IT'S UP TO LONDON - NORTHERN DOCKERS STAY OUT

LIVERPOOL dockers met yesterday in a mood of calm determination and voted unanimously to stay out on strike.

Not one man out of the 6,000 present raised his hand against the recommendation to continue the fight on an unofficial basis.

Shop steward Paddy Doherty warned of the dangers ahead. The press, TV and radio would go all-out to break the strike, he said.

•We must not let these attempts succeed,' he added. 'Those who dare to split our ranks must be regarded as splitters and traitors to our movement.' London dockers who meet today must heed these words. The return-to-work decision of a mass meeting yesterday at Tilbury weakened the struggle. The northern ports must not be isolated.

At London the lay delegates will speak at the key morning meeting. The stewards will not put forward their own recommendation to keep the strike going until a mass meeting at 1 p.m.

The danger in this decision by the stewards is that it opens the way for the right wing to force a returnto-work vote at the first meeting as happened at Tilbury yesterday.

Manchester and Preston have also followed Liverpool's lead. Shop stewards at Hull decided to recommend an unofficial strike from Monday. A meeting of the port's 2,600 dockers will be arranged before the weekend.

Clearly the greatest danger facing the men is that leaders of the Transport and General Workers' Union, in active cooperation with the Tory government, will be able to isolate their struggle from the rest of the working class.

This will give the government maximum opportunity to break the strike by force.

Already military aircraft have been used against the Scottish dockers. Elsewhere armed services personnel are on a 24-hour alert to move into the big docks and shift. . cargo.

The Cabinet was reviewing the new situation after the revolt of the militant dockers , who have now become the main target. It is understood that troops will be used first to release cargo and grain held in strike-bound warehouses and silos.

Meanwhile the open collaboration between the forces of the state, the Tory government and the union leaders becomes more blatant every day.

The scene at Transport House on Wednesday typified this. Jones and the delegates were cordoned by a massive 1,000-strong force of police while the meeting to call of the strike proceeded.

It was like the battle of the picket lines with a difference: the police were not defending employers and scabs but a building that, by right, belonged to the dockers outside.

Trotsky's characterization of unions under imperialism is most apt:

'Monopoly capitalism is less and less willing to reconcile itself to the independence trade unions. It demands of the reformist bureaucracy from • who banquet table chat they become crumbs transformed into its political police working class, the eyes of the Jones is playing this role. By advancing the latest proposals he is helping the shipping mono polies and the big port employers who dominate land and sea transport.

On the basis of promises he wants to break the resistance on the docks to the plans for a further 10,000 cut-back in the labour force, massive increases in productivity through containerization, National Dock Labour ization and a further erosion of Scheme.

This open treachery poses the question of a new leadership in the T&GWU.

It is the duty of every member of this union to fight to remove Jones and his clique and recall the biennial conference of the union to discuss action to defend the dockers' rights.

We warn all militants against any compromise with Jones and O'Leary on the basis that the dockers are three-quarters of the way towards victory.

There can be no peaceful coexistence between the rank and file and this discredited bureaucracy.

Just as there can be no peaceful co-existence or deals between the dockers and the employers. Any Communist Party member on the docks who says otherwise is leading dockers into another trap —just as they led them into the Devlin trap.

Finally the dockers must realize that concessions from the employers cannot solve the crisis they face.

6,000 say strike on' —Liverpool Pier Head yesterday Containerization in the hands of the monopolies will mean a vast reduction in manpower. This will occur whether or not the ports are registered.

The only alternative to the Jones - Aldington sell-out is nationalization under workers' control without compensation to the owners.

Jones himself recognized this 'Don't fall into bosses' trap' SIX THOUSAND Mersey dockers were told yesterday: If we chuck it now the employers will have the initiative' Port steward Dennis Kelly, a T&GWU docks delegate, told a Pier Head meeting: 'While we go back to work and negotiations and inquiries start they'll be opening small wharves with part-time labour, getting half our wages.

'Behind our backs they'll be cutting the ground from under us. There are no jobs in Liverpool, and if anyone accepts the £4,000 severance pay, after 12 months he'd be back at Social The meeting unanimously rejected the latest Jones-Aldington proposals and voted to stay out.

Dennis Kelly said: We are not chucking this fight until we get cast-iron agreement on bringing the unregistered ports into the National Dock Labour Scheme and on making stuffing and stripping containers dockers' work.

'In the whole history of the trade union movement I don't think anyone has said chuck the fight when the fight is at H0L0400 when he said that the two choices facing the dockers were a deal with the employers or new legislation to secure their These are the most crucial days of the dockers' fight. The working class must rally round them. If they lose their fight for the right to work it will be a blow to the whole labour move—meeting urged its strongest and we're only half way to ending the battle.

'Cornelius Clancy was right when he said in London that anyone who accept Jones-Aldington is a lackey of the capitalist system. It is all part of the plan to lick our strike, smash our trade union and make us docile workers.' Liverpool will be one of the ports hardest hit by containerization and modernization. By 1975 there will be 11,500 fewer jobs in Britain's dockland, many of them on Merseyside.

Birkenhead shop steward Larry Cavanagh told the meeting: 'There was nothing at all in the Jones-Aldington proposals about job security.

'Our lads at the delegate conference hammered them line by line. The people who voted for them never took our lads up. They just sat back and voted. They couldn't wait to get back inside the gate.

'All it promised was that there would be further committees set up to look into conditions on 'But while these • Recall the biennial conference of the T&GWU. • All unions to mobilize in solidarity with the dockers. • Force the Tory government to resign. • Elect a Labour government to nationalize the docks without compensation under workers' are being set up employers like Vestey are sayıng they wıll not gıve jobs to dock workers. How can Jones offer 200 jobs when the employers say 11,000 will be put out of this industry in the next two-and-a-half years?' Cavanagh said the dockers were fighting for the basic right to work and he thought many other sections of workers could be rallied to their support.

Liverpool Trades Council was asked last night to call for a meeting of all Merseyside shop stewards for joint action to back the dockers and bulding workers. • Preston dockers yester...., unanimously rejected the lasic : Jones-Aldington proposals. Shep stewards will meet employers once more to 'test their reaction:" to the report, then meet on Sunday to decide whether to keep up the strike.

The consensus however is strongly in favour of unofficial action. 'We want them to give a statement of intent. We want nothing under the carpet,' said Norman Wright, stewards' convenor.

ARDUND THE=WORLD SPENCER ITALIAN police authorities are preparing a mass 1972