25,000 join- S.Yorks strike

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Jo Thwaites TRAIN DRIVERS go into a further week of industrial action having notched up a significant victory against the Fleet Street union-busters.

A wave of strike action, followed by determined blacking of the Sun and other newspapers owned firm in the face of legal threats and forced the Sun to carry a reply to the smears and slanders it published last week.

Far from undermining the action, the sun and its ASLEF leader Ray Buckton What's needed now is for local liaison committees to be formed to link up the different depots in an area so that there is effective organisation to coordinate action, and to put pressure on the leadership to call an all-out stoppage.

This is the policy of the ASLEF branch at Kings Cross, and a London liaison committee is being set up. These liaison committees will be of particular importance in view of British Rail's decision to lay off workers rostered for work on Sunday. 45,000 NUR and TSSA members will be locked out - a mere foretaste of the kind of treatment they will receive if ASLEF is defeated.

So in order to draw all railworkers into the fight against longer • working hours and job losses, liaison committees should be formed in all areas.

NUR guards could be drawn into these liaison committees straight away so that militants are not left isolated and there is a focus for them to fight against the NUR leadership's capitulation to flexi-rosters.

Blow

The British Steel bosses' complaints that the rail strike is hitting steel production, and thus 'forcing' them to make more job cuts, gives added fuel to the argument that the Triple Alliance between railworkers, steelworkers act mines should act now to delend AsLEF, as a first blow to detending jubs in the three industries.

by Rob Dawber SOUTH Yorkshire gave a lead this week in the fight against the Tories. A 24 hout general strike call put out by the South Yorks Steel and Engineering Committee was answered by 25,000 workers coming out and a mareh of more than 3,000 through Sheffield:

Ambrose-Shardlows, Firth Brown and . British Steel craft unions made up the core of the demonstration, supported by local branches of UCATI, AUEW, ASTMS, GWU, GMWU • NALGO, NUPE, COHSE, EETPU NATHE, several shop stewards committees and a contingent from the occupation at Sheffield Poly.

The key group were tht Sheffiled hus drivers who decided on an all out strike for the day, meaning no public transport within Sheffield boundaries.

A glaring absence from the demonstration and the strike, however were representatives of Yorkshire NUM and the ISTC. The steel industry has been decimated in South Yorkshire (20,080 jobs in 20 months), and steel workers are most obviously in need of action to stop the Tories. NUM support was denied on grounds that the Barnsley HQ was too busy dealing with the pay claim and ballot and with replacing Scargill. No approach was made at individual pit level.

Support by the NUM could have transformed the impact of the day.

The rally had a resolution put to it by George Caborn,, District Secretary of the CSEU, calling on the TUC to organise a national lobby of Parliament on 26 April. This was passed unanimously.

The South Yorks Engineering and Steel Committee is a rank and file body supported by the CSEU, and several shop stewards committees. Militants should be supporting it and pushing it to call for April 26 to be a national strike.