Black Pergamon!

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Patrick ROBERT Maxwell, millionaire publisher, has had his most outrageous offer yet slung back in his teeth by NUJ members at Pergamon Press.

Maxwell's first meeting with NUJ leaders came almost six months after he sacked nine NUJ members at his Oxford base for daring to strike in defence of their rights to a wage rise.

His long-awaited offer deserves a special footnote in the history of union-busting employers.

It was: for six members - reinstatement; for three, including two chapel officers - deportation.

The FoC, Jim Boumelha, was offered a transfer to Paris; the deputy FoC and NEC member Simon Collings had a chance of New York or Australia; and Carol Russell, group chapel MoC, was offered Aberdeen on account of her Scottish accent.

Of course none of these offers was anything more than a flippant jibe at the committee.

This must be opposed vigorously and immediately.

On Friday there is a full meeting of TGWU convenors to consider the wage review.

The meeting must back the Cowley membership both in their £20 claim and in their demand that either a joint elected committee is agreed or the TGWU elects its own democratic and accountable committee and demands the right to negotiate with BL independently.

Stewards and workers in each plant should find ways of putting maximum pressure on the TGWU senior stewards' meeting.

ight chapel leadership. The real offer came in Maxwell's alternative - several thousand pounds if they would gc away.

Any humour in the offer was savagely outweighed by the fact that NUJ president Harry Conroy promised Maxwell he would recommend it for acceptance.

The chapel stood firm, rejecting the sell-out by nine votes to nil. They stepped up demands for the action to be spread with strikes throughout the British Printing Corporation which Maxwell recently bought and of which he is now chairman, and by blackıng all Maxwell printers.

This key demand for blacking would involve NUJ members at the Sunday Times and the Observer taking action to stop the colour magazines. It would also hit the Radio Times, TV Times and a large number of IPC magazines.

Such is the extent Maxwell's monopoly colour printing.

The chapel's fight is being hampered by the retusal of key people in the NUJ leadership to fight for the demands and by a high-level spy somewhere in the union keeping Maxwell well informed.

Even as Pergamon members pressed for action, NUI officials were urging their London colleagues in BPC to settle their own claim with Maxwell by withdrawing it completely and staying out of the fight.

Vincent Hanna - the Newsnight TV reporter -declared that Radio Times members were disciplined enough to obey an instruction. But he and other broadcasting leaders were advising them they would be lemmings to do so.

The National Newspapers Industrial Council went one better, and did not even instruct relevant Fleet Street chapels to meet. That at least has now been overturn ed, and the Sunday Times and Observer chapels will hold mandatory meetings.

Meanwhile promising reports in favour of blacking have come from several magazine and book-publishing chapels.

Tamely, the NUJ emergency committee decided to wait three weeks before taking a decision on blacking. Meanwhile, industrial councils were asked to "draw the facts of the Pergamong dispute to the attention of their chapels and canvass these chapels on the prospect of escalating the dispute"

It says much for the Pergamon nine that they shrugged off their disappointment and began preparing a new campaign for the blacking be put into effect.

Robert Maxwell It also says much for the lack of sharpness on the NUJ left that both Jonathan Hammond and Dave Chapman - who genuinely were trying to help the Pergamon members - went along with the Hanna formula.

It is only by challenging such sham resolutions that the tide can be turned in such disputes.

The Pergamon dispute has become a test for the whole union as well as a challenge to the attacks Maxwell has launched throughout the printing industry.

Blacking and strike action can blow Maxwell apart, but it can only be won if the NUJ leadership is forced to take off the gloves and start fighting for real.