BOILERMAKERS ANSWER PRESS LIES

The Newsletter, vol. 3 no. 101, 9 May 1959 · scan pages 4, 5

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.

seeeseeeeeceeeecseen [| gbour Must Blast the Blimps TI TT IT Titi iii By the middle of this week over a third of the labour force was idle at Cammell Laird’s . Birkenhead Answering Press attacks that this strike of 1,700 boilermakers was about who should pull a string to chalk a line, the Merseyside delegate of the Boilermakers’ Society, W. Kerr, declared:

‘The issue is simply over the victimization of two men. That is overlooked by the gimmick writers of the popular Press.’

By suspending other workers the management evidently hopes that the hardships will be blamed on the boilermakers. But at plumbers’ and joiners’ meetings some of the men have demanded that all the suspensions should be resisted. grievances, the prisoners were undoubtedly goaded to a point beyond human endurance.

BOB PENNINGTON

yr $ Said one plumber: ‘In letting the firm lay off men at will you weaken the boilermakers. Cammell Laird keep our unemployment cards. If we ask for them to seek employment elsewhere, we get no dole for six weeks.

‘The firm wants the right to lay us off but at the same time keep us for employment when it wishes. The suspension weapon is used to discipline workers and split other workers from those on strike.’

Militants are raising the demand that the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions call a mass meeting of all trades in the shipyard to discuss united action against suspensions. ‘We need the 40-hour week to spread the work and stop unemployment.’

Though Monday’s stoppage was limited to one contractor, the men I spoke with made it clear that unless there is progress at the national negotiations an all-site meeting will be called to discuss further action.

‘We need a mass stoppage throughout the country,’ said Federation steward John Gantley. ‘Peaceful negotiations have got us nowhere over several months. We’ve got to demonstrate our strength to the employers and to our leaders.

‘The Tory government can afford money for H-bombs and rocket sites but not for the working class. We. must protest strongly against all rocket sites.

‘The Stevenage lads made a gallant stand. We fully support