Police tough on sit-down strike

lewsletter building new factories and expanding a number of new towns and is expected to cost £100 million, most of this to be raised from the European Investment Bank.

This area is the centre of pit closures and there will be no shortage of labour for manning new factories.

The fight against pit closures has to be seen not as one of palliatives for the existing capitalist system, but part of the struggle for power in Britain. If there is to be a Tory government or one under the leadership of right-wing Labour, then 'planning' can only mean more unemployment, plus the herding of workers into new and highly-sweated industries.

Mr. Gaitskell was recently given space by the Beaverbrook press in Scotland to state his support for the 'direction of industry'. This demand is also the current policy of the Scottish TUC and is echoed faithfully by the Communist Party.

Along with it goes the demand for the development of 'new towns', also a favourite of Mr. Gaitskell. It is time these old decoys were exposed for what they are-support for capitalism and a tying of the Labour movetent, to class collaborationist policies.

Miners have had bitter experience of directio n of industry and they are reaping a tull reward they are reapir fuil reward from it now.

It means the worker following the job into new areas and cheapening his labour in the process. There is a new town at Glenrothes close : to the now dead pit shaft. All such well-meaning palliatives for streamlining the economy under capitalism aid the Newsletter Correspondent POLICE threats were made against strike pickets on Monday in the dispute between 600 car delivery men and the Austin group of delivery agents in Birmingham.

Striners at one of the firms in the group, the Autocar & Transporters Ltd., Alvepreventieway the gateway of the firm to church, were sitting down in prevent cars being driven away by part-time drivers sent by the agents to collect them.

For over three hours, 50 pickets blocked the entrance. Two policemen tried to persuade the strikers to move, but the men held their ground until a police superintendent arrived and threatened them 'with action' if they continued to sit in the road.

He told the branch secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Mr. William Birmingham, that the strikers would only be permitted to talk to the part-time drivers in an effort to persuade them not to drive away the cars.

BMC bosses were alarmed by the week-old strike because it threatened to hit the export of vehicles. A BMC official said some consignments would undoubtedly miss the ships they were scheduled to be delivered in and that the effect on delivery would become progressively worse.

The strike was over a claim for an increase in the hourly rate for certain intermediate journeys and the demand for a £2 10s. increase in holiday pay. Mr. A. Law, Secretary of the Commercial Group of the TGWU said that individual firms were willing to meet the men's demands but the group committee refused to consider them. He said it had been decided to make approaches to the individual firms to sign separate agreements.

The chairman of the group at first described the strike as 'utterly purposeless' and the demand as 'unreasonable' . On Monday, however, he announced that it was hoped to find a basis of negotiations with the union.

The dispute ended on Tuesday on the basis that the claim for increased holiday pay was to be dropped and a claim for a substantial increase on the basic rates to be negotiated with the individual firms.

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