NIRC acquires new powers AUEW FINE WTO BE SEIZED TODAY

The NIRC president also said he would deliver a detailed judgement at a later date giving the court's reasons for their decision on the costs, and also dealing with a wide range of other points brought up during yesterday's hearing.

Yesterday's court proceedings which were described as 'unprecedented' established machinery for getting money off unions who refuse to pay fines to the NIRC voluntarily.

The fine was imposed after the AUEW branch at Sudbury, Suffolk, would not allow union member and evangelist Henry Goad to attend their meetings.

The union's two banks, Midland and Hill Samuel, refused voluntarily to disclose the union's accounts or pay the fine when asked by the commissioners.

Leading City accountants, Price Waterhouse, were appointed to collect the money last week when the 16-day deadline for payment of the fine expired.

The banks told the court yesterday they owed a 'duty of confidence' to the union, 'an old and much-valued customer'.

Without the instruction of the AUEW they could not pay the money, but would obey any order of the NIRC immediately.

The court was told that the engineering section of the union's cash account with the Midland was in a 'very substantial debit position'.

At the same time the union's stocks and shares held Midland as security were valued far in excess of the overdraft.

There were two credit cash accounts with Hill Samuel. No precise figures were revealed in court after a request from Mr Thomas Bingham, QC, for the banks. A request for the accounts to be examined in camera was turned down.

Sir John Donaldson ruled out making an order for the sale of some if the union's stocks and shares. He said it would create unnecessary difficulties with capital gains tax, for example.

The final order did not single out any specific account from which the money has to be paid.

Mr Richard Southwell, QC for the commissioners, said all the property of the union was subject to sequestration.

'It includes all the funds, whether they are capable or not of being used under the rules for industrial action, he said. Sir John confirmed this view later.

Mr Southwell said the bankers were under a misapprehension when they argued that the duty of confidence to a customer was overriding. They were subject to requirements of law.

Replying for the banks Mr Thomas Bingham claimed that the writ of sequestration did oblige payment except as authorized by the customer.

'We will comply with any court order,' he added. • Mr Goad's next branch meeting is this Friday. If he is refused entrance again he will be free to bring another action in the court. Widespread opposition to Lynch's 'dictator' laws FROM IAN YEATS IN DUBLIN OPPOSITION from the Irish trade union and labour movement to the Lynch government's so-called anti-IRA bill and the sacking of the controlling body of Radio Telefis Eireann continued to mount yesterday.

The Leinster House government moved quickly overnight to stifle opponents of its new oppressive legislation by freeing on bail RTE journalist Kevin O'Kelly. This is a bid to separate the clamp-down on the IRA from their rightward turn as a whole.

But as RTE journalists and technicians returned to work yesterday after a three-day strike in support of O'Kelly, all newspapers in Dublin and Cork were paralysed by a 24-hour journalists' strike.

Dick Walsh, chairman of the Dublin National Union Journalists' branch, said: "The colonels in Greece would have done what Jack Lynch is doing if they had legislated themselves Kevin O'Kelly: Released on into power instead of seizing it.

"There is no question that the government is moving towards dictatorship and the amendments to the Offences Against the State Act will carry it a good deal further.' whic It fo and

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STEEL WORKERS in Teesside continued their strike 'yesterday, despite opposition from their union who have described the dispute as a 'red plot'. The strike involves 1,000 workers at the British Steel Corporation's mills at Lackenby and they are demanding parity with South Wales steelmen who earn £8 above the Teesside rate.

The 'red plot' accusation, made at a mass meeting by the divisional organizer for the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation Jim Drinkwater, was drowned by jeers and heckling.

Mr Walsh claimed Fianna Fail had resented RIE criticism of the government and that they had used the MacStiofain incident as the precedent for a major attack. He added that the government was almost certainly preparing to deal with an outbreak of extra-parliamentary activity throughout the Republic in the next few months.

•Extra-parliamentary activity is bound to grow because of dramatically growing unemployment, with nothing being done to stop it and the very serious problem of rising prices!

Many trade unionists and Labour Party members are worried that the new legislation will be used against them to ban strikes and legislation which under the new law could be construed as injurious to the state.

But although both wings of the labour movement condemn the new legislation, there is little agreement on whether, together with the conviction of Sean MacStiofain and the attack on RTE, they mark a watershed in BACK

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