Echoes of Warsaw

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"BEIRUT 1982 — Warsaw 1944; it is difficult; it is difficult to avoid a direct comparison, such an acule irony of history, with in both cases a ghetto people demanding a homeland, both beleagured within an alien capital under siege by a powerful - ideological enemy and with another army either unable or unwilling to come to their aid, standing off nearby.

That's the way one letterwriter tr 4 lardian sees it. A . as not the only one. R is a paratrooper living in northern Israel whose testimony on the Lebanese atrocities was reported in the Israeli daily Davar. 'When I look at what I have done in terms of my own values, I cannot help remembering what was done to my people during the Second World War.

"I am not making accusations, I know the difference between those 'processed' and selected at that time and those whom we are 'processing' and selecting now. Nevertheless, it turns out that the job of an army of occupation ... invariably involves the very mersures we were exposed to in the 1940s."

IN THE midst of campaigning for the health workers, don't forget others who are also having to tighten their belts.

After being elected as SDP leader, Roy Jenkins is going to have to manage on £30,000 a year - paid to him until the end of 1983 as a 'farewell payment' from the EEC Commission.

He is giving up his job as director of merchant bankers Morgan Grenfell, which brought him £10,000 a year for attending a few board meetings] and a chauffeur-driven car. THE US immigration service is appealing against a court order instructing it to release some 1,900 refugees from the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti from internment camps where they have been held since fleeing to the US.

Unfortunately the court order was based not on human rights, but on a technical flaw in the legality of the US government's policy. The government is still saying loudly that. it will lock up any future refugees from Haiti: ..

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be following suit. Harry Sloan reports SIR Peter Parker neither looks nor sounds like Michael Edwardes. His chubby cheeks and public school breeding contrast visually with Edwardes' lean South African arrogance. And as a union-buster he has always appeared distinctly a keen amateur rather than one of the "professionals"

But Edwardes can't be everywhere at once. And there are lots of unions to be confronted. So the Tory government and the employers must 'make do and mend' ', using the management personnel that comes to hand.

Instead of replacing Parker .«.м as they had replaced Sir Richard Dobson with Edwardes at BL, or Sir Charles Villiers with lan MacGregor at BSC - the Tories have piled pressure upon him, and persuaded him to enlist the services of a squad of mercenary anti-union 'hit men' The abrupt shift in the British Rail Board's demeanour since the one-day stoppages by ASLEF earlier this year is apparently linked to the consultations by the Board with a firm called Opinion | Research and Communications, headed by one Tommy Thompson.

The letter threatened that a strike would mean no pay increase, the loss of thousands of jobs and the closure of some lines and services.

And it contained an outright challenge to the trade union closed shop, promising to would-be scabs that their jobs would be protected in the event of any union disciplinary action.

"If you decide not to strike, the Board will not accept loss of trade union membership as a cause for dismissal."

In many respects therefore it is a direct attempt to go over the heads of union representatives and bludgeon individual members back to work, the British Rail stance is an echo of the arrogant posture struck by Edwardes in BL.

ballot An important role in such confrontations played by the postal ballot, or where this cannot be achieved or might show a majority for action) the "personal" threatening letter. Exploiting the unease of individual workers at the (invariable) equivocation of their union officials and right wing stewards, and using the isolation of workers in their homes, such letters always set out to atomise the mass strength of a collective decision.

Thus in the famous April ฿ 1980 BL showdown Edwardes successtully forcec an abject retreat by union leaders by threatening to sack any worker who failed to clock in that day. Those who came. in to work, his labour movement: it scared the trade union burcaucracy witless.

Workers on the shop floor were both desperate cnough for moncy and confident enough to defy Edwardes' talk of closure: but. detached from their members, and accepting every word and every statistic trotted out by Edwardes on the state of the company, the knous of the top union officials could be heard rattling together like castanets.

Headed by AUEW negotiator Ken Cure they scratched around frantically for a "compromise that would let them off the hook. The TUC was dragged in to help -as were the Labour leaders, and ACAS.

The final miserable climbdown came on the weekend before the strike. As militants began preparing in earnest for the mass picketing on the Monday, Edwardes met with 11 union general secretaries and Len Murray, and struck a "deal" which went over the heads of the Joint Negotiating Committee and was actually worse than the original 3.8% offer.

The prospect of entering a major confrontation with both the government and Edwardes while their own officials were openly against them sapped the strength of the recalled mass meetings -and an 8-1 majority for strike action was transfor= med into a 25,000 to 19,000 vote to accept the "deal" • The lesson has not gone unnoticed by other managements. And there is reason to believe from ORC's involvement with BR, that in fact the BL experience is being consciously generalised, at least within the public sector.

In the case of the NUR strike, management had an added advantage compared to Edwardes in the last BL pay round.

The resistance to Edwardes had been fuelled tremendously by the mass meetings held in each plant, which allowed every worker to draw strength from the 88% support for the strike. Every worker had participated in a meeting at which the offer and the union response were explained.

Sid Weighell But the NUR, bureaucratic from top to bottom, had offered no such collective strength to its members and for a very material reason.

The vote for strike action had been taken by the NUR Executive against the strong opposition of General Secretary Sid Weighell. Weighell had never made any secret of his desire to avoid any serious struggle over pay -or anything else.

From the day of that vote to the start of the strike there was no attempt whatever to use the machinery of the NUR to mobilise for the issues stiles in detai to ple meme bers.

. Instead it is plain that behind the scenes right wing officials throughout the union were working to undermine the strike vote from the lay Executive, looking towards the union's right-leaning AGM as the forum . to overturn it altogether..

On top of this the ASLEF leadership, •which had - under pressure - put forward an apparently milltant, 'left' face on the issue of flexible rosters earlier in the year, remained rooted in narrow sectoralism, and refused to support the NUR in the struggle on wages for 1982.

Instead, Ray_ Buckton and other ASLEF leaders viciously attacked the NUR and witch-hunted militants who pressed for solidarity, common action and respect for NUR picket lines.

It was under these more fruitful conditions that Parker was able to issue the BR Board's threatening letter to rail workers. It was written by ORC - at a cost of £90,000. And for some railway workers it must have reinforced uncertainties and confusion over the issues.

But it did not break the strike, The vast majority of NUR members heeded the strike call. it was their bureaucratic leaders. Weighell's right wing cronies and faint-hearted conference delegates with no stomach for a fight - who called off the action at the end of a day in which militants were just beginning to feel their strength.

Weighell of course acted as the aggrieved party. He complained that cordial relationships between NUR negotiators and BR might never be the same again.

He complained that BR management - once eager enough to use the closed shop to their own advantage (by using NUR leaders to force through unpopular deals onmanagement's behalf) - were now threatening to break it up.

But the responsibility foi the betrayal of the pay struggle on the ral Is

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LAND OF THE FREE

Work on our terms, or get sacked' . BL pioneered the formu- la. Now BR seems to

GOT THE VOTE

10% IS AN INSULT STRIKE ACTION