wages negotiated by their union and accepted the previous day by Merseyside docks, delegates at a conference in Liverpool. The agreement gave dockworkers an increase of 2/- per day, with corresponding increases for pieceworkers. In return the unions had agreed to mechanisation, new manning schemes, measures to abolish restrictive practices and the reduction of absenteeism.
The Merseyside Portworkers Defence Committee - an unofficial body - had been campaigning for a Dockers Charter which incloded a guaranteed wage of 25/- per day, 14 days paid holiday and a pension scheme. The T&GWU rejected the scheme as being 'unpracticable. The strike, which began in Birkenhead, spread immediately to Liverpool and three days later Manchester came out. By 8 February 77 ships were idle in the three ports, although attempts to spread the strike to London had met with only limited success.
RED BAITING DEAKIN Arthur Deakin, the hysterical anti-communist who was then General Secretary of the T&GWU, denounced the strike and alleged it was part of a conspiracy by the World Federation of Trade Unions to strike at countries which do not have the Communist outlook. The next day dockers Johnson, Harrison and Crosby from Merseyside and Constable, Timothy, Dickens and Cowley from London were charged at Bow Street The strike at Brannans thermometer factory in Cleator Moor, Cumberland, has collapsed. It began in June, 1971, when seven men were arbitrarily selected for staff status and a pay increase despite continuing to do exactly the same work as before. The resuiting strike was made official by the AUEW almost immediately - union recognition in the factory had only been won after a long struggle, and the seven had promptly handed in their union cards on getting staft status. At first the strike was almost solid. But the management resolutely refused to negotiate, Issued an ultimatum declaring that strikers who failed to return to work would be "sacked', and brought in blacklegs, Cleator. Moor is a small town, with a high level of unemployment, and the strike caused deep divisions within the community, in some cases actually splitting families. Eventually only a hard core of fifty (two-thirds of them women were still out, Last month the Weat Cumberland district of the AUEW voted to discontinue a local levy of 5p a week, and the union executive took this opportunity to also withdraw strike pay. Without further funds, the remaining strikers were forced to abandon the struggle and join the dole queue Muriel Hillon, formerly a shop steward at the factory and leader of the strike committee. considers that the strike talled for ra main reasons. Factories in the area are widely scattered, and as Muriel Hillon says: "You just don't get the unity you find in big towns. But I think more could have been done to publicise the strike within our union. If workers had heard about the strike through their branch and gone back to their factory and found they were heedling an order for Brannans, straight away they'd think: "Well, this shouldn't be going out." If the union had let them know and asked for support, it would have helped enormously."
The union sell-out at Brannans is not an isolated case. The strike at Fine Tubes, Plymouth, which has now dragged on for over 2 years, could have been won by now had the unions concerned (AUEW & T&GWU) organised blacking on a national scale - yet official union support remains at a token level. The T&GWU makes a to-do about its concera fot the problems of the woman worker (to say nothing of the OAP's), but faced with the very real hardship of the night cicaners in their attempts to get organised, looks the other way and talks of realism. Hugh ScanIon and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions have just decided to de monstrate their reasonahleness by dropping The "Equal Pay" part of their package of demands in their national negotiations with the Engneering Employers Federation - and dropped the interests of their women members along with it Recent events have shown that union solidarity only works in practice when the rank-and-file take responsibility into their own hands. Now the Law Lords' decision puts the onus on union officials to keep their members in line, union members must learn to decide for themselves and to organise active solidanty with all sections of the working class under attack. One expression of this need is seen in the local women's committees already growing inside the unions to ensure women's interests are no longer brushed aside The organisation of Trade Union Defence Committees in all areas is also an ugent priority in this respect. Let there be no more Brannans!
James O'Hegarty Marilyn Scotcher The Red Mole 21 August 1972 Page 3
escalation of the war in Indochina: what it is doing to Vietnam; what the