News from the Strike Fronts FREE TEA, LEMONADE, CHICKEN AND

BLACKLEGS producing a four-page edition of the Birmingham Mail have free tea, lemonade and meals all day long.

They have been told they can ask for anything—even chicken—and it will be provided free.

And they are allowed to smoke in the publishing room.

‘We would be sacked on the spot if we did it, Bro.

Harry Escott, father of the chapel at the Birmingham Post and Mail, told me. ‘It takes us all our time to get a piece of toast when we are working—and we have to pay for it.’

The blacklegs were being ‘treated like lords’, he added. ‘There were office typists on the linotype machines and directors and clerical staff on printing machines.

Bro. Escott and Bro. Jack Perry, secretary of Birmingham branch of Natsopa, were giving an exclusive interview to The Newsletter. Prominently displayed on the wall of the strikers’ ‘signing on’ room, with other Press cuttings, was the front page of last week’s Newsletter.

‘We are the shock troops going over the top in the fight for the 40-hour week and an increase in wages,’ said Bro. Perry. ‘If we fall down on our claim then so will every other trade union that tries to follow us. _ ‘All our members are solid. We firmly believe in the justness of our case. We are not asking for the moon.

“We believe it is part and parcel of Tory policy, through the various confederations of employers, to refuse all wage claims and claims for the shorter working week.

‘Arbitration is the red herring the employers are using to . confuse the public and trade unionists. What is there to arbitrate on? The employers will not budge from their offer of 23 per cent.

Highest profits in history ‘You notice they do not tell the public the nature of the twenty-two points they demand the unions accept before they give even a 24 per cent. increase.

‘Chairman after chairman of newspaper combines, including the Birmingham Post and Mail, have recorded in speeches that profits are the highest in their history.

‘Before this dispute they always thanked the staff for their loyalty and co-operation, which have helped to make these record profits possible. We give a fair reply: how about a share of this cake in return for all our labour?’

Birmingham printworkers are angry at Moffat’s, a building firm, sending its labourers to deliver paper to the Mail.

Demands for the Amalgamated Engineering Union and Electrical Trades Union maintenance men to withdraw their ‘labour are increasing.

Birmingham Trades Council has called on all trade unionists to boycott the Mail, and has barred Mail reporters from trades council meetings.

COMMITTEES ARE NEEDED

that the printers’ fight for the 40-hour week is a fight on behalf of every worker.

Building .workers and engineers were there with their banners alongside the printworkers.

Several minutes’ mighty roar The electrifying moment of the march came when the half-mile-long, six abreast procession slowed almost to a halt passing the Liverpool Echo building. For several minutes there was a mighty roar of: ‘The Echo’s black!’

Main features of the march were the linking of industrial and political slogans, the great numbers of young men and women obviously in a working-class demonstration for the first time, and the presence of a number of colonial workers.

It was a glorious occasion. That is—until the procession reached St George’s Plateau, where another thousand men and women awaited it, and where the speeches began.

Mrs Bessie Braddock began by promising to convey the best thanks of everyone to the police for the way they had behaved. She would do so as vice-chairman of the watch committee (she was careful to tell us that).

After telling the demonstration at great fength all about herself she ended by promising to raise certain points in Parliament.

The chairman, Bro. Kinsella, of the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers, called for three cheers for Bessie. There was a ragged response—lukewarm compared with the full-throated roar outside the Echo Not one loudspeaker van Liverpool’s small central disputes committee, consisting of representatives of the various unions on strike, and liaison delegates from Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party, has organized picket-lines as far afield as Widnes and St Helens.

Strikers have been surprised to find that among all the unions in Merseyside it is fot possible to find one solitary loudspeaker van.* Militant trade unionists have demanded a mass picket of Merseyside workers around the Liverpool Echo offices and works.

The Echo’s managing director and editor-in-chief is Alick Jeans, president of the Newspaper Society. He is producing an eight-page paper with apprentices and blackleg labour.

The local branch of the National Union of Journalists— refusing to co-operate in the production of ‘black’ papers—has decided that none of its members will co-operate with any journalist working on the Echo. :

Guarantee against sell-out There is no link yet between the dispute committees in Manchester and Liverpool.

This lack of contact, and the slowness in developing a mass picket around the Echo, are the two most serious shortcomings of the struggle on Merseyside from a rank-and-file point of