Tilbury containers DOCKERS VOTE FOR BAN TO STAY

DAV As port bosses would like to see it...

5,000 schools apply to strike N.U.T. chooses 300 for Monday FOUR-AND-A-HALF thousand teachers will close more than 300 schools for two weeks from next Monday, it was announced yesterday.

Against a background of growing support for more protracted and determined Support for it has also come action, National Union of castle University Department Teachers general secretary- of Education and other traindesignate Mr Edward ing colleges in the area. Britton admitted that in many of the 5,000 schools that had applied to be called out there would be 'considerable disappointment'.

He said that a reserve list of other schools had been prepared in case it proved necessary to repeat the action.

Most schools in the NorthEast will be hit today when teachers throughout the region strike.

Students' support

The strike-involving members of the NUT and the National Association of Schoolmasters in Northumberland, Gateshead, Wallsend, Blaydon, Ferryhill, Blyth, Durham and Newcastle-affects more than 300 schools and colleges.

WEATHER Outlook for Friday and Saturday: Some sleet or rain places but becoming cold with wintry showers in the north on Saturday.

London area, S.E. and Central Southern England, E. Midlands, Channel Islands: Cloudy with occasional light rain at first, becoming dry with sunny or clear intervals later. Frost during evening. Wind light or moderate, NW. Rather cold. Maximum 6C (43F).

W. Midlands, Central Northern England, Edinburgh: Mainly dry with sunny or clear intervals. Frost early and late. Wind light or moderate, NW. Rather cold. Maximum 6C (43F).

SW. and NW. England: Sunny or clear intervals, scattered shower locally strong, NW. Wind moderate or Rather cold. Maximum (45F). Glasgow arear intervals, scat- N. Ireland : Sunny or clear tered showers. Wind fresh or strong, NW. Moderating later. Maximum 7C (45F). TWO TI threats i of Fleet the new Essex. from students at the NewA mass rally is to take place this afternoon.

Support fot more militant action was demonstrated at a Gateshead NUT meeting recently when a proposal from the floor for an all-out national stoppage was greeted by a huge burst of cheering.

The motion was then ruled out of order by the chair.

Boycott

At Heathfield school in Gateshead, the sixth form has passed a resolution pledging full support for the teachers and calling for a boycott of all unscheduled lessons.

From next Monday, NUT members will strike for a fortnight in some 15 different areas.

Some 500 of its members will strike in a total of 77 schools, the NAS announced yesterday.

Agreement

Although both unions have warned other teachers not to do the work of those on strike, joint agreement has been reached for members of one union to remain on duty in schools where those of the other are on strike.

Two things become clearer every day.

Teachers are more and more determined to force the derisory offer of a £50 pay increase back down the throats of the government and the Burnham Committee.

They are rightly cynical about Mr Edward Short's statement that the teachers deserve more money and will be paid when the country can afford it'.

The union leaders are scared stiff by this mood.

Your decisions will make them not only "disappointed", Mr Britton.

They will throw more and more teachers into the struggle for all-out, immediate and national action ! IOUSAND dockers yesterday defied the by voting to continue their ban on working £5 million containership berths at Tilbury, La new GREATER London Council announced yesterday a proposed £22 million scheme for the redevelopment of the now - closed St. Katherine Docks—a 25-acre site on the north bank of the Thames near Tower Bridge.

Once again Mr Horace Cutler's Tory council reveal their anti-working class face for all to see.

At the same time as the GLC is seeking to evict thousands of tenants for refusing to pay rent increases imposed last year, it is proposing to give Londor its first yacht basin' and a floating riverside bar and restaurant, which will ride and fall with the tides.

GLC tenants will doubtless have sharp words for the playground GLC Tories want to provide for their friends.

It also comes as no surprise that while the scheme includes a Taylor Woodrow group proposal for a hotel, to be London's largest with 776 rooms, housing is to be provided only 650 families.

Subject government approval, the scheme could be started in 1971 and finished in 1978.

The scheduled closure of other sections of London docks is rumoured to be connected with the rising value of the wharf sites for property developments similar to the GLC proposal.

The fight for the nationalization of the docks, land and building industry without any compensation to the former owners is the only answer to this all-sided attack on the working class.

On a show of hands, it was decided to retain the This was imposed almost two years ago by the Transport and General Workers' No. 1 docks group to pressurize the employers into a favourable pay agreement for the whole London's docks.

Its retention is the second slap in the face in a week for the port employers in general and the Overseas Containers Limited-Associatec Container Transportation consortium in particular.

OCL-ACT threatened to abandon its £2,500,000 investment at Tilbury and move its operations permanently to Europe following last week's rejection of terms by the London men for the second stage of Lord Devlin's docks 'modernization'.

There were hastily-called meetings with the Department of Employment and Productivity by both employers and union officials.

UDI suggested At the weekend, Fleet Street started to suggest that the Tilbury men would lift the No less a personage than Stephen Fay, 'Sunday Times' industrial correspondent, discerned 'growing support for a [Tilbury] UDI [unilateral declaration of independence]'. Financial nancieste dimes mid The Guardian' had followed suit.

Meeting on Monday night, Tilbury's T&GWU stewards decided to recommend that the men lift the ban and 'go it alone'.

