We back NHS

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Is backed ASLEF ASLEF members have been demonstrating support for the NHS workers. We have sent delegations down from our branch.

It is obvious why we should support them. There has been a clear attempt to smash our union 'and if our union goes to the wall, the lessons are there for the NHS workers. No union can stand alone against the Scargill SCHOOL GATES were closed in Tower Hamlets, East London, last Thursday 8th, when school dinner workers called a one-day strike and picketed. government the final analysis.

Our members will be doubly sympathetic to the health workers given the extent of the betrayals we've faced over the last 48 hours. The comments this morning when I came into the strike headquarters were, for example, 'Well, if they can do this to us, what chance have the nurses got?' THERE is no doubt that the ASLEF dispute could have been won.

• In Yorkshire the NUM Area Executive and Area Agents had already met local ASLEF leaders and agreed that no coal normally moved by rail would go by lorry.

Nationally the NUM donated £10,000 to the ASLEF strike fund.

At pit level, NUM branch officers were being vigilant about cowboy haulage firms getting into the yards to take coal away Sue Carlyle are scrapping contracts, casualising labour, cutting the retaining fee and balin holiday money, and even saying that leaves earned this year will be 'kept back SANTRA ARMINI vijay.

There is much sympathy for ASLEF in the pits. Many of the miners involved in the 1972 strike remember the valuable assistance given to the NUM by ASLEF.

Drivers would stop trains if they saw a picket's banner draped over a railway bridge. Hardly any coal moved at all by rail which of course made it easier to get pickets to places like Saltley and stop the lorries.

The support given by ASLEF was vital to the success of 1972: It looks tion to continue action:

Promises from ILEA not to follow Kent's example ring hollow. Despite ILEA being Labour-controlled and pledged to preserve increasingly likely that we may be out later in the year, over closures, wages or both, -and we'll need all the support we can get. The best way to build that support is to give our support to those in struggle now like the health workers and ASLEF.

Arthur Scargill said he would argue for continued support for ASLEF if they decided to ignore the TUC sell-out proposals and he was quite right.

WE WANT Jobs

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