Letter a lock-out threat -APEX

A LETTER to 70 clerical staff on strike for over a week at John Hunter's Liverpool food factory is claimed to be a 'lock-out threat'. North-west organizer of the clerical union, APEX, John Allen, commented:

'In : the letter they state if we do not return to work, we are being given notice of termination of our employment under Section 26 lA of the Industrial Relations Act, 1971.

'Our legal advisers tell me there is no such section in the Act. We will not return to work under threat, only under negotiated settlement.' Earlier this week 700 shopfloor workers staged a one-day sympathy strike.

Ferry stops THOUSANDS of commuters vere hit yesterday by a one-day trike of Mersey ferry crews which halted services between Liverpool and Birkenhead. The strike, in protest against delays over a pay claim, ended at midnight, and normal services will operate from shortly after 6 a.m. today. The men returned to work on Monday after a five-day stoppage.

ROAD HAULAGE Association members were told yesterday to increase their freight charges by up to 10 per cent despite …a warning earlier this week by Trade Secretary John Davies that an increase would permeate the whole economy. Eric Russell, association secretary, said either charges must go up or 'unremunerative traffics abandoned'.

Goldthorpe miners in Yorkshire welcomed the Young Socialists' Rightto-Work marchers into their welfare social club for a midday meal on Thursday-the sixth day of the Leeds to Sheffield ampaign. In almost every town the youth have passed through, the miners have been their most stalwart supporters, both financially, morally and politically. On the right are some of the marchers and miners with the women who cooked that most welcome meal.

NEWS THAT the governernment is withholding money from the coal industry in a bid to curb miners' pay demands has increased fears on the coalfields of more closures.

• The Tories want an assurance that there will be no repetition of last winter's strike which blasted a huge hole in the government pay norm.

They also want the union leaders to cut their pay claim from the £5.50-f7 decided at the National Union of Mineworkers' annual conference.

National Coal Board spokesmen from all the major coalfields admitted yesterday that without the £800m aid the number of mines falling within the category 'uneconomic' was bound to increase. One, from Yorkshire, gave a typical opinion:

'A lot depends, of course, on If we can get a good full year Increased fear for miners' jobs in then difficulties will mized.

'But naturally the Board cannot go on making huges losses -the programme for future closures, even in a prosperous area like Yorkshire, depends on how much money the Board and government, can get out of the get out of the A union view was given by Arthur Scargill, Yorkshire miners' official and one of the strike leaders.

I do not accept pit closures and I don't want pessimistic talk about the industry. I want to see the industry in terms of continual expansion. The NCB has not intimated to us that there are any pit closures pending in this area.' Yorkshire contributed a massive £40m to the NCB's £118m loss for 1971-1972. But it is not STEP be miniexpected to be the main victim in a closures programme- though the NCB admits there are many 'small and old' pits in the Barnsley area (£10.5m loss).

NCB chairman Derek Ezra says eight pits are due for closure this year through exhaustion of coal and a further six in 1973-1974. The region likely to be worst hit will be the north west which made the highest loss of the Board's 18 areas.

This area covers North Wales and Cumberland. 'Problem pits' says the NCB, include Solway at Workington which is near exhaustion; Haig at Whitehaven; Gressford and Bersham in Wrexham; and Point of Ayr near Prestatyn.

On the main Lancashire field three out of the nine pits were before kie miners statine. Phest strike. These Action vital on a south London estate, Mrs Veronica Gayle, talked to Workers Press about the fight against the Act and the Communist Party leadership in her area. Her rent is going up 64p on Monday, making it £11.80 a fortnight.

The tenants' leaders have had no policies to fight this Act. Round here the CP Stalinists have said the campaign was non-political and all they ever wanted was peaceful protest against it. also must be considered in jeopardy, facing the north west's 15,000 miners with a redundancy battle within the next 12 months.

Other closures will include Smithy Wood—a mine near Sheffield employing 500 men.

In South Wales, Fernhill, at the top of the Rhondda Valley, is on the jeopardy list, but union leaders say output is rising and hope to remove it from danger.

On other fields NCB officials deny that any closures are planned-with the proviso that the industry does need the government's f800m.

Clearly miners face dangers: • Their leaders will with the Board to avoid and possibly send a claim to arbitration. • The Tories will plough ahead and close pits as part of its general offensive working class. Councils of ACTIVIST in the tenants' movement conspire a strike denuded AN INTERVIEW Now the tenants are on their own. The Lambeth Labour council is putting up the rents. They have set no example and given us no lead.

They talked a lot about different ways of fighting, but all the time the Tories were in the front and the Labour leaders behind them.

If you're going to fight something like this you need good leadership.

At the moment you will only get a small minority of tenants who won't pay their rents. But tenants alone cannot get the Tories out, which is what's needed.

They have to unite with other workers who are under pressure from the Tories. Other workers are usually tenants. It's the same for everyone.

The rent goes up and the wages stay the same. With the increase in the cost-of-living you still have to find the extras to pay the bills.

Now the Tories are going to make things even harder for all of us.

We definitely need Councils of Action to work towards a General Strike to get the Tories out and put back Labour to carry out socialist policies.

But the Stalinists don't want that. They will now turn round and say we couldn't have done any better and you now have to take everything.

They will blame tenants for their own failures and use us as scapegoats.

Tenants and workers have to clean up their leadership now. We must have people determined to fight all the way in political way to get the Tories out.

Older workers are understanding the base and root of their troubles as the Tories. Workers are making it their duty to understand and are not as backward as their leaders make them out to be.

All the strikes workers have been in this year have opened their eyes and given them confidence.