Solidarity grows for the strikers

• At Colville's, Lanarkshire, stee! workers threatened a 24hour strike in support of the Port Talbot men. • On Monday, in London's West India Docks, the tally clerks, who are members of the TGWU, decided to black any large quantities of steel that might help undermine the strikers' position at the Steel Company of Wales.

The Sheffield District and Divisional Committees of the AEU have both passed resolutions pledging full support for the Port Talbot strikers. They are to send financial support. @ The Port Talbot Trades Council last week lifted the infamous 'black circular', which banned and proscribed the Communist Party. • Moves are afoot in Port Talbot to organise joint demonstrations of all the six craft unions who are locked out and are being refused dole money.

It is by actions like these that the struggle in Port Talbot will be won. The steps reported above should be only pointers to further and more extensive actions by the labour movement.

This dispute is not merely over craftsmen's wages in one particular steel works. The right to organise in unions is in jeopardy.

And underlying the strike is the decisive question of whether or not the working class will benefit from the increased wealth produced by automation, instead of paying for it with redundancy and the dole queue.

Committed

Trade union solidarity inside Port Talbot and wide support from the labour movement outside it are vitally necessary.

It is no good calling upon 'the Ministry of Labour and all responsible public bodies' as the Communist Party has done. These bodies are not unbiassed. They are firmly committed to serve the interests of the employers.

Lifting the ban on the Communist Party and joint demonstrations by all the craft unions inside Port Talbot are the first steps towards the necessary unity. But the strike cannot be won unless the production workers of BISAKTA and the TGWU in the works are actively

brought in to support the strikers.

They stand to lose as much as anyone if the strike fails and the management is allowed to impose its terms for automation and speed-up.

The ruthlessness of the management in the lock-out is a foretaste of its ruthlessness should the strike fail. The production workers, as the overwhelming majority of the workers employed in the plant, hold the key to victory over the management.

At least one BISAKTA branch in the works has come out in favour of the strikers. The craftsmen must actively work to win the support of more of them.

The rejection of the TUC proposals by the AEU aggregate meeting on Monday shows that the rank and file members of the union are determined to The locked-out ETU members at Port Talbot who are not receiving unemployment pay have launched an appeal for funds, with the agreement of their executive council. Donations should be sent to T. Lyons, 98 Woodfield Street, Morriston, Swansea, Glamorganshire.

fight on despite the attempts of their so-called 'representatives' to get them back to work.

These leaders know that a sell-out (or in their terms 'an agreement acceptable to the management') is difficult to impose on workers out on strike.

If they can be got back to work, the men are less likely to strike again over the same issue and it is therefore easier to impose agreements on them.

This was the lesson of the Ford's strike in 1962. The men returned to work on the union leaders' promise that there would be no victimisation.

Once they were safely working again, the 17 shop stewards were sacrificed in the interest of 'agreement'.

The TUC must not be allowed to impose any such 'agreement' on the workers of Port Talbot.

Pressure on the strikers continues to mount, with the CP's 'responsible public bodies in the lead. The government, not satisfied with refusing the ETU men from SCOW their dole money, is also refusing it to ETU contracting workers who have been thrown out of work as a result of the lock-out.

The argument used to justify this move is that their union subs would go towards the ETU lock-out fund and thus public money would be being used to subsidise men involved in a dispute.

The logic of this argument would be to stop the dole of all unemployed ETU and AEU men all over the country. This ridiculous argument is made even more ridiculous when one considers that unemployed union members do not pay dues anyway!

Clearly this refusal to pay dole money is merely one more way of trying to cause bad feeling between the unions, in the hope that the ETU men will blame the AEU for the government's actions.

The government's plan to set up a court of inquiry if the men return to work is tantamount to handing the trade union leaders a sell-out formula on a plate. If the men go back and a bad agreement is foisted on them, the union leaders can nevertheless protest their innocence.

The local council's actions are hardly praiseworthy. The council normally runs a rent relief scheme, granting a reduction of 5s. a week to tenants who are in any financial difficulty.

Naturally, during the lock-out, a great many of the tenants are in precisely such difficulty.

Many of the workers have applied for rent reductions. But the council has stopped issuing forms and is referring the matter to a committee.

This Labour-controlled council seems very reluctant to help the workers whose interests it is supposed to serve, at a time when help is badly needed.

If the government is unwilling to give public money to 'subsidise workers engaged in a dispute, it was far from unwilling to use great amounts of (Cont. page 2, col. 1)