"We would have been 100%

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by the second day"

National UnionofRa Iwayn BABURGH EAST OF SCOTL DISTRICT bashes NUR and ditches _pay claim Colin Foster reports •'HAD they been on the picket line with the members on Monday, there is no way the AGM delegates could have taken that decision to call off the strike. It didn't reflect the rank and file" , said Rob Dawber (Sheffield City NUR).

The AGM, dominated by oider delegates, browbeaten by the press, flooded by a campaign of anti-strike resolutions from branches, and nudged by right wing general secretary Sid Weighell, voted on Monday 28th to call off the NUR strike.

One NUR picket at Euston told us:

'The way I see it, it's like parliamentary democracy. You elect these people to go to the NUR AGM and once they get there, just like Parliament, they do what they like.

Weighell Rob Dawber explained. His branch was one of those which sent in a resolution opposing the strike.

•We thought we were going to have a hard job. Our branch meeting was sramped and we ended up sending a resolution against the strike.

•But when we started the picketing, hardly anyone went in. In my own department we had 50 on the picket line, and no-one went in.

*We had nearly 100% out. The next day we would here had 100%, and we would have been sending dying pickets down to Trent WITH Thatcher's armies seizing the headlines for their exploits in the South Atlantic debbit - the cabinNorman Cable et's Colonel H - led the onslaught on the enemy at home.

But he ran into stiff opposition as he ventured out on a Tory raiding party into the enemy territory of Greater Manchester.

300 trade unionists whole of the North West -despite incredible pressure from management, and despite a complete lack of leadership from the union. Most people on the railway did not even really know what the strike was about."

The claim in itory ay s strike was that local trains in Birmingham were kept running. That's a pretty clear indication that the turnout across the country PERS OF UNITE turned out to support a North West TUC picket of a Tory public meeting on June 19.

Police rescued Tebbit as he came under fire from "stand-off'"' missiles guided placards and (Soviet-made?) rolled up newspaper.

Tebbit however returned safely to base. His comment was a classic of true British grit - and in the best tradition of Defence Ministry statements.

"I was a serving officer in the armed forces, and am used to coming face to face with the Queen's enemies."

In case anyone is sceptical about this picture of our Norm slugging it out hand to hand on the battlefield with the Nazi hordes, it is worth noting that he was in the forces: he was an RAF pilot!

was overwhelming.

In Glasgow, pickets at Queen Street station on Monday told Socialist Organiser: "Weighell wants a deal. But that's not on. And it's not on to bring in ACAS either. "The only thing for us is strike action."

On Tuesday, even after the AGM decision, pickets turned up again at Muirhouse, Hamilton, Polmadie, and Glasgow JOHN HARRIS Tebbit - "returned safely to base"

Central station, before being sent home by the strike comittees.

At the NUR Glasgow no. 5 strike committee, in Queens Park Labour Party rooms, activists were bitter:

' The gut reaction of the staff to the AGM decision has been that it was diabolical, bloody rubbish."

But they were determined to make the best of it.

"At the end of the day it's a decision taken by the AGM and it wasn't a close vote either. But the strike hasn't been finished, only suspended."

Now the task is to fight petty inter-union rivalries, to floor NUR headquarters with branch resolutions against a sell-out, to ensure NUR members respect the ASLEF picket lines from Sunday, and to build ASLEF-NUR joint committees.

Buckron UNREMITTING NUR bashing is the only way to describe the speeches made by ASLEF executive committee members at a mass meeting at the union's headquarters in London last Sunday 27th.

The most virulent attacks on the NUR came from ASLEF President Derreck Fullick and Ray Buckton, the General Secretary.

The impression created, particularly by Ray Buckton was that the present NUR dispute had been engineered by Weighell and the BRB with the sole intention of dragging ASLEF into a strike which would break the union.

The reality is, of course, that the decision of the NUR Conference to call off Buckton Cross ASLEF)

call!

In the last year the "machinery" has handed down one decision after another against ASLEF -the decision on flexible rostering being the most severe. The machinery has been totally discredited in they eyes of ASLEF members and ignored by the BRB except when it has suited them.

Furthermore, it is now ASLEF policy, following a resolution passed at the annual conference, to go for a complete review of the machinery, precisely because of the decision it has handed down and the way in which it has been disregarded by management.

Yet here we have the ASLEF EC once again defending it.

The EC expressed its "regret" that ASLEF members would have to cross NUR picket lines, and said that it was up to the 'conscience" of the individual whether or not he or she crossed the picket. It was also a personal decision for an individual to work with a blackleg guard if s/he crossed that picket A resolution put forward by Kings Cross members calling for joint strike action with the NUR was resoundingly defeated -by exploiting the old sectional prejudices against the NUR which run through the ASLEF membership.

The irony of all this is that the ASLEF EC played precisely the same role that the NUR general secretary played in the ASLEF dispute earlier this year. The position taken by ASLEF and the capitulation of the NUR conference only opened the door for a renewed management offensive on railway jobs and conditions.

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-ront ine Tebbit

ay TOOTLAND