Only the Tilbury men themselves remained unimpressed by this remarkable display of unity in action. And, of course, they are absolutely right.

A decision on the white suggested by the union's stewards would have enormously weakened the fight in every port against the speed-up and redundancies which will undoubtedly result in capitalist rationalization of the docks under the second phase of Devlin. desperate The employers are desperate to achieve the conditions for a massive expansion in the use of containerization and other capital-intensive methods cargo handling.

For them, Devlin and the lifting of restrictions on conWriters' Union slanders Solzhenitsyn AN OFFICIAL sta by the Soviet writers Union has accused

Still not

working 200-YEAR REDUCTION CABOT LODGE, US negonator at the Paris peace talks, yesterday dismissed North Vietnamese and NLF terms.

'Our side has an alternative plan in accordance with which the US is reducing its troop strength in South Vietnam on an orderly timetable'.

According to at least one US Army leader, that could take 200 years!

meetings BIRMINGHAM Teachers' meeting •Fight the attacks on Thursday, November 27 The Wellington Corner of Bromsgrove Street and Bristol Road READING trade unions' Tuesday, December 7.30 p.m.

Palmer Hall West Street Alexander Solzhenitsyn of lying and adopting 'positions hostile to the cause of socialism'.

The celebrated Soviet novelist, who was expelled earlier this month from the Union, was also 'invited' to leave the Soviet Union:

Nobody is going to hold Solzhenitsyn and prevent him from going away even if he desires to go where Vietnam atrocities:

More G.I.s speak out FRESH REPORTS continue to leak out concerning US imperialist atrocities in Vietnam.

Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin has called for an Army investigation into allegations that a South Vietnamese village in the Mekong Delta was used 'for target practice' in June.

And a report from the US base at Chu Lai has confirmed that these atrocities continue.

As recently as last month he Army was burning dow Villages near the hamlet of My Lai, scene of the 'Pinkville' massacre in March 1968.

The leader of the platoon admitted:

destroyed i clared ber et.

Warning

After giving 24 hours warning to the occupants of the village, the platoon follow a set routine.

Either 'zippo squads' set fire to thatched dwellings with cigarette lighters.

such delight. received with his anti-Soviet works and letters are Tuesday's statement, published in the "Literary Gazette', is clearly the bureaucracy's slanderous reply to the writer's open letter to the Union written after his expulsion, where he insisted that Soviet society was 'deeply sick' through Stalinist fear of socialist criticism. From our own correspondent Or: When we found candles some of us used candles. Some of the houses were made of stone. If we think it's really worth it, we throw • a frag [fragmentation grenade] or concussion grenade in', said a US Army Sergeant.

The interviewed platoon leader described the ruthless way in which whole communities are hounded out of their dwellings:

'What we try to do is to get all of the people out of the village before we start burning.

'Because of the psychological efiect, of course, they don't want to go.. .. That's their home and everything.

'So what we do is to get them all out of the village and out of sight before we burn it so they won't have to stand and watch their houses burn.' Beginning These revelations are only the beginning.

Thousands of Gis will now find the courage not only to speak out but act against the Their confidence comes from the growing involvement of millions of US youth, workers and students in the campaign to get all American troops out of South Vietnam.

The principled stand of our American comrades in the Workers' League is now confirmed.

Only those who have fought unconditionally for the victory of the Vietnamese people ovel US imperialism in the past can provide revolutionary leadership for the anti-war movement in the future. Briefly

tainerization are of vital importance.

Where does the T&GWU, and in particular Mr Henry Battie (Tilbury representative on the union's No. 1 docks' really rod committese these questions?

The terms on which its officials negotiated for Devlin's second stage would have opened the door for a major onslaught against all the dockers' past gains.

If these were rejected by the dockers themselves, it was no thanks to the T&GWU.

What is more, top officials of the union must have known Battie one of their leading lay represent.

atives-and the Tilbury stewards were moving towards the idea of a 'UDI'. Big trouble Such a decision would presumably have meant a break from the union's No. 1 committee.

It would certainly have provoked big trouble amongst volves 400 men-started other sections of London's when the management of portworkers.

John Lewis and Son Did the union fight this claimed that the two If it did, this was certainly workers were surplus to kept very quiet indeed. No such struggle has come out requirements. into the open.

Dockers must increase their vigilance on these vital questions. McConnachie (AEF), was It is not only their wages sacked because of his and conditions, but their jobs militant defence of their themselves which are at stake: interests.

Unity fall ports against the Devlin scheme!

shipyard are now on strike.

• For an immediate and substantial increase in pay without 'strings'!

No redundancies!

• No collaboration with new methods of working without full nationalization of of the sacked workers. the docks under the full control of those who work in them and without compensation to the old owners! in the area.

GREET

NEWCASTLE Sunday, November 30, 7.30 p.m.

County Hotel, Neville Street LEEDS Wednesday, December 3, 8 p.m.

The 'Old Bar' JOHN NOLAN (Young Socialists) CANTERBURY Monday, December 8, 8 p.m.

The Cornwallis Bullding University of Canterbury that have taken pl lace all over the count try.

Thousands of sch 1ools have lined up to take in the fortnight's strik e at iber.