BRITAIN’S FIRST STRIKE AGAINST H-BOMB Stevenage Building Workers in Token Stoppage
1959The NewsletterEdward Knight Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
B UILDING workers at Stevenage New Town are to be asked this Friday to down tools in a one-hour token stoppage against the manufacture of guided missiles. This will be the first strike action in Britain against nuclear weapons.
‘It is essential to get rid of the H-bomb,’ said John Marney, secretary of the Stevenage branch of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers, tellin Eg me of the growing feeling among his members that a stand must be made against murder weapons before it is too late.
‘Black the H-bomb and the rocket bases!’, the slogan FIVE HUNDRED DOWN TOOLS ON OIL first put forward by The Newsletter in January 1958, REFINERY SITE AT GRANGEMOUTH is now bearing fruit in a town where over half the industrial workers are engaged on destructive work.
A STRIKE of 500 tradesmen employed by George The AUBTW branch and the local branch of the AmalWimpey and Co. has brought work to a standstill on gamated Society of Woodworkers are to press the the refinery plant of the Distillers Co. Ltd. and British Development Corporation to set up peaceful industries to Hydrocarbon Chemicals Ltd. at Grangemouth (Stirlingreplace this destructive work.
A resolution to this effect was carried unanimously at the shire).
AUBTW branch, and will be put to a mass demonstration The dispute follows the management’s rejection of a claim for sixpence per hour blanket payment to compensate for abnormal working conditions encountered on the job by all the trades concerned.
A similar claim had been submitted last September by the