pack of cards.
mighty heave from the workers movement released.
After these struggles, the trade union leaders desperately hoped for a return to "normal". The employers wore more realistic. They knew that a return to normal meant breaking the power of the working class and smashing the mass pickets. If the IR Acr would not serve that purpose then some law had to be found that would: 2 IN THE MINERS' STRIKE OF 1972, FLYING PICKETS WERE USED ON an unprecedented scale. The power stations were choked off, and victory for the strike was assured. The Tory Government's wage policy collapsed like a Later that year the hated Industrial Relations Act was ground into the dust as thousands of workers rallied to free the Pentormile Fire. Factories, docks, and building sites ground to a halt. The capitalist law was shrugged aside by a the imprisoned dockers were Robert wake whole soctions of the trade union bureaticracy. Even the TUC had to announce it was calling a one-day general strike The Communist Party could quickly place itself at the head of The rank and file movement because even the trade union bureaucracy dare not oppose that struggle, 'NORMAL' LAW The Shrewsbury arrests were different. It was not the hated IR Act under which the workers had been charged, instead it was the "normal bourgeois law. The mass of the working class were confused on the issue, which meant that no mass spontaneous opposition to the 1875 Act sprung up.
There was no movement which the CP could ride, It either had to come out in opposition to the trade union burcaucracy and begin the of whose members were being charged, independent organisation of Shrewbury Defence Committees, or rely on putting pressure on the trade union leaders, Because the CP sees the building of an alliance between itself and the trade union and Labour Leil as its way to power in Britain it naturally At a mass meeting, this offer chose the latter course.
of the revolutionary left, independent militants and groups of the CP rank and file who had to take up the Shrewsbury case. It was they who organised atost of the speaking lones for the Shrewsbury Defence Commiitter. It was they who organised local Liverpool building workers on the march during their unofficial strike against the jailing of the Shrewsbury lads. The Communist Party refused to make their action the focus of a national campaign, and instead clung onto the coat-tails of the trade union buresucrats. meetings, leafleted factories, put up the posters on the building sites and set up the local Strewsbury Defence Committees. It was mainly because of Committeer that pickets and demonstrations were held outside the courts.
The CP. anxious not to cut itself adrift from the unjon bureaucrats, refused to use its forces and its inflwence in the building trade to organise all-out strike action on the sites. No one would claim that a ready-made movement existed as it did over the Pentonville 5. But the CP refused to fight for the building workers, most of whom were educated over Showsbury, as a spearhead for a rolling strike movement when the first of the Shrewsbury lads were imprise oned. In fact they sabotaged the decision of the Birmingham UCATT shop stewards committee to do just that.
BIG INTERVENTION a big intervention in the Shrewsbury Campaign when it begin to fear that lack of involvement might mean the left, But its intervention was made It was therefore the small forces the first casualty.
ToT austs. the revolutionary left and the Defence * LOST The CP had only starled to make been by-passed.
loss of intrience to the revolutionary ANOTHER BOSSES' Ever since Labour first took office in 1924 the budget of its respective Chancellors of the Exchequer have not held any surprises for the working class-except nasty ones.
Snowden, Cripps, Dalton, Callaghan, etc. have all produced budgets which have had as their aim the shoring up of the capitalist system Healey's budget is not yet in as we go to press, but it will not be any different. Interestingly enough all the hysteria and innuendo about 'Marxist influence in the Labour Party" which was such a feature of the press reporting during the clection compaign has now virtually stopped as the same press awaits Healey's hudget, Given the role of British social democracy as an important prop of the capitalist system in this country, we can be sure that Healey will offer a number of incentives to the City. Price controla will be relaxed Money will be doled out for industries tottering on the verge of Whether Healey uses the skeleton of a National Enterprise Board (which might soothe the 'let!' Tribunites) or Harold Lever's Bank scheme makes little difference. Some of the more sophisticated indus trialists-Like the boases of ICt and British Leyland-don't mind under what flug industry is hoosted, provided that the problems of 'cash-flow are resolved, No matter how Healey tries to cover it up, this is going to be a bosses budper. Tens of thousands of workers who carassed and worked for the Lahour Party in the last elections, and the people they convinced, will react Indignaptly. The sociul contract" could well be After all, British capitalism is not going through just any old crisis.
It is the most serious in its entire history, and Labour politiclans who seek solutions to it at the expense of the working class will not be easily forgotten, The massive cuts in social expenditure (housing, health, education) are being made precisely in order to make resources available Nationalisation of the leading industrial monopolies, starting with those that try to throw workers out of jobs, would be a first step towards dealing with the crisis in the interests of the working class but there won't even be a whisper of that in Healey's budget.
Those who will cringe with pain will not be the capitalists, but the millions of workers already waging an uphill struggic to maintain their living standards. It is they who must start to work out plans for solving the crisis-for Labour's plans are not for them.
******** tor one purpose: to stop any independent action, and to make sure the Shrewsbury Campaign did not come into open conflict with the bureauc The end product of this policy is only too easy to see, Warren and Tomlinson went to jail. They lost cheir appeals and have now gone back to finish their sentences.
The failure of the Cl to mount a really systematie campaign of strike action has helped the state to blunt the right of the workers to organise mass pickets. Furthermore it has meant that a real opportunity to educate the working class on the need to oppose ail capitalist laws has Al last weck's rally George Smith, general secretary of UCATT, made it clear that be and his right-wing executive have no intention of org anising any mass movement to forco * the Labour Government to free the Shrewsbury 2. Again the CP have restricted the actions to token strikes, as they hang on to the coat tails of the bureaucrats.
And agues, the CP isolated a group of workers who did take all-out unofficial strike action - building workers in Laverpool, whose decision was Ignored by the Morning Star and not sunde the focus of a national campaign Their return to work for lack of support outside Liverpool was of course fully reported in the Star.
Once again, the initiative falls to those who are prepared to push the struggle forward, no matter what the Sureucrats do. In every possibile area committees must be set up to fight for and organise indelinite strike action to free Warren and Tomlinson It is a hard task, it will involve a hard and difficult slog, but it is necessary if the interests of the working class are to be defended
In early 1973, 24 Shrewsbury building workers were charged under the 1875 Conspiracy Act with alleged offences arising out of the building workers strike which had taken place in the summer of 1972. The ruling class intended to strengthen the power of their courts to deal with striking worker. They also hoped to use the sentences meted out to these workers as a macans of intimidating and demoralising other workers faced with having to challenge the law:
The arrests should have aroused a mighty response from the trade union movement Pentunville had shown how lo deal with such attacks. Ne such response was forthcoming.
The leaders of UCATT and the TGWU wanted the men to plead guilty to the "lesser charges" amault, obstruction, etc. hoping that the prosecution might drop the conspiracy charges. The entire emphasis was on a legal defence and the union leaders stuhbornly resisted an open direct challenge to the law.
HESITANT The Communist Party, a number at first appeared to be strangely hesitant aboul launching a campaign.
Over the Pentonville Five, there was widespread opposition to the IR Act. As soon as the dockers were arrested this opposition swelled over into a mass movement pulling in its