Staffa sit-in busted

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SUBSCRIBE! SINCE October 2 no cars have been produced in a major part of the Renault factory at Billancourt, near Paris. A wave of strikes has rolled through the factory, the most important being a strike of 700 assembly workers for regrading and against attempts to impose speedup. As a result of this strike, the management has locked out a total of 4,000 workers at Billancourt. Management has made token concessions such as offering a 50 franc rise (the strikers' demands would mean a rise of between 170 and 300 francs a week). AT 5am on Saturday October 16, several hundred police, a few bailiffs, and management, in a multi-prong movement, smashed their way into the Staffa factory in Leytonstone, in a military type operation.

The factory had been occupied for several weeks by workers in an attempt to save 390 jobs.

The police were acting on a repossession order granted to the management by the courts on Friday morning. Earlier in the week, a police helicopter swooped low over the factory, clearly taking photographs to help on their early morning raid.

At the time of the police raid, there was only a handful of workers on the premises, and in tactical terms they had little option but to leave.

They are not, however, disheartened. The official picket lines of the AUEW and ASTMS have been set up outside the factory and are being manned on a rôta basis. 300 people turned up for a mass picket outside the factory on Monday 19th.

Stockpile

It is hoped to get official TGWU blacking of all Staffa products, as a first step to try and stop management moving the stockpile of machinery inside the plant.

The management strategy will probably be to try and break the workers' determination by getting some of the workforce back in the factory. The convenor, Dave Green, expects management to issue letters to the workforce inviting them the workforce back to work.

Staffa workers, like those at Laurence Scotts, need as much support as they can get from the labour movement. They are in the forefront of the fight to save jobs..

Many readers tell us they think Socialist Organiser has improved greatly since we went weekly. And our circulation has improved, too.

But it could improve a lot more if some of the many readers who like the paper, but only take one copy for themselves began taking bundles.

We're offering bundles of 5 each week for 80p p ost free, and bundles of 10 for £1.50 Messages/money: Chris Mewson, AUEW Strike Committee, 39 Somers Rd, Walthamstow, E17. Socialist Organiser readers in the AUEW, NUM and TGWU should be raising the question of blacking Staffa products.

post free. That's £9.60 for three months for bundles of 5, and £18 for bundles of 10.

Regular subscription rates are f4 for three months, £7 for six months, and £12 for a year.

From: Socialist Araanicar 28 Middie

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Write to 150 Walworth Rd, London SE17.

Block hunger strike, many republican prisoners in the Long Kesh camp are now apparently wearing "their DEMONSTRATION Saturday October 24, 11.30 from Victoria. Emoankment, London own clothes.

They are also beginning to claim rights to association, recreation and meads in the canteen served by their own nominated 'orderlies".

But as yet it is unclear how many concessions will be made to prisoners on these issues, or on the queston of interpreting what is prison work? . It seems certain that the Thatcher government will offer no more than a 50% restoration of remission to the prisoners who took part in the four-year 'blanket' protest.

Courage

The sacrifice and courage of the ten dead and the surviving hunger strikers has however drawn the world's attention to the plight of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.

It is high time that was transiated into a fight for solidarity in the British lab: our movement.

Troops out now!

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Renault na tec