Maxwell pulls back at BPC

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Peter McIntyre ONE OF the BBC's most prestigious projects this year, the all-action nauseapacked Royal Wedding edition of the Radio Times, was fortunately not available in many parts of England and Wales.

Mr Robert Maxwell, the entrepreneur whom Department of Trade and Industry report once described as not a fit person to run a public company, managed to foul up production of the Radio Times within weeks of it coming under his control.

His demand for redundancies among SOGAT members at Waterlow, Park Royal, London, was met by all-out strike action backed by other workers in the plant.

Embarrassment in the BBC, who were forced to announce almost hourly that their programme of events would not be available, forced Maxwell to make concessions. This was not before he had had a slanging match with SOGAT chapel officers and had crashed his car in full view of their membership after storming out of a meeting and ordering his unlucky chauffeur to move over.

His plan to transfer 750,000 copies of the Radio Times to East Kilbride in Scotland was foiled by blacking from Scottish SOGAT members. But details of the settlement are impossible to obtain, and it looks highly likely that the tough-talking Central London SOGAT branch backed down and accepted anything up to 35 redundancies.

This is no example to set SOGAT members at the MacDonald Futura warehouse in Camberwell — another part of the newiy acquired BPC -where members are preparing to fight 27 redundancies. The 'survival plan' accepted by officers of all the print unions can only be resisted if shop floor workers unite their struggles not only from one plant to another, but also across the traditional craft divide.

This means, also, linking up with the nine NUJ members at the Pergamon headquarters in Oxford who have been on strike and sacked since early March. An excellent start would be to send delegations to the next Pergamon rally on the picket line on Monday August 10th. more JOURNALISTS at the now defunct London weekly newspaper Camden Journal must wait at least another week to learn their fate.

The chapel met an 'arbitrator' last week to present their case for saving nine jobs which the company decided to axe three days before Christmas.

NUe members, with support from colleagues on the Islington Gazette and in Rugby, Leamington and Wales, have struck for varying periods up to six months to beat off this attack both on jobs and on one of the best-organised small chapels in the country.

Their battle ended in June after the NGA leadership first promised longoverdue support and then withdrew it when the owner of the paper, Stanley Clarke, chairman of Courier Press, promised to go to arbitration.

With the arrogance of his profession, the arbiter told chapel members las: week that he was too bust to decide on the future of their lives in the next week or so?