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ADDRESS Red Mole Reporter 200 workers, most of whom are Indian, have come out on strike in support of a wage claim of £5 at the Mansfield Hosiery Mills Ltd. in Loughborough. The strikers are also demanding equal treatment in the factory: Indians are banned from working as knitters - a better paid job kept exclusively for white workers at the behest of the union (which is currently before the race relations board over this matter). The management has sacked all the workers who are on strike.
Both the white workers and the district secretary of the union (the National Union of Hosiery Workers) have refused to support the strike and the union is demanding that the strikers return to work.
Nevertheless, the struggle is spreading. Two more to aid struggles against these conditions - yet Loughborough factories belonging to the company (Nottingham Manufacturing Company) have come out in sympathy, and workers in Leicester and Shepsted will be coming out in support if the dispute continues for a further week.
The solidarity committee in Nottingham has played a crucial role in the development of the struggle. It was set up during a strike at Crepe Sizes Ltd.involving Pakistani workers. The committee is a united front of revolutionary groups - the Black People's Freedom Movement, The I.M.G. and International Socialism. The committee's aim is to organise support for workers in struggle and its ad hoc basis enables it to intervene quickly with leaflets, collections, solidarity meetings of local trade unionists, help on the picket lines, and obtaining social security benetits for the strikers. At Crepe Sizes, the committee's action helped force the union officials to back the strike and bring it to a successful conclusion. In the present strike, the solidarity meetings arranged throughout the East Midlands are playing an essential part in breaking down the strong racial overtones in the dispute. Although the nature of the solidarity committee's activities are partly produced by the peculiarities of the area - textile factories employing many black workers at rates far below the average, with union refusal this form of united front activity is of wider significance.
The Loughborough strike continues and the government's 90 day pay freeze has not weakened the workers determination to continue the struggle until victory. Despite the opposition of the union, solidarity is spreading and attempts are being made to win over the white workers. Support and financial contributions should be sent to:The strike committee, 31, Station Street, Loughborough, Leicestershire. The solution being promoted directly at the expense of students (and workers). Consequently, fully supports the present rent strikes and will seek to turn such struggles directly against the policy of the bourgeoisie. At the same time sees the necessity to centralise the, at present, fragmented struggles into a national movement through heightening the struggle in the colleges and promoting the involvement of the mass of students. il) To take as a special responsibility the defence of workers in the colleges who suffer from the effects of the capitalist rationalisation. "In the interest of a broader unity, this conference formally dissolves the LCDSU."
In pursuance of the terms of this resolution, a conference is to be organised in Margate on the first day of the NUS Conference, Friday 24 November at 1.00 p.m.
To avoid any possible misunderstanding, we would emphasise that the points which the forces in the LCDSU have privileged are absolutely non-exclusive. We do believe that these should be the basis of any specifically student alliance, but other questions and issues can be raised. Indeed, the IMG as the main force in the LCDSU would itself want to raise questions relating to the general class struggle, e.g. around the outcome of the present Tory-TUC talks, the struggle in Ireland and so on.
In order therefore to prepare the conference at the NUS, and explore on which issues unity in action can be forged, we invite a representative of vour organisation to a preliminary meeting on Friday, 17 November, Clare Building, London school or economics, koom sool at - p.m. Yours fraternally, Brian Grogan pro-tem conterence organiser