Leadership is the key says London steward

Cold Store, a men iber of London docks ste wards' committee, talked yesterday to Workers Press about the struggle docks.

The Jones-Aldington proposals offered dock er s nothing at all, he said.

The question of the temporary unattached register had not be solved.

After October 31, for example, our employer says he will have to sell out if he is forced to take more dockers on.

We have been given guarantees for 200 jobs at the expense of 10,000 workers. The register now is 42,000 and we want it to be like that in 50 years' time.

Our fight is to maintain the National Dock Labour Scheme which they want to do away The problem can only be solved by a shorter working week-not at the expense of other workers.

We have never refused work with containers, but modernization has to be for benefit of the working class.

At the London meeting last Friday the feeling at first was that Hull had let the men down by not staying out. On the other hand, after what we did, we let Liverpool down something terrible.

They were prepared to fight alongside us.

I was critical at the way Bernie Steer handled the meeting. He went on too long instead of making a short speech and coming over with the proposal which would have won the day.

I agree the decision of the national port shop stewards' committee after the delegate meeting was for stewards to fight to keep the strike going. That wasn't carried out on Friday.

There was no meeting between the Wednesday and the Friday to change the proposal.

Ask me why Vic Turner hanged his mind after talking about concreting in the dock if we lost and I don't know the answer.

At the moment the committee is at sixes and sevens, trying to regain the confidence of the men. Last Friday's decision was like a knife between the shoulder blades.

When Steer and Turner came along the men at our place saw them as some sort of saviours. We all have to gain the confidence of the men.

There are no guarantees in Jones-Aldington and I don't dispute you can't get guarantees about the jobs we want. FAN TYI 01-622 We've always wanted 100 per to see the five who went to cent nationalization on every prison? port, wharf, dock, where any docker works, registered or un- leadership and he let them registered. And the fight will never be over until we get that. —just like Vic Feather.

It's the dole queue or shorter working week. There one million unemployed and our children will say we sold our jobs for £4,000.

Many children in Sunderland have never had a job.

My politics are nil, I've just been thrown into the fight. I've no answer as to how you bring the Tory government down, though the fight we've got can't be separated from that.

Workers in every industry have to wake up. Then you'll bring them down and I believe it's coming to that.

As to Jack Jones' "inquiry" into what happened at Transport House, it is going to be a witchhunt.

If words are violence Jones got violence.

These men had a real grievance to put to him. If it isn't a witch-hunt, then how come Jones never did his job and went WEATHER AN ANTICYCLONE is slowly moving over Ireland.

The dockers followed their down one of the milt ant lead to be What are the rest like.

A lot of men, Ray Halsey told unions into the Blues' (National were talking changing Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers), but he did not think that would help.

We have to change the leadership, he said. The problem was who would replace them.

He concluded: "The trade union leadership is now defunct, but workers in different industries will see the light. Every worker is asking what is happening to their unions and where they are going!'