[During the Leyland Vehicles strike, the Leyland Action…]

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During the Leyland Vehicles strike, the Leyland Action Committee organised meetings and produced leaflets to try to build links between the Leyland Vehicles struggle and the Cars Division. It will now be trying to consolidate a LAC group in Lancashire alongside the established group in BL Cars.

All this costs money! Please send donations to help. Address: LAC, c/o 194 Dawlish Road, Birmingham 29. Cheques payable to Leyland Action Commeeting, a press report speculated that leaders of the Engineering Union - by far the biggest in the strike —had been having secret talks with Edwardes and were moving to withdraw support.

Though it was quite consistent with all that the AUEW Executive had done in BL and elsewhere in the past, there was no vutward sign of such a sell-out at the meeting.

Gerry Russell, NorthWest EC member, was apparently still going along with the strikers' demands, no doubt under strong pressure from the membership, who showed their militancy outside the meeting by lobbying with shouts of Edwardes Out' and sellout' mittee. meekly accepted by the shop stewards, putting a very large question mark against their commitment.

A short while later they were to be shown up by the women in the nearby Plessey factory who refused to give in to similar pressure.

But the decisive sections of the strike were in Lancashire, where by far the largest numbers were out.

The ignominious failure at the mass meeting of the strike committee chairman and recently elected convenor. Mick Coyne, was not just the weakness of an individual in front of a hostile minority which was allowed

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday February 25, 1982 Page 15 ndustrial Fares strike March 10 New victory in 'It isn't only a fares increase, there will be cuts in services and jobs too" • The Law Lords attack on the GLC Fares Fair policy is starting to bite, and services are already being cut.

From Monday February 22 overtime workingwhich keeps a lot of services going — was cut back.

The threat to services and jobs was üppermost in the minds of many of the 600 London Transport shop stewards who met at the TUC on February 17 to discuss how to fight back. Proposals from union officials for a one day protest strike got overwhelming support -but the stewards never got a chance to plan out a real campaign.

Officials from the TGWU and NUR wouldn't even let the meeting decide on the date for the strike action -they didn't want the stewards fixing an early