Port chief hits out at Royal group trading Twisting dockers' arms over meat trade

GERMANY BEDWORTH Labour council, near Coventry, has reaffirmed non-implementation of the 'fair rents' Act. At the same time, six Labour councillors who manoeuvred for the rent increases have been removed from the council's management committee.

In all, nine right-wing Labourites fought for implementation at a special council meeting on Tuesday night.

But they were narrowly defeated by ten votes to nine, with the Liberals and one Tory abstaining. The question has now been referred back to the management committee. BUILDING workers on strike at the Cubitts, World's End site, Chelsea, are in danger of being isolated by the union leaderships.

Altogether they have been out for ten weeksfive of them since the end of the £30, 35-hour week claim recently compromised by union leaders.

Immediately following the ending of the fight for the national claim, Cubitts cut the site bonus like so many employers have done.

Before the strike was PITC SCIST TUTION.

IKE CONT! PALES ArI PICKETS SUFFE PALESTINAN LONDON over £l an hour. Now Cubitts are only prepared to pay 35p an hour.

This cut led to an immediate total stoppage of the multi-million pound housing site. Stewards rightly saw that Cubitts intended to try and crack the strong trade union organization on the site which has made the men some of the highest paid in London. •Although it's official, PAPERBACKS CENTRE 28 Charlotte St E DEMAND TIGH OF PALEST HANDS service.

dockers. we can't get any change out of the union men,' I was told by a picket on gate yesterday morning.

In a succession of meetings, stewards have pleaded with officials to bring out the other Cubitts sites • in London to back the World's End men.

It's something : in 1972 when you have to have another Barbican or Horseferry Road do,' added John AUEW backs fight on backing of the engineers' union district committee in their fight against threatened closure.

BOC wants to start closing its Angel Road, Edmonton, welding proLondon W1 A NEW BID to force speed-up in London's Royal group of docks has been made from New Zealand by the director-general of the Port of London Authority, BOOKS @ PERIODICALS @ NEWSFAPERS endeavours. BY DAVID MAUDE OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT John Lunch.

The New Zealand Meat Producers' Board has threatened to transfer its trade out of London to wherever offers the cheapest and most reliable If a substantial proportion of the trade does go, up to 2,000 jobs could be attected. Port employers have attempted to use this situation to blackmail higher levels of throughput from the Now, after a visit to New Zealand for top-level talks with government Ministers and leaders of the trade, Lunch has joined this campaign for the second time in two months.

I must tell you frankly,' he says in message to London dockers, 'that the future of the conventional New Zealand meat trade in the Royal docks hangs in the balance, despite our best 'I have done all I can. But the past record of low throughput per man at the Royals meat berths means that the trade is worried about delays to both ships and importers.' In fact tonnages through the berths have increased considerably in recent weeks.

Fontaine.

Nevertheless, there is no sign that the men will abandon the principle they came out for. But without support from other building workers in the London area they face a bitter period of isolation.

Financial support should be sent care of the Treasurer, 1. Fontaine, 25 West Bank, London, N.16.

BOC jobs ducts factory early next year. It would be completely shut down by 1974 if their plans go through. This would destroy 750 jobs in the area, and the Sparklets factory at Tottenham would also be hit.

the port employers and the Producers' Board, in which the Vestey family have a powerful voIce, want They stepping up the pressure on all fronts.

In his message, Lunch tries to whip the Royal dockers with the example of the West India and Tilbury men. New Zealand is most impressed by the service given in West India and Tilbury,' he says.

The New Zealand Apple and Pear Board, Lunch adds, particularly valued the 'goodwill' of the India dockers in clearing their ships of perishable cargo at the start of the national dock strike.

By looking after customers in this way India docks are making a fine investment in the future.

After attempting to split the dockers and isolate the militants in this way, the PLA director-general says: I have expressed my belief that Royals dockers will respond to the challenge with good performances?

Lunch's previous intervention was interview with the Tournal of Commerce late in August.

There he said that Tilbury was the PLA's growth point, and that many of the customers who were establishing themselves at Tilbury were doing so with the Maplin Sands developmen even further downriver in mind.

'Frankly,' he said then, 'the Royals are a worry to me as they are not providing by and large the same standard of service as other docks in the system and it is less easy to attract fresh trade to them.' Besides being the largest complex in the upriver docks, the Royals have been the centre of militancy in the por:.

Following the end of the national docks strike, as Lunch's interviewer Peter Green revealed in the same article*, the port employers and container operators embarked on a deliberate policy of smashing the shop stewards' power there.

They took advantage of the opportunist weaknesses revealed by the Communist Party-led stewards in the ending of the strike in London.

It is no accident that Lunch's statement comes just four days after Lord Vestey's decision to sack 27 depot workers at Midland Cold Storage rather than give any concessions to the dockers' pickets there.

This attempt to split the dockers must be combated. But this job will not be done by stewards who refuse to clear up the confusion created by the rumours and counter-rumours of a picketing 'truce' at Midland in return for talks with Vestey. * 'Journal of Commerce', August 25, 1972.

See Who's creating cold store confusion? p. 1l.

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