[I WAS very glad to see your coverage…]

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I WAS very glad to see your coverage of the Laurence Scott dispute in SO82.

You are to be congratulated on continuing to support this beleagured group of workers when so many others have deserted them.

After all they are still threatened by a legal bill for £6,000 and a case under Prior's Employment Act.

Particularly disgraceful has been the role of the SWP.

These people added to their Here today, gone tomorrow' reputation in industrial disputes.

When Scotts was 'where the action was' they would give elbow room and Socialist Worker had detailed coverage.

But once the hard defensive slog set in after the picketing of Doncaster was called off you couldn't see them for dust.

Since Christmas there hasn't been a word in Socialist Worker.

Lindsey Greig wrote a Review in January, arguing that it was the mistakes of the workers that lost the He claimed that what workplace begins is could be disastrous.

• Without plant cover to hold the soil together, the top soil is soon washed away by rain, resulting in loss of fertility and growth of deserts, as found when tropical forests are cleared.

What a fatalistic recipe for passivity! Why did Greig bother with Scotts at all?

"That silly specimen' one of the strikers aptly commented 'wants his arse kicking'.

Of course mistakes were made; but the workers came forward tremendously as the strike developed and the going got rough. The betrayal of the union leaders and the lack of solidarity were the central problems: which brings us to the CP.

They did give moral and financial support.

FOr example at the November AUEW NC, prominent Stalinists Halverson and Cole voted to support the strikers.

Local CP stewards too collected money and attended the picket line. All the time however they refused to build for industrial action.

You got the impression that they wished the Scott workers had accepted the sell-out.

They constantly harped on tactical mistakes made by the strikers as an excuse for not giving support.

Who can doubt that if the CP • had put their shoulders to the wheel the Scotts strikers would now have the 260 branch resolutions required for a ballot on the removal of Boyd and Duffy.

The "resolutionary socialists" of Militant largely averted their eyes from the Scotts workers who were actually fighting the Tories now.

As one industrial militant said to me: "When I'm through with the struggles of the day I like to relax and get my mind on something that's altogether different from politics, so I read Militant"

By the way, anybody who believes that reformists don't fight should look at the excellent track record in this dispute of MP Charles Morris.

And so to the IMG who in a lot of hard work (their record was probably the best of any tendency) but alas in their usual nonpolitical way.

They claimed that the slogan 'open the books' should not be raised in relation to the NCB and its suppliers as it would get nowhere' Obsession They criticised Socialist Organiser's attempts to analyse the differences between local officials and the AUEW leaders, tactically important in such a struggle, as "showing an obsession with the bureaucracy"

And they failed to take up vital questions such as extending picketing to Doncaster, claiming this would "usurp the role of the elected strike committee"

One final thought. If the fighting qualities shown by the Scotts workers can be built on and extended then Tebbit may not be in business for much longer.

Comradely greetings, M. STARR Oldham