As TUC talks to Heath TORYANTI- UNION LAW TIGHTENS

BY DAVID MAUDE Our Industrial Correspondent A LEGAL web is tightening around the trade ul leaders meet today to decide on further co-of government.

The focus of the action in the courts is once again the docks, where in three separate cases road-hauliers and warehouse firms are seeking to stop dockers 'blacking' and picketing their premises in the fight Actions are proceeding ir the House of Lords, the Chancery Division of the High Court and the National Industrial Relations Court.

Were the employers successful in all these actions the effect would be to: • OVERTURN the Appeal Court's judgement that the Transport and General Workers' Union is not responsible for blacking by its docks stewards in Liverpool and Hull; • FORCE seven named London dockers to pay damages for conspiracy and intimidation to Midland Cold Storage Ltd; and • ORDER the London dockers' joint shop stewards committee to stop picketing Midland.

In the House of Lords, three haulage firms are seeking to overrule the Appeal Court's June 13 decision to allow eight T&GWU appeals against the NIRC. "The firms are Heatons Transport (St Helens) Ltd; Craddock Bros, of Wolverhampton; and Panalpina Services and Panalpina (Northern) Ltd, of Bradford.

They want to establish the principle that the union's national leadership can be penalized for failing to discipline its members and stop the blacking. (The Appeal Court paid back the €55,000 fines imposed by the NIRC for failure to do this.)

Yesterday in the Chancery Division of the High Court, counsel for Midland Cold Storage complained on six ounts against picketing at the ompany's Hackney depot.

The counts were: conspiracy, intimidation, breach of statutory duty breach of procurement of contract, actionable interference with contracts and nuisance.

The court was also asked to declare that work at the depot is not dock work as defined in the Dock Labour Scheme.

A stop-picketing order has already been obtained by Midland from the NIRC. The company's action in Chancery is an attempt to get a double bind on the dockers, both under the Industrial Relations Act and in common law.

Refusal to pay any damages arising out of yesterday's action, or any fines resulting from possible contempt proceedings in the NIRC, could again hang the threat of jail over dockers attempting to combat the redundancy crisis in Britain's ports.

Today, as the TUC Economic Committee gathers for its meeting at Congress House, Midland will go back to the NIRC just half a mile away to challenge its refusal to make an order against the London port stewards' committee.

Sir John Donaldson, NIRC president. argued on Monday that the committee was not 'an organization of workers' as defined by Section 61 of The court had no evidence that it had sought recognition by the port employers, he said. No organization whose principal objects included regulation of relations between employers and workers could fail to seek such recognition. Therefore the court could make no order against the committee as such.

If Midlands succeeds in obtaining an order against committěe on review of this judgement, the scope of any uture orders against picketing could be greatly increased, lion movement as TUC eration with the Tory laying the committee open to charges of contempt as a result of zetivities by almost any docker.

This, then, is the context in which the TUC chiefs will be considering Tory premier Heath's proposal for a joint working party on pay and industrial relations.

The right wing of the 17man Economic Committee can be expected to argue that the proposal reflects government desire to move away from its hard-line stance against wage increases.

And if we allow Heath to save face on pay, they will reason, concessions may also be forthcoming which will stave of a clash between our members and the Act.

Above all else, the lords, knights and gentlemen who comprise the Committee fear such a clash.

The Tories, however, have no real room for concessions. Only abject surrender by the union leaders will fit their bill.

The steady tightening of the legal web goes alongside a rapid worsening of the capitalist economic crisis on a world scale.

For the so-called left union leaders to go along with further talks with Heath, therefore, would be the most contemptible betrayal.

Jack Jones of the T&GWU, engineers' president Hugh Scanlon and Richard Briginshaw, the printworkers' leader, have : for too long played the right-wing game and refused to express the massive rank-and-file pressure for a recall of the TUC.

This is why today's lobby of the Economic Committee, called by the All Trades Unions Alliance, assumes such great importance.

All out behind its three demands: 'Break off all talks with Heath!' 'Recall the TUC!' 'Force the Tories to resign!' dockers take over their jobs.

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