Save cheap Tube Buccaneer

Scan page 2

said to be overcome by the public reaction to the news that his pioneering tube service had ground to a halt.

As the man who brought cheap tube travel to millions announced he had failed to save his famous red and silver trains from the knackers yard, Mrs Thatcher said she was choked at the zak!

and its laws, and know what it's like to be up against the full force of its discriminating powers against women who are fighting for their right to a decent life. If there is anything you can do, please write to this address: c/0 3 Tramere House, Morgan Road, London N7 or just contact your MP and ask him what is happening in the case of Lilli Luczak. Thank you.

•REAGANS CRUISETITANIC!

The latest Women's Fightback - 10p plus by Peter collapse. From Chesham to Barking, from Ongar to Richmond and from High Barnet to Wimbledon thousands of ordinary people were reaching into their pockets to save the stricken • subterranean service.

"If we each gave 20p Trary train maybe we could save every time we got on a it, wept one 86 year old pensioner."

One school child aged no more than six arrived at the GLC headquarters clutching her piggy bank. "It's for you, Ken", • She said thrusting it into his hands before disappearing into the morning crowd.

One train was halted in the tunnel between Willesden Junction and Harlesden when the fateful news broke. The guard announced over the intercom "I have some bad news for you. We have to go back."

The passengers, journeys to Kenton arid Hatch End ruined, Were shocked.

Then a wino travelling in the corner of the compartment opened his cider bottle and passed it round. The moist-eyed passengers toasted Sir Ken. A cheer broke out. Someone started singing 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Guards in smart blue uniforms were weeping with their arms round passengers at the ticket offices. «We know nothing, love" said one ticket collector. But the crowd were not angry or impatient.

Silently they began pressing 50ps, £l notes or £l million into a hat being passed - round-whatever they, the ordinary chap in the street could afford to keep Sir Ken afloat. Mcintyre ""He'll be back" shouted one ordinary eccentric millionaire pressing €100,000 into the porter's hand Sir Ken took on the big boys of the establishment and lost. People who had never travelled on a tube before enjoyed the experience for the first time in their life. They visited exotic faraway places. People flew all the way from America so they could fly on the Heathrow to Earls Court service.

But the giants were out to get him. And the Lords of Travel put the word out. They pulled the rug from under his feet with a vicious cartel which forced prices up.

Deep down

The news was broken to Mrs Thatcher during a cabinet meeting by the underground minister lain Sproat. The cabinet stood in one minute's silence. Mis Thatcher said:

"Ken Livingstone was one of the finest men this country has produced. He wanted ordinary people to be able to live and work in London. His business. may have gone but his name will live on."

Last night tributes continued to flood in. And the ordinary small merchant banker was still mailing off the couple of grand that might make the difference between survival and defeat.

Staff were planning a march the Stock Exchange to ask big hearted Stock Brokers to contribute to the funds. Despite everything, deep down in the tunnels underneath London things are looking up for Sir Ken.

Scan page 3

Sirs played a lament for Shirley - floating plans for "DONT shoot. the pianist - he's only doing his best!" - that is the gist of one strand of the limited heart' of the union movement, the Government is striking at the wrong organ. The heart of the trade a Labour /SDP coalition. Sid Weighell bashed out a reverse quickstep - sticking the knife into the back criticisms of Norman Tebbit's anti-union Bill voiced union movement is a sclerotic but generally respons- of the ASLEF strikers. And the NGA's Joe Wade tried his hand at We'll meet again' , accompanying The pianist in this case in the TUC bureaucracy, "The real mischief in industrial relations is job-slasher Rupert Murdoch, to the horror of his whose struggles to curb and defuse the militancy of wrought not by the heart but by the arms and legs of their members many SDP defectors have long the trade union movement, the local groups of activ- ists and militant shop stewards... Mr Tebbit's Bill will TUC bureaucrats, there is a haunting silence from But while this cacophony is coming from the But this is not an unanimous view in the SDP. do nothing to restrain their activity and may even the labour movement's windsection. The Shadow Many MPs and the bulk of its middle-class members Cabinet is preoccupied with its own attempts to are so rabidly anti-union that they would criticise Tebbit's Bill because it stops short at shooting the relied upon in the past is the (diminishing) influence «One life-line which besieged employers have crush those same rank and file militants which the pianist and fails to line up the whole orchestra which full-time union officials may bring to bear on Labour representatives have of course gloated shop-floor mavericks but, by putting union funds at over the much-advertised divisions in the SDP over One SDP proposal - compulsory arbitration in risk through the activities of full-time officials, the all wage disputes - amounts to illegalising all Bill may force them to retire from the scene..." llaboration. But now is the time to demand that our leaders The less hysterically anti-union elements of the redding march, follow our baton, not that of the Thatcher governBut a more "pro-union' representative, Brian Cap- SDP therefore see the task as retaining a working Tebbit but to ment. It is time that the workers who pay these relationship with the bureaucracy along the well- trod lines of the 'social contract' under Wilson and Thatcher! Bill pianists and pipers got to call the tune. by the SDP.

admired.

before a firing squad.

stick, argued in Monday's Times: ible affair.

encourage it. Callaghan, while supporting weaken shop floor action and strike.

For Tebbit's blunderbuss, they p! stitute an Armalite rifle pointed at t and file.

Thatcher, on the other hand, has nearly three years of TUC retreats that the pianists and fiddlers of Cong make stumbling attempts at playing al she cares to demand.

January alone brought the Teb unemployment figures topping thre renewed signs of a tenacious fight agai ies and closures.

But from the TUC bureaucracy jarring notes of surrender and class col Len Murray struck up a hopeful y elaborating TUC plans not to fight seek a new "social contract' - with Tory measures to restrict the right to Propose to subhe union rank ; learned from and betrayals ress House will Imost any tune bit proposals, e million, and inst redundancOrganiser, Thursday members.

SDP finds so objectionable.

came only the Tebbit's Bill.

----- pull-quotes -----

WOMEN'S FIGHTBACK .. WOMEN WHO FOUGHT BACK

postage from 41 Ell- ington St, London N7

... by aiming, as Mr Len Murray put it, 'at the an censorship help liberate women?