Chapple strikes again!

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"THE Executive Council's policy of closing lodges and branches has not been in the best interests of the membership and should be reversed."

This resolution, from the North London Lodge of the EETPU, was carried at the union's conference this May, but a little thing like that doesn't stop Frank Chapple.

The North London Lodge has now been singled out as one of the first to be cłosed down in a new round of attacks on left wing branches.

The lodge, lay officials, will be split up and many of its members placed in an industrial lodge' run by a full-time official.

Many glaziers in North London will be shoved into the Catford lodge on the southern outskirts of London.

Chapple's aim is simply to stop the members being able to have any say in their union - especially if they are left wingers. North London's secretary Tom Painter explained "It is progressive lodges such as us which are closed while so-called moderate ones like the plumbers lodge in South London are left alone."

Another victim of Chapple's axe is to be the Central London (electricians) branch, already suspended for refusing an EC diktat to pack out Labour Party bodies with his handpicked right wingers. It is set to be merged into a 16,000 member super-branch, agaln run by a tuli-time otticial.

But Central London has already shown that Chapple can be fought. Its campaign against suspension has already won growing support from the EETPU's membership, fed up at being deprived of their rights.

The job that militants in the union have now is to bring together all the lodges and branches faced with the axe into a campaign that can stop Chapple destroying our union.

Our Lodge was told "It will all be over by Christmas" - they said that in 1914 about the First Work War!

by a member of EETPU North London Lodge

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 15 October 1981 Page 15 THE third in a series of one-day strikes took place last Monday throughout British Shipbuilders. The strikes are being supported by all the BS yards apart from a majority of workers in certain unions in the Vickers shipyard, Barrow.

The unions involved include the Boilermakers, the Joiners and the GMWU.

Despite appeals at mass meetings in Vickers last week by the Shipbuilding Negotiating Committee and the stewards, the majority still decided to turn in even though a picket has been mounted by stewards in affecting the workers as much if not more than BS.

Obviously strikes will affect the workers but they should be fought to win and not be used as excuses by national officials who can see no way out for Robb Caledon in Dundee.

The way things are, the one day strikes can go on for a long time without much result except for growby Stephen Corbishley 'OUR STRENGTH is that we have the factory, the machines, and a warehouse full of Staffa motors" That sums up the feeling of the 220 engineering workers now in control of the Leyton factory. The American owners had planned to shut it down over the next year and a half.

Since September 29th the 400 staff and engineering workers at Staffa Ltd, manufacturers of hydraulic motors for the mines, docks, and building industry, have been fighting for their jobs.

The owners, Brown and Sharpe, took over Staffa in 1979. Within a year they had sacked the convenor, the deputy convenor, and

Everything seemed

for a bosses' victory.

in order to take advantage of a $4 million Government handout, promises of rate relief, and a £5,000 employee subsidy, the American owners also wanted to get rid of the union and move to a 'green field' site in Plymouth.

Suspicions

The company refused to discuss with the Greater London Council an exactly similar package of cash handouts that Plymouth was offering; and the stewards' suspicions grew that the company was not serious about negotiating over anything but redundancy money.

Staffa motors are essential equipment in all mines, and the NUM should immediately black all Staffa replacement motors, spares, etc., and ensure that the Coal Board buys no more Staffa motors until the workers win their demands.

Over 70 per cent of output is exported, and dockers could give vital support, too.

One feature of the occupation is the discovery of documents from Hay Communications Ltd, Grosvenor Gdns, London SW1, which have been used to train management and provide them with all the answers they need _ including to questions that the shop stewards never considered asking.

Deception

The sophisticated package of deception was designed to enable the managers to push through the transfer to Plymouth. -Messages money to Chris Newson, AUEW Strike Committee, 39 Somers Rd, Walthamstow, El7. And Socialist Organiser readers in the AUEW, NUM and T&GWU should be raising the question of blacking Staffa products. A militant sit-in strike by 87 AUEW members at a small plant in Swindon has won reinstatement after two days.

They had walked out on strike in defence of their convenor, John Hackett, who was suspended by management at Kembrey Wiring.

Management immediately sacked the whole workforce. But in the face of the occuphowever, remains suspended on full pay pending talks be.tween AUEW officials and the company.

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ation of the plant they climbed down. Hackett,