Pupils call all-London strike for next

FROM SARAH HANNIGAN SCHOOLCHILDREN from North and West gathered near Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, day to plan the next moves in their campaign caning and school uniforms.

Schools Action Union leader Steven Wilson, who was detained by police during the march last Monday, read out a leaflet calling on pupils throughout London to strike on Wednesday, May 17.

He said: 'Not only does the Inner London haucation Authority think it can get away with ignoring our just demands, tionary "counter-revolution 1 also Wade This was shown by ILEA threats to send letters to over 3,000 organize parm against their children.

It is also shown by the suspension and other victimizacarried the head, he said. dictatorhip of the head Children at the meeting said that many pupils who had taken part in marches in the last week Above: A 13-year-old supporter of the Schools Action Union speaking to pupils (Top right) at London's Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, yesterday. The speaker was a leader of the delegation to London education headquarters at County Hall last Tuesday. He walked out of the meeting protesting that the discussions were 'getting them nowhere' Seaforth about turn: Little gained IN AN astonishing aboutturn, docks shop stewards at Liverpool have lifted the black on the giant Seaforth container terminal. The first ship into the £50m berth was the Ellerman Line's "Tagus' carrying fruit and wine from Portugal.

Within an hour it was unloaded. Mr George Brimyard, managing director of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, met the 1,578-ton ship to stage an unofficial opening.

Wednesday's official opening was postponed because of militant action taken by a mass meeting of dockers last Sunday.

On the recommendation of the shop stewards committee, the men decided to handle no ships at Seaforth pending an agreement on wages and conditions.

These included a 35-hour working week, an increase in the basic wage, increases in both pensions and sick pay and assurances on stuffing and stripping of containers.

In announcing the blacking decision, joint chairman of the shop stewards' committee Jimmy Symes, said:

"The port employers are trying to get us into Seaforth without an agreement. Our claim was placed before them last January London yesteragainst are now facing expulsion threats.

Three 14-year-old girls from Sarah Siddons school, West London, were detained by police after a march on Wednesday. MILITANT grammar school boys in Lancashire claimed yesterday that their headmaster had broken an 'agreement' with their sixthform union over the length of pupils' hair.

Many of the 300 fifth and sixth-formers at King Edward VIl Grammar Schol, Lytham St. Anne's, have pledged to disobey orders to get their hair cut.

They are threatening to workto-rule'-by sitting-in after morning assembly and boycotting their sports day and a charity walk for school funds-if any boy is suspended.

One boy said 20 pupils had been threatened with susnension if they did not have haircuts.

r'wa INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT and nothing has been done about it. We now want to make them realize they have an obligation to us.

*If the employers come out with the right announcement, everything will be all right.' Three days of talks then commenced. But from the brief statement issued on Wednesday, there is little justification for saying it is the 'right announceOf the six demands made last Sunday only one was met... and that is pretty half-hearted.

'Discussions' will take place "immediately' with a view to the introduction of a 35-hour working week for implementation in the last quarter of this year!

It was on the basis of this concession lifted by Symes and black was company.

The capitalist press was rubbing its hands with glee yesterday. Writing in "The Guardian' Geoffrey Whiteley said:

'The dockers' leaders, however, have not emerged with any dramatic gains from the conflict. The dispute has produced no immediate improvement in pay packets and the promises are little more than those which might have been expected from No snags' to Clydebank sackings IAN THE DEAL about to be signed between Communist Party shop stewards and the US Marathon Manufacturing Co., at Glasgow's Clydebank shipyard is a total betrayal.

• It deprives the workforce of their basic right to strike over a period of four years.

It includes no guarantee against redundancies and concedes there will have to bea considerable changeover in the existing labour force to provide the skills Marathon will need.

• It agrees to the bulldozing of Clydebank's east yard taking the Stalinists back on their promise to maintain the yard as a shipbuilding unit.

On Wednesday Stalinist shop stewards were 'very happy' after a day of talks with Marathon. Clydebank convenor James Reid told the press:

'We have established a frame- 'We have established normal negotiation few months.' Lew Lloyd, Transport and General Workers' Union docks district secretary, said that although the ban on the terminal was lifted, the blacking of the three haulage firms still remains in force.

