[ORGANISING. for all-out strikes on September 22 was…]

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ORGANISING. for all-out strikes on September 22 was the main topic discussed at a TUC fringe meeting organised by the Mobilising Committee for the Defence of Trade Union Rights and attended by 30 people.

All the speakers stressed the importance of coming out with the health workers in the fight against the Tebbit Bill. All secondary solidarity action on that day will be unlawful under Prior's 1980 Employment Act, so support for the NHS workers will by definition also be a nationwide act of défiance against the existing law.

It will also clearly prove, as the support for Sean Geraghty proved, that the Tories' law is unenforceable in the face of united massive strike action.

Speakers fror An India and Markors Rash Tart some aut ELSTE MOMECOT aME Te INSENS SORET FILES I Tier Tea becomin Las ant sauces against momen.

The task now is. 1. To fight in the turnout Organise against the Tebbit Bill with the new broadsheet from the Mobilising Commer - Ir " -t = ună wcO -28 M.00= Lane Loncor 2. To hold the union leaders to the pledge of action, not words, which was made at the TUC this week.

3. To step up the action - as part of the same fight -for the full 12% and for the scrapping of anti-union laws.

WENDY MUSTILL ive 22.

rosters steward in breach of agree ments, and Air India have since sacked 91 strikers The strikers believe tha Air India bosses are out t break the union. • Picket lines - 24 hou picket at Heathrow Cargo Picket at the Street office, 8 am-7.15 pm L Messages and money to Air Ihdia branch 7-9 South Road, Southal Middlesex.

IF PREE af(..... ..

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The Scottish TUC Special Conference for NHS and non-NHS shop stewards on Friday September 3rd, came out with a clear call for a 24 hour General Strike in Scotland on September 22nd.

The call did not originally come from the Scottish TUC General Council, rather as a result of pressure from shop stewards. At the conference, this was demonstrated by the support shown to health workers by stewards who said that their branches had already taken decisions to come out on 24 hour strike on September 22nd.

The General Council put a resolution to the conference, which was accepted, calling on all shop stewards and union officials to go out and campaign for maximum support for a 'stoppage of work on September 22nd' . (The '24 hour' part of it was only conceded at the end of the conference, when it became /apparent that it would be 24 This call would never have been made if the shop stewards' conference had not been called, and pressure put on the STUC to make the call.

It remains to be seen whether this will be followed up by the STUC carrying the call to TUC conference. • It. could provide a major boost to demands for a 24 hour general strike in Britain. SHEEP - in wolf's clothing. The TUC leaders' unaccustomed display of verbal militancy on the opening weekend of this year's Brighton Congress has taken a few people by surprise.

It has been expected for some time by the more astute industrial correspondents that the TUC General Council would call for supporting action for the health workers' September 22 day of action - in order to pre-empt moves to raise an emergency motion to this effect from the floor, and keep the union officials in control of the speading waves of solidarity action.

In the event, so great has been the impact of the NHS struggle that the speeches have been stronger and more MARGARET Nix, an S.O. supporter, talked to one of the workers who carried out a successful occupation in the laundry section of Broadgates Hospital, near Hull.

On September 2, six machine operators in the laundry section carried out pre-planned decision to occupy the department.

The decision to occupy was forced on them because after 3 weeks of strike action in support of the NHS national pay claim, the management had reneged on an emergency cover agreement.

The agreement was to provide 30 bags of clean linen to each of the 8 hospitals in the area per day. (Under normal conditions it is 80 bags for each hospital.)

Management wanted to up the emergency cover from 30 bags to 60 bags per day to each hospital, i.e. almost full cover.

Management held talks with the local NUPE full ON FRIDAY 4th, 1000 people took the day off work to show support for the health workers arrested for 'obstruction' while picketing at North Owram hospital in Halifax during the three day action.

The court was packed, the reception area straining at the seams, and there were hundreds outside the The judge was a little shocked by the standing ovation given to the eight defendants as they walked in. Since they asked for their cases to be heard together rather than separately. the hearing was postponed to October 19. All plead not guilty in law.

Meanwhil widereaching tr an many expected. There have been calls for action w lich would amount in effect to a 'mini Yet nobody would be more delighted than the union leaders - who have struggled since April to sell out the NHS pay claim - if such predictions of mass action prove to be gross exaggerations. The strong talk from top officials is not in general being combined with any serious preparation for action at shop floor level - though the militancy is clearly there to provide an immediate response.

On top of the NHS pay issue there has been the barrage of defiant statements against Tebbit's anti-union laws.

At first Moss Evans grabbed the headlines with his seemingly heartfelt offer to go to prison sooner than time official, Dorothy Hardon, who in turn met the membership and told them that if they did not meet the management's demands, their wages, which were being made up by donations collected from the local trade union movement, would be stopped, and that they would only receive normal strike pay.

Under this threat the six machine operators saw that the only: course of action left open to them was to occupy.

On Friday August 27, the management had approached the membership through the full time official, asking them to work over the Bank Holiday period to clear up some of the backlog of dirty linen which had built up over the three weeks of strike action.

On Wednesday September 1, after the Bank Holihospital in Halifax, health workers have been • оссируing the admin building for the last five days, and were prepared to stay until the eight were found not guilty. About 50 demonstrators, led by six of those arrested, persuaded the occupiers to leave, reluctantly, for the moment.

As well as obstruction. one of the eight was also charged with stealing four hospital biros. Now police are trying to drum up a case about a sheepskin coat lost from the hospital two years ago. Whether or not the theft charge sticks. clearly management are not after keeping their birod. but getting rid of good shop stewards. pay fines levied under the new Bill. Television technicians' leader Alan Sapper was equally vociferous.

Yet nobody from the press seemed to ask these two why they had voted two months ago on the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the TUC to knife the ASLEF strike - giving the Tory union-bashers their biggest morale booster this year.

When the question was asked - in the welcoming address from Brighton Trades Council - Sapper and Murray closed ranks in an angry response: the 'wolf had no teeth!

Nobody from the mass media asked Evans and Sapper why both TGWU and ACTT were silent when Fleet Street electricians' day, management were still insisting that 60 bags of clean linen were produced per day for each hospital.

The six machine operators decided to take action independent of the NUPