Right 10 Work marchers lobby MPs

NEW FACTS have emerged about the miners' strike showing that had the NUM leaders demanded the full amount, the Tories would have been forced to pay out.

Four days before the Tories capitulated to the miners, the powerful Engineering Employers' Federation was engaged in feverish, secret talks with Employment Sécretary Robert Carr asking for permission to sack millions of workers.

In a confrontation at Carr's Department of Employment the EEF leaders asked the government to suspend the Guaranteed Week Agreement, the Contracts of Employment Act and the Redundancy Payments Act.

If the government had agreed to the EEF's ruthless measures, engineering factories throughout the country could have immediately dismissed millions of But Cari, acting with the Cabinet's authority, told the EEF that such a wholesale onslaught on the working class was 'not on'.

government resisted the EEF's demands not out of any affection for the miners; but Heath and company realized that they were not in a position to wage all-out war on the working class—YET. Having misjudged the critical effects of picketing and the militancy in the working class which the strike generated, the Tories decided on a tactical stand-off.

of a confidential EEF memorandum which gives precise details of the behind-the-scenes talks between the Tory government and the employers at the climax of the strike.

The document is headed 'circulated to officers only' and dated Thursday, February 17, the day before the Wilberforce tribunal reported to the government.

It reveals that the EEF's past president, D. C. Bamford, the deputy president, Tom Carlile, and the director general, Martin Jukes, held private talks with Employment Secretary Carr on Tuesday, February 15.

(Bamford, who has just retired as BEF president, is head of Chadburns Holdings of Liverpool, a mercantile engineering firm. Carlile, the new president, is managing director of Babcock and Wilcox, the big engineering firm with £100m turnover each year.)

The memorandum says that the three EEF leaders 'emphasized the extremely serious situation in the industry as a result of the power reductions and strongly requested government action'.

RIGI GL SAY -NO ment being able to extend any such assistance as the emergency powers did not enable them to take action of the type requested'.

The document goes on to say that Carr refused the EEF's demands because young socialists TOUNG SOCIALISTS TRI SAY • ANOTHER PICTURE p. 12. STEPHEN All five Young Right-to-Work marches massed together in London yesterday following their 8,500-strong Empire Pool rally on Sunday to march to the House of Commons to lobby Labour MPs.

The banner of the five-week Glasgow-London march led the 400-strong column through London's packed West End.

Lunch-hour shoppers crowded on the pavement as the marchers swung down Oxford Street, singing "The Right-to-Work Song'. .

Passers-by waved and smiled at the youth from Britain's unemployment blackspots. Collecting tins were quickly filled and hundreds of Workers Press sold.

In Fleet St, staff of the major capitalist newspapers came to their windows and looked down on the chanting, spirited column.

Before the lobby, march leaders attacked the Labour Party hierarchy for attempting to smash up the march.

Leader of the Right-to-Work campaign. Clive Norris, said yesterday's lobby of MPs showed 'the marchers are determined to carry the fight against the Tories to the bitter end.' He said: 'People have walked through London and marched hundreds of miles to give Labour MPs the same message they gave the labour movement along road.

'We are trying force Labour MPs to fight the Tories, because they are now the only people standing between the working class and socialism.' Kent leader Les Pankhurst said: "The march and lobby show the leaders of the Labour Party and the Tories that the working class is going to fight.

'If we can force Labour MPs to stand up and fight we can force this Tory government out.' Glasgow leader John Barrie issued a challenge to Labour MPs.

'We will ask them to condemn the campaign organized. against us by Transport House' , he said. 'We wil ask them where they stand on bans and proscriptions within the party.

'And I for one would like to Jenkins™ MP$ like Roy is allowed to organize a right-wing faction in defiance of party policy while men like Philip Bond, Mayor of