PAPER OF THE INTERNATIONAI MARXIST GROUP Photo: CHRIS DAVIES (Report)
WEEKLY Militants lobbied the TUC in December to demand action for the freeing of the two. Now the TUC has moved - but will this be the beginning or the end? 1 JANUARY 1975 No 82 Jenkias has refused to budge on the question of the two, He has made it perfectly clear Test loyalty is to the law of the ruling class, and not to the workers movement who put him where he is.
breathing advocate of cabinet "discipline when it suits his purpose - has just shrugged his shouklers and said that he can do nothing only Jenkins has the power to free the two.
and Wilson are in need of a sharp reminder of just who they are the workers movement should be preparing to serve up to them.
bureaucrats throughout the long struggle to defend the Shrewsbury pickets has been utterly disgusting. For eighteen months they refused to hit a finger to help these trade unionists, charged only with the 'crime" of organising a picket.
railroaded through the courts, and shunted around from court to cluss justice.
PRICE 8p Phe General Council of the TUC has called a mass lobby of Parliament for 14 January to demand the freeing of the two imprisoned Shrewsbury pickets.
Other trade union bodies —including the Shrewsbury National Coordinating Committee and the Liverpool corporation works department— have called for a one-day strike on the 14th to back up the lobby. As the Secretary of the South-East Regional Trades Council, Stewart MacKenzie, said, 'I hope the maximum number of factories will stop on 14 January, especially in London.
Labour's Home Secretary Kay that his Similarly Harold Wilson -fireIt is obvious that both Jenkins supposed to represent. This is what something.
The attitude of the trade union The Shrewsbury workers were slapped down with vicious sentences court in futile appeals against ruling could be.
For a yoar the union bureaucrats turned a blind eye to their plight. Most of the jailed Shrewsbury picketa had already served out their sen tences by the time the TUC recog mised their existence. Only the most viciously treated Des Warren and Erie Tomlinson- were still around. They had been sent to prison for three years and two years for an offence which would normally carry a maximum sentence of six months, through the use of the notorious "conspiracy" laws, All the TUC did for them was arrange tea-parties with Government ministers. Only the stubborn refusal of Jenkins and Wilson to give way on even this most olatant case of class justice has finally forced the TUC to put up a show of doing For the bureaucrats see 14 Janwary as only a token gesture —an 'honourable burial' for the campaign to free the two. But for the workers movement a lot is at stake in this struggle much more than just the welfare of two comrades.
The right to picket has come under bitter attack over the past two years, ever since the 1972 miners strike reminded the workers movement and the ruling class alike just what a powerful weapon it Eric Tomlinson and Das Warren The Labour Government, instead of using its position to roll back this attack, has allowed it to ahead Since Labour come into office the courts have ruled, in the 'Prebbles case, that all pickets not connected with strikes are illegal. Labour's refusal to free the two and their virtual rejection of even the TUC's moderate proposals for amending the antipicket laws are further examples of the treacherous cooperation of the Labour leaders with the ruling class attack on workers rights.
In order to defend the right to picket, 14 January must be the beginning -not the and of the struggle. Militants should work to bring out the largest possible number of workers for the TUC lobby -but only as the first step in a continuing campaign of demonst rations and mass strikes on such a scale that Labour will be forced to fece the two and repeat ail antipicker and conspinacy laws.
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