rike committees are vital to win

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STRIKE already some rail committees are being formed by union branches. a lot will depend on these strike committees -how active they are, how democratically organised, and how ready to give a lead.

Whether there is a strike or not may depend on them. ASLEF conference policy is against productivity deals, but ASLEF leaders are willing to talk about selling jobs. And the NUR accepts productivity deals in principle.

Unless the rank and file is mobilised and vigilant, the slightest pretence at concessions from BR will be enough for the top full-time officials to call the strike off.

If the strike lakes place, vital then, too.

This strike will not be won by sitting at home and waiting. Four weeks' strike notice has given the bosses plenty of time to prepare (that's why the Scottish Region of ASLEF has voted unanimously to bring the strike date forward a week).

Blacking, flying pickets and mass pickets will be vital to blockade the depots and stop rail traffic being moved by road. Many railworkers are also calling for the extension of the strike to London Transport.

The strike committees should be joint ASLEF-NUR .committees, democratically recallable by mass meetings during the strike, and drawing in extra militants beyond the established branch committees.

The first links from outside the rail industry should be with the Triple Alliance' The NUR conference this summer voted for an alliance against cuts and redundancies between rail, steel, and coal unions; and for this to include "Triple Alliance activity at branch level with the NUM and ISTC"

Coal, coke, iron and steel represent 66% of BR's freight revenue, so solid blacking by miners and steelsuccess of the strike.

But every factory whic receives supplies OH dispatches products by ri has a duty to support the strike. And the TGWU has : special duty.

In . the steelworkers strike, there was a forma statement of support from the TGWU - but no firm clear instruction to TGHL drivers not to cross picke lines.

In the miners' strikes o the 1970s, and in othe disputes, the railworker have had a good record o solidarity. Now they nea and deserve support them selves:

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What BR's productivity strings would mean Laurence Scott strike up against Boyd's ma Now the fight will continue on the picket line orgalaler BRITISH RAIL wants to cut 38,000 of its 240,000 jobs in the next five years. Already it has cut some 150,000 jobs over the last 15 years, and 6,500 between April 1980 and June 1981.

At present BR has about 9,000 vacancies -and a deliberate policy of | not filling them, because it wants to get rid of the "rarea den in naltnalii eonf jobs involved or use them At 2.45am on Tuesday August 18, 40 or 50 bailiffs smashed their way into the Laurence Scott occupation in Manchester and evicted the workers. Doors and windows were broken down and one worker was hit over the head.

Shop stewards' chairperson Peter Rowan said, •The manner in which the factory was repossessed will make the workers even more determined to pursue their fight from the streets outside.

«We have contingency plans to continue. There are still £3 million worth of orders in the factory, and the management want to get them out".

A repossession writ to *redeploy' workers from other axed jobs.

Long hours of overtime on the one hand, and train cancellations through staff shortages on the other, are established BR policy.

The NUR has calculated that a 35 hour week on the railways would create 23,000 extra jobs. But the BR bosses' push for profit means a relentless drive PHOTO: JOHN SMITH (IFL) to increase the dole queues.

So far, job cuts on BR have come mainly through "natural wastage'. Because of BR's rock-bottom wages labour turnover is high -about 20,000 workers a year have been leaving the industry.

But as unemployment mounts, the turnover is slackening. And if BR can't get the job cuts it wants through 'natural wastage' ', it will get them through sackings.

BR's productivity proposals mean more jobs lost and more long and 'unsocial' hours.

The rail bosses want flexible rostering. This means:

*Sundays become normal working days;

*The standard eight hour day is scrapped. Workers may have to do ten-hour shifts or split shifts. Split shifts can mean a few hours at morning peak times and a few hours at evening peak times, with a gap in between.

They want to extend one-man operation of trains. Different grades will be telescoped into one 'trainman' grade, guards and drivers' assistants will lose their jobs, and safety standards will suffer.

And they want open stations' - stations with no workers. Tickets would be issued and collected on the trains themselves. Ticket clerks' and ticket collecElsie Tanner of "Coronation Street" to Alan Gowling (chairman of the Professional Footballers Assocation and Bolton Wanderers star), asking them to speak up for Scotts.

"By placing as many pressure points possible on both our own union leaders and Snipe, we hope to continue the "What's more, we've got three people sat permanently on the phone all day just following up the various angles of support.

"One of the ironies of the situation now is the big turn-about that's taken place between the officials and the MPs.

Initially, the officials were keen to back us up but when Duffy withdrew official status the tors' jobs would go.

If these proposals are accepted, there will be many more - for scrapping mealbreaks, increasing job flexibility, reducing manning, etc.

Whole With two and a half million already unemployed, the railworkers' fight against these plans is the fight of the whole working class.

It's a known fact, for example, that AUEW sponsored MPs have their speeches vetted by Duffy before they are made on union related matters.

Ken Eastham (MP for Manchester Blackley)

has been rebuked on a number of occasions for not towing the Duffy line in speeches in Parliament.

Their power over the union extends to the fact that the two Broad Left Assistant General Secretaries, Bob Wright and Ken Brett, according to one local AUEW official, "can't go to the toilet without Big John's permission"

A fundamental probWITH Michael Edwardes issuing leaflets to all of BL's 80,000 workers, warning that the company may make no pay offer at all this year, the BL Combine Committee last Saturday voted unanimously to support a unified £20 pay demand.

The resolution adopted was broadly in line with one passed at a mass meeting at the Cowley Assembly Plant, and avoids any reference to percentages or payments SOmE WUINLIS MATADAT some workers receive under the company's roots activists on the stewards committee is that unless at the end of the day the positions of he right wing power barons are broken inside the unions, the prospects for workers developing an offensive strategy are bleak.

Denis Barry, the convenor of Scotts, lays a lot of the blame for this situation at the door of the Communist Party:

Forty "For forty years the Communist Party have preached socialism and progress - but when it comes to basic, fundamental questions like at

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