TO CARRY ON THEIR STRUGGLE

THE seventy-eight African seamen who struck against racial discrimination have left Liverpool by air and returned to Lagos in Nigeria.

The Elder Dempster liner Apapa sailed last week without them.

Before their return to Nigeria, African crews on other Elder Dempster ships in Liverpool, Manchester and London went on sympathy strike.

Another Elder. Dempster liner, the Accra, arrived at Liverpool on Monday with the Nigerian prime minister on board. The end of last week found a collection of people, including Mrs Bessie Braddock, MP, Nigerian government officials and Hogan Bassie, the Nigerian boxer, working to remove the dispute from Liverpool before the Accra berthed and her crew joined the strike.

Mrs Braddock told the crew they must go back immediately, otherwise the firm would class them as deserters and they would be arrested and taken out of the country.

‘Fight is just beginning’

‘Don’t think it’s lost,’ one of the seamen told me after the meeting where they decided to go. ‘The fight is just beginning. We'll fight up there’—i.e., in Nigeria.

A cable from the Nigerian Seamen’s Union had informed them that the Lagos dockers were out in sympathy.

Trouble for Elder Dempster is not over.

In a few days the Apapa will arrive at Lagos with her 275 passengers feeling that the self-service voyage was not very agreeable. They will have to clean up after themselves in the Bay of Biscay and fetch and carry in the tropical heat.

Elder Dempster will still have to get an African crew in

‘ who told the strikers they had defied the sacred cow of the negotiating machinery.

They should have gone to the general conference at Yorke— even though every striker knew it was a waste of time.

A striker shouted: ‘If we return to work now and the management says “No” again, will the union make our strike official if we come out again?’

Kealy replied: ‘No, it must go to York, and then the executive will consider the case.’

Then Beard, the local official—who is not exactly popular among the strikers—put in: ‘Think of your poor wives and children.’

Another striker retorted: ‘Keep them out of this. We're fighting for a living wage, and that is for our families.’

But after two hours the platform got its way, for though there was a good spirit among a number who spoke against the return, that cohesive leadership capable of rallying the majority to defy the officials and stay out was lacking.

Breaking York memorandum stranglehold The need to create rank-and-file committees in the motor factories, linking the piece workers and day workers into a fraternal unit—so that the employers’ splitting tactics in sending thousands home when there is a sectional dispute can be combated—has emerged clearly in these struggles.

Such committees can link themselves together and carry the shop stewards forward with them.

Such committees, in the disputes that will recur time after time, can also appeal to workers in factories other than their own for solidarity action.

Above all, the basis can be laid for breaking the stranglehold of the York memorandum.

This machinery for stamping down on workers’ militancy was imposed by the bosses on the defeated engineering unions in 1926.

Since then the unions could have scrapped the York memorandum thousands of times. But’ the trade union leaders, frightened of class struggle, have been as eager as. the bosses to keep it going.

This hamstringing procedure can be smashed only by the workers’ moving forward in struggle.

The workers’ demands must become the issue—not whether this or that point. in the employers’ constitution was carried out. — The present motor disputes are a sign that the necessary leadership will be found in the course of the struggles—and there is no better way of hastening this process than the formation of factory branches of the Socialist Labour League.

JuLty 4, 1959 and is to be closed by January of next year.

‘The miners, of course, have not been consulted. We have been told that work will be found in the neighbouring Glenochil colliery, but this cannot provide other than shorttime. working for the men that are taken on. This is a fight against government policy, not just to keep the Devon open!’

Asked what had been the outcome of the stay-down, Bro. Hughes replied that they had forced the NCB to meet them, together with Abe Moffat and representatives of the miners’ Scottish executive.

And if the talks were not successful?

‘This is my personal opinion, but I think that every miner in Britain should down tools to stop the closures programme. This is a trial. We must await its outcome.’

Youngest down the pit, 17-year-old Andrew Stewart, refused to go to the surface until the rest of the men went up.

George Bolton, 25-year-old secretary of the Scottish Miners’ Youth Committee, who stayed down for the whole period, told me: ‘This has shown that the miners in general are prepared to grasp any lead given in this fight against the closures.’

And Bill Muir (24) said: “The cold was our worst enemy. News of support from other pits kept our spirits high.’