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What is needed is the mobilisation of the whole labour movement in all-out general strike action. But such is the weight of confusion created by the betrayals of TUC leaders since Thatcher came to office that it is plain the workers movement is not ready to embark upon - such a course of action.

Awareness

We must call therefore on the TUC to organise a series of one-day strikes against the Bill-strikes reaching every branch and shop floor meeting, every shop stewards committee, explaining the issues at stake for the whole labour movement.

We must mobilise in opposition to futile protests such as the brainchild of the TGWU bureaucrats-staging silent half-hour protests at lunchtime!

To those who claim that May 14 1980 was a failure the answer must be that we need firm instructions for strike action from the TUC. Such a series of strikes could under certain conditions is Kitson conn ing! A YEAR or two ago in sunny Manchester a certain Mr Kirkham who was member of NATSOPA decided to take voluntary redundancy.

Now an old trade union principle opposes this on the basis that those lucky enough to be in employment have no right to sell a working class job.

When Mr Kirkham pocketed his slightly more than 30 pieces of silver his branch passed an admirable resolution to the effect that Mr Kirkham could go hang himself and that all those who sold their jobs would not be re-admitted later on as mainstream members of the union.

They would only be eligible for the casual section.

This did not go down too well with Mr Kirkham.

Having spent his ill-gotten gains, he made repeated attempts to obtain reinstatement as a regular. ing to his rescue came Jim Prior's 1980 Employment Act.

This gave tribunals and courts the power to decide whether or not unions had behaved "reasonably" in expelling or refusing entry to a worker.

In other words it gave the judiciary-whose view of "reasonableness" is vastly different from that of most trade unionists-powers to rewrite union rules.

• Daubed The Act specifically states that a union should not be held to have behaved reasonably simply because it had followed its rulebook!

The Code of Practice issued with the Act to guide tribunals states, for example, that a union would be acting unreasonably if it disciplined a member who erossed a had been called after a secret had been called after a ballot and was official.

Not surprisingly the TUC opposed this section vigorously as the rest of the Act.

Well, opposed it verbally. at least! Because what should NATSOPA branch secretary Cyril Brown find when he was hauled before a tribunal earlier this year to justify his members' correct stand on Mr Kirkham?

Sitting there in judge. ment upon him, large as life, was TGWU District Officer Jack Povey!

The decision of the tribunal was unanimous. Mustachioed Jack "the busman's friend" found himsalf in happy unanimity with his colleagues on the tribunalthe management representative and the lawyer.

NATSOPA, in fighting redundancy, had, they pro nounced, behaved unreason ably.