The TUC bureaucrats last week managed to push through their L6 wage-limit. But in eight or nine months' time, faced with a massive drop in their standard of living and further increases in unemployment, we can expect more and more workers to challenge the £6 limit.
very well and have begun their prepara tions well in advance. 1972 miners' and building workers' strikes, mass pickets have been a large thorn in their sides. So police have obligingly attacked picket lines in Newcastle, Peterborough, Birmingham, Glasgow and now Liverpool artne present ume taere are over 100 workers on trial for various picketing 'offences, while Des Warren remains in jail.
The response to these attacks on pickets has been far from adequate. In fact, if the trade union bureaucrats had selling the £6 limit, then the working class would be in a much stronger positon.
pious resolution calling on the General Council 'to use the full strength of the the release of Des Warren. Mick McGahey of the NUM claimed that if Warren had been a miner he would no longer be in jail.
therefore be campaigning amongst the Scottish miners for strike action now. It is almost certain that he would win in Scotland many other workers could be brought into such a struggle because of the savage attacks on pickets at the National Front meeting in Glasgow.
TUC to organise any struggle can be itants opposing the slanders heaped on the Shrewsbury workers by the Elecin the police!
the Eldon Square pickets in Newcastle, the Cammell Laird workers in Birkenattack in Glasgow.
One thing the right to picket.
The employers have understood this Ever since the been prepared to put a tenth of the energy into defending pickets that they put into PIOUS MOTION The TUC of course passed yet another British trade union movement to secure Bro. McGahey, if he is serious, should Newcastle.
support from miners in other areas. And However, the unwillingness of the seen in the ejection from the hall of miltricians' delegate. Marie Patterson, chairing the Congress, even threatened to call Moreover, not one trade union leader has yet called for any actions to defend head, or the victims of the vicious police.
But some workers have begun to see the common nature of these attacks on The Eldon Square 'Des Warren is still in nick at the moment, and ten lads are up on trial in And then there's 76 lads up on trial in Glasgow for antifascist demonstrations. We've got to concentrate on the same sort of events and same tactics we used for the Shrewsbury lads in these trials, and for the lads that are now involved in the Cammell Laird dispute.
'What they're doing now is not using conspiracy laws, but once again using the criminal law. At the present time there's over a hundred people involved in law suits arising from incidents that have happened on the picket line. I don't think the TUC have got any option other than to call for a one day stoppage.' - Ricky Tomlinson, Shrewsbury picket, after be ing thrown out of the TUC conference last week son, who brought messages of support from Des Warren and the Cammell Laird workers. One of the arrested pickets in Glasgow also spoke. After the meeting the stewards from Rover in Solhiull LawS who had come for the demonstration the next day in support of the Eldon Square Square, Cammell Laird and Glasgow pickets, promised a donaton to tre Glasgow defence committee.
The nationally organised one-day general strike which Ricky Tomlinson is arguing for would be a tremendous step forward in bunamg a comapaign a campaign would have to take up all attacks on pickets. and not simply call for the release of Des Warren or - worse still - just the repeal of the Conspiracy By uniting the struggles at Eldon with the fight to free Des Warren, we will be able to build the broadest possible movement to defend the right to picket. This will put the workers' move ment in a much stronger position when it goes into battle against the £6 limit.
LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE 'socialist' programme that maybe the red weekly I1 september 1975 labour party 3