Blacking: Pressure on in Preston

PRESTON dockers yesterday decided to increase their pressure on blacked hauliers. Instead of letting lorries into the docks, where they had remained untouched, they are now organizing picket lines at the dock gates to turn those lorries away.

During the last three days dockers' leaders have been meeting union officials and members the Road Transport trade group of the T&GWU. After their last meeting on Thursday morning a leading docks shop steward said: The RTC men categorically state that they don't want to be registered dockers.

'However, if the employers wanted them to become registered they say they'll reconsider. That's like committing murder today and joining the police force tomorrow to cover your sins.' Another leading steward said: "The employers must be laughing at this, but we won't stop the blacking' • A MASS meeting open by union card only to road haulage drivers will be held in Hull tomorrow. The drivers, members of the Transport and General Workers' Union, will discuss the container issue and a pay claim.

Hull dockers are blacking two local haulage firms, Panalpina (Northern) Limited and MAT Transport Limited.

On Monday an interim order granted against the union and the chairman of the Hull docks shops stewards' committee, Walter Cunningham, will be reviewed in the National Industrial Relations Court. The order calls on 21 days, or else Court ultimatum to IN ITS most important ruling to date the National Industrial Relations Court yesterday told the Transport and General Workers' Union to discipline or even sack shop stewards for disobeying court orders.

The judgement will have the most profound implications in the labour movement.

It virtually requires trade union leaders to act as 'policemen' within their organizations or face severe penalties.

The court gave the T&GWU 21 days to obey its decision or, in the words of Court president Sir John Donaldson, the Court would 'asert its authority in an unmistakable manner'.

This deadline coincides with the first day of the threatened national docks' strike over the use of containers.

Sir John launched an attack on the practice of blacking. •Blacking damages the public, fellow workers and the employers of those fellow workers. It does not damage those who do the blacking —they draw their pay.

'It is an unfair weapon and parliament has declared it to be unlawful. The duty of trade union officials at every level from shop steward upwards is to lead.

'Leadership takes many forms setting an example, advising, explaining, and using the elected constitutional committees of the union to the full, and when all else fails, using the disciplinary powers with which they have been entrusted by the membership'. arisins rom In 27-page judgement— from the blacking of two like information abou both parties to lift the blacking, described as 'an unfair industrial practice'.

Sunday's meeting in Hull will be followed on Monday evening by one between the commercial district committee of the road transport group and the Hull docks district committee, the union's official policy-making body in the port. • In Liverpool next Friday, May 17, the regional secretary of the T&GWU, Mr Douglas G. Farrar, will participate with Tory ministers and port employers in a seminar organized by the Merseyside Productivity Association.

The conference is also being backed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company and the Merseyside Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Apart from Farrar other speakers at the conference Jack Jones: roncing memvers!

container firms on Liverpool docks-Sir John rejected the union claim that they were not responsible for shop stewards who acted outside union policy.

He quoted from a passage in the Taff Vale case of 1901 to support his conclusion.

This ruled that a principle was responsible for the actions of his agent, even though the agent carried out a class of work in a manner not intended.

'The law is plain. The union is accountable if its officers, officials, representatives or shop stewards do their union work in Scottish Tories hear 'lame-duck' 1 THE TORIES can do no more to stimulate the economy, Trade and Industry Secretary John Davies told the Scottish Conservative Party's conference at Perth yesterday.

He said the government could not create demand or markets where they did not exist and that the next move was up to industry.

In other words the Tories feel they have done all they can to provide industry with a framework ot. opportunity within which they can expand.

But if the possibilities are not there and there has to be a slump, then so be it.

Davies said the government had aimed at stepping up efficiency and providing cash assistancr : to projects they ould be fairly sure would become viable.

Referring to with an eye Hunterston in duntainl inaustrial complex, which could provide thousands of extra jobs, he warned:

• what would be unpardonable in govassent to the creation t plant whose tuture night be precarious with dire consequences for those who work in it and for recources, the nation's recources.

He stressed: 'We breach of the law. It is for the union to see that they do not break the law. If they persist in doing so, they are unworthy of the union's trust and of continuing in office.' Sir John said the T&GWU shop stewards' handbook clearly gave the shop stewards the authority of the union.

'So long as he remains an accredited shop steward of the union, management is entitled to assume and usually does assume that he has the support of the union and is acting in its behalf and in accordance with such policies as it may have.' Sir John said it was true that the union had 'advised' their shop stewards to obey Court orders and cease blacking, but he argued that this was not enough. At no time did anyone say that it must cease that action in such circumstances was contrary to union policy or that it was unauthorized.

'Indeed this has not been said to this day, otherwise than to a modified extent in the affidavits read to the Court.' Sir John said that in these circumstances the Court had 'no hesitation' in affirming the earlier decision that the union by the action of its stewards had disobeyed the court order.

'We have been reminded on more than one occasion that a trade union is not an army, but a voluntary association. This 1S, indeed, the case and it will be a sad day if the movement ever loses this character.

'But the voluntary principle and active participation by the membership are not an excuse for irresponsibility and lawlessness. It is a challenge to real leadership.

'It is not for this court to tell the leaders of the union how to do their duty. But it is for us to point rut where that duty lies.' steel and multimalar Mr J. Lindsay Alexander, Chairman, Ocean Steam Ship Co —Ports and Modern Ship OperaMr Philip E. Chappell, Chairman, National Ports CouncilNational Developments of the Ports Indusiry — Merseyside's Role.

Mr George W. Brimyard, Managing Director, Mersey Docks and Harbour Co-The Port of Liverpool in the 1970s.

Mr_Eldon Griffiths, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, will also address the conference.

Chairman will be Alderman Sir Harold MacDonald Steward, President, Merseyside Productivity Association.

Eldon Griffiths is an extreme right-wing Tory. When in opposition he represented the Police Federation in the Commons.

pnilosop don't believe in sustaining enterprises for which we cannot, with certainty, envisage viable future, but we have bent our rules recently under the pressure of other considerations — notably unemployment. 'But when we have done so-as in the case of shipping on the Upper Clyde-we must not compound our heresy, if heresy it is, by pretending to get away with it at minimal cost and then see the whole problem surge again for want of naving faced reality. •So we have sought without equivocation to assess what it really costs to give the sucEXCLUSIVE cessor enterprises the best chance of a satisfactory future. And to face the whistles and the cat-calls that result.

'Some concerns-and Rolls-Royce springs naturally to mind-play such a part in national and international life that their loss would constitute such a catastrophic blow to our national interests or those of our friends overseas as to be insupportable.

'So we rescue them.

'In our rescue operation we must not, at public cost, salvage : the interest of those whose management has failed or those whose stake has been lost as a result of that failure.'