is a subsidiary of the British Aircraft Corporation.
He added: 'There is the possibility that further concessions will be given to the private airlines.
Apart from creating possible unemployment, these moves in the industry will mean a loss of £6 million of public money to the taxpayer.
'This will now go into the pockets of the private owners.' Builders' pay BUILDING trade unions yesterday replied to employers' rejection of their wage demand with a call for an immediate meeting of the National Joint Council for the industry.
The National Federation of Building Trade Employers last week rejected a union-side plea to re-open discussions on a 30-month package deal signed • in December.
The deal provides phased wage rises up to June 1972, but the unions now want the increases brought forward.
Strike shuts Manchester sorting office MANCHESTER'S three-weekold mechanized sorting office was closed by a strike yesterday after 1,000 postal workers walked out.
The strike follows a dispute over graded duties whicl flared up when two sorters were suspended for_refusing to handle bundles rather than individual letters.
A Post Office official said yesterday afternoon that the two men had been reinstated.
Hundreds of Post Offices may be forced to close next year unless steps to protect staff against bandits are speeded up, the Union of Post Office Workers has warned.
CONSTRUCTION workers at the giant Beckton sewage works in the East End of London are on strike after a unanimous vote at a mass meeting yesterday morning.
The 200 men struck against a contracting firm's attempt to continue work last Thursday and Friday despite what the men claim are dangerous conditions caused by recent heavy rain.
Contractors sparked the strike when they refused payment of 'wet money' for the two days in question.
The workers feel this Everyone - from right to 'left' wings of the official labour and trade union movement -has his part to play.
Underpinned by the British Communist Party and its press, it must and will be smashed.
Chieí architects are the right-wing Labour Party and Trades Union Congress leaderships, whose opposition to the Tories is purely token.
It is intended partly to lull some sections of workers who might otherwise get in the way of a behind-the-scenes retreat.
• Nowhere will opposition to unofficial action against the forthcoming Industrial Relations Bill be more virulent than at today's meetings of the Labour Party's national executive committee and the TUC General Council.
Just to make sure everyone knows where the Labour leadership stands, kingpin Harold Wilson has refused the elementary step of pledging-in advance of tomorrow's Commons debate on the Tory pans their repeal if made Reconciled Yet Wilson's reconciliation with the, TUC-scarréd only slightly by his government's own attempt at anti-trade union legislation-is now virtually complete.
He is to be the main speaker at the TUC's Albert Hall protest rally in January!
The publicity campaign of which that cosy protest forms a major part, meanwhile, continues its defeatist course.
Fire is continually directed in this campaign against the demand that the TUC call a general strike to defeat the Tories.
Adding insult to the injury already inflicted on • S Wales miners by their official leaders, TUC assistant secretary Lionel Murray told a weekend meeting in Cardiff: 'You cannot take on a government and beat them.
'This issue is too big for unofficial groups, he said; condemning even the planned December 8 protest stoppage.
But the TUC right wing is already grooming itself for faithful implementation of the Tory dictates.
Trade unionists cannot oppose thém if they become action is retaliation for a one-day stoppage in support of the council workers and against the anti-union laws held at the site recently.
Senior steward Fred Lavinski told yesterday's meeting:
"They have got a motive.
They have deliberation, done this with The strikers may lose their attendance bonus holiFor most housewives living in Lewisham houses the rent increase will mean less children. (L to R) Mrs Carol Schafer, Spencer, Mrs Margaret Tate. A TORY-controlled London borough today plans a substantial increase in council-house rents for the third time in as many years. latest TROOPS of the National Liberation Front söbred-en important victory when they' over-ran• , the • Cambodian district • headguarters :: of
law, General and Municipal Workers' chief Lord Cooper is said to have argued at a meeting of the Congress 'inner cabinet' on Monday.
"Co-operation' And the TUC 'lefts' are apparently not far behind.
Engineering union president Hugh Scanlon, who last week urged managements not to upset the traditional 'rules of war' in polite industrial relations by backing the legislation, is believed to have argued against Cooper for long-term plans to refuse co-operation with the Tory law.
Both sides of this argument are equally bankrupt.
First Scanlon pleads with employers to preserve all the old rotten trappings of class compromise, instead of preparing his members for what everyone knows is an inevitable conflict.
Then he further weakens the struggle by suggesting that the Tory plan is going to go through anyway.
This retreat could not be sustained for five, minutes without the daily aid and com-