Over 70 trade union delegates attended a conference last weekend called by the Sheffield and Rotherham Shrewsbury Defence Committee. It was, explained chairman Gwyn Read, a delegate from Rotherham Trades Council, the latest of the committee's attempts to publicise the issue and to plan practical measures to defend the pickets.
Jim Kemp, of the London building workers Joint Sites Committee, emphasised that the law is based not on judicial niceties or on debates inside the courtroom, but on the balance of class forces outside. And the State's preparations for the inevitable clashes under Phase 3 of its income policy entail smashing the most important tactical development in the labour movement over the past 18 months - the mass flying pickets, first used by the miners and building workers last year, and most recently put into effect by the Chrysler workers. The answer to the Government's attacks he said, depends on the ability of the rank and file to lead mass mobilisations of the working class. As John Lebor of the Labour Research Department told the conference: 'All laws are good for the capitalist class and bad for the workers.'
Two building workers from the Shrewsbury area also spoke at the conference. Alan Abrahams, a UCATT regional official and member of the editorial board of Charter, the building workers' rank and file paper, detailed the problems of organising in an industry with a large element of casual labour. As he said, even after the great steps forward in last summer's strike North Wales remained one of the weakest areas for union organisation, which no doubt explained why this area had been chosen for the attack. Des Warren, one of the Shrewsbury 24, described the harrowing experiences of the pickets since their arrest in February: telephone calls late at night, threatening letters, and continual police harassment.
The main resolution preparing the way forward was carried unanimously. Moving it on behalf of the committee, Rotherham building worker Ian Stevenson stressed the need to extend the campaign throughout the whole of Yorkshire, and for delegates to raise the issue in their organisations. It was agreed to work for a mass mobilisation for the rally to be held in Trafalgar Square in September.
The conference also recognised the wider issues of repression, nationally and internationally, discussing and unanimously carrying emergency resolutions in defence of the five Birmingham building workers on trial for their activities in fighting against the lump; in support of the three members of the NUT in Wandsworth, under attack from their union leadership, and in solidarity with the militants of the former Communist League, banned by the French Government.