MAY DAY, Sunday May

very careful with the Fleet Street press.

not giving him publicity for clear at once.

Is he, or is he not, going to fight the port employers all the way?

very blurred meanwhile.

and we do not politically trust that Party. Manchester last week-end of delegates from the IN INTERVIEWS I had this week Jack Dash With portworkers on Merseysid dockers articularl expressed FROM silence the union leaders and employers have contrived this MARCH (from Whitehall Place, near Charing Gross tube LABOUR HAS NO EXCUSE THIS TIME Make the bosses pay for the crisis Defeat all anti-trade union laws • not the workers Defeat US imperialism in Vietnam Workers all over the world unite to end imperialism this week-end in the ports of Manchester, Hull Modernisation Committee. This was decided at a special conference in These meetings will be the first opportunity which rank-and-file portworkers will have had to LIVERPOOL REG PERRY REPORTS and trussed up, but gagged as well. We get nothing at all except the destruction of all the safeguards against the employers we have won over the years. We will definitely be worse off.

But they have not implemented this scheme yet and we shall fight Isletter Blue it right through to the end.

Nothing but the complete withdrawal of this scheme will satisfy us' Mr. Larry Cavanagh, a Birkenhead docker and branch delegate to the Area Committee supported this:

It is now abundantly clear to all dockers that the modernisation of the docks is to be carried out at the expense of the docker. "These amendments to the scheme have been worked out behind our backs by leaders of the T&GWU, NAS&D, employers and the Labour government. "Devlin proposed that opposition from dockworkers must not be allowed to stand in the way implementing this decasualisation. It has always been custom and practice in the NAS&D for decisions of this nature to be ratified by mass meetings of members before our officials reach agreement. Devlin did not like this and our leaders have listened to him and acted against our interests. "There is not one good thing about this scheme. Jack Jones, acting assistant general secretary were cuany of the T&GWU calls it a step to© Devlin Resothat be as d ward nationalization. It is nothWing of the kind.

FROM MEETING IN HYDE PARK the Labour Government returned with a decisive majority out compensation express their opinions on decasualisation.

In London the docks Liaison Committee has been holding meetings at the main dockheads where dockers have voted against the recommendations.

The mood for a fight to a finish is growing in the ports as more and more dockers begin to realise the extent to which the union leaders have gone to betray them.

Below we print reports from our reporters.

Peter Kerrigan 'Does this mean that the Modernisation Committee and the Labour government believe nationalization would be the best way of modernising the docks? If they did, then why don't they nationalize now, before the employers have created more chaos?' Mr. Tony, Burke, a T&GWU member in the No. 10 control in Liverpool, was particularly angry about the role of the Labour government:

and the Labour govern ment must have known about th he he he sinks, Docker.

under race the ne are te Fact which i - po do as ockers see the connection the It is very scheme tween the introduction of thi and the It is no accident that these two measures are introduced at the same time. Nationalize all the basic industries with• Smash the Smith regime in Rhodesiaarm the African workers "The anti-trade union legislation will be used against the docker if he should fight to oppose this scheme, which he must.

It was the solidarity of dockers which smashed Order 1305 1951 and removed it from the statute books.

'The employers know from bitter experience that dockers will resist this other attack on their conditions.

'No doubt they fondly hope that with the legislation contained in the Prices and Incomes Bill they will be better able to defeat the dockers and implement these Devlin proposals.

'But dockers have a good case to win the unity of other workers which will be essential to their struggle. If they do this, I have no doubt that this scheme can be defeated.' Mr. Peter Kerrigan, well-known militant from Merseyside, also emphasised this point:

'The dockers are to be taken on first. The Labour government intends to introduce this scheme sometime in July.

'In the meantime they are preparing the legislation on the trade unions so that they can attack the wages and conditions of all trade unionists.

I don't think there is anything accidental in the fact that the port employers have stubbornly resisted agreement on the wages which dockers are to be paid under this scheme.

'If dockers fight, and I know they will, they must think ahead and outmanoeuvre the employers.

"The Devlin proposals, as now seen in the amendments to the Dock Labour Scheme and the issue of trade union legislation, are for one and the same purpose: to reduce the standards and rights of workers. We must fight them as one issue.'