The firms-Heatons Transport (St Helens) Limited, Bishop's Wharf of Warrington and Craddock Brothers of Wolverhampton-have taken the union to the National Industrial Relations Court.

'Our priority is the work and the protection of jobs,' Lloyd added.

MEANWHILE in London, Southern Stevedores has announced that - despite parliamentary protests- their docks will close next month.

At a private meeting between docks officials and management on Wednesday, terminal payments of £300 for each man were negotiated.

When the docks close on June 3, as many as 1,250 dockers and tally clerks face dismissal.

As in Liverpool, the leadership in the sell-out at the Royal docks has been Communist Party members. gene work for negotiations are no snags.

Trouble had been expect outside observers over the oil-rig firm's insistence legally-binding, four-year, strike agreement.

But Marathon's senior president Eldon Nuss yesterday:

'It is our understanding The Stalinists ar What hope Clark hold out? would take the Macmillan. Stalinist stewards sign away right to strike Led by Texas vicesaid are no legal and binding agreements in the United Kingdom. We think that our labour agreement will be such that it will be honoured by the unions and it will be written in such a manner that they absolutely will honour it and we will have four years of continuous work.' The shop stewards have told Nuss that there will be no strikes in the yard unless dispute procedure has been fully exhausted— thus giving Marathon the guarantee they have looked for since first entering the venture.

The Stalinists are pinning their Since the Southern Stevedores announcement a month ago, there has been no campaign organized by the Stalinist leadership to protect the jobs of Royal dockers.

No wonder a Workers Press reporter was barred from a recent meeting on the question.

The steward who threw our reporter out said that the capitalist press would be allowed in 'but not the Workers Press' James Reid and his cronies at UCS tried the same stunt last year during the early stages of the Clydeside treachery.

The great protest so far mounted by the Stalinists has been a deputation to the House of Commons to see a local MP. He is Sir Elwyn Jones, a former Solicitor-General in the Wilson government, and a determined right winger.

Jones took a delegation of MPs to see a Tory minister with a sympathetic ear — Robin Chichester Clark, new minister of state under Maurice Macmillan. Chichester Clark, an Ulster Unionist, is the brother of the former right-wing premier of Ulster.

did ChichesterHe said that he matter up with faith on escalation and comparability clauses in the long-term contract which they have obviously given Marathon ver good reason to assume they wil nonour.

Nuss said after Wednesday's talks: 'It has been a very good day. There has not been a grave area of dispute and I do not see any obstacle to arriving at a mutually satisfactory agreement.' But he madé it clear that the deal the Stalinists are about to sign includes no firm promise on redundancies.

All the agreement committed Marathon to 'was to try to employ as many as possible of the 2,200 workers still at the yard.

'We are going to make every effort we can to retain as many people as we can. We have always said we will have at least 2,000', said Nuss.

Not only are the Stalinists about to sign away the basic right of labour to strike, they are also about to concede the inevitability of hundreds more redundancies on top of the 900 jobs already lost in the ten months since the 'work-in' fraud began.

A private report circulated by the stewards at Clydebank confirms the view that Marathon intends to sack the entire labour force and then pick and choose who it re-hires.

The report says that when Marathon finally goes into business on July 24, the company will employ only 1,000 men, taking on a further 1,000 over a period of eight months.

There can only be one point of this hiring-and-firing procedure. It must be to allow Marathon to take on men with skills other than those of workers presently employed.

In other words the Stalinists are giving their blessing not just to 200 or 300 redundancies surplus to the 2,000 Marathon say they need, but also to massive sackings among the existing workHundreds will be permanently onsigned to the dole and man † those re-hired coul between six and eight months unemployed. Significantly, steward, Point 12 of the shop report on the subjects for negotiation with Marathon is-redundancy pay.

As for the Stalinists' • other major promise to maintain all four yards intact and as a shipbuilding unit, the report admits bet Ceded the round and ont pazer to and ont the west yard modernized for oilrig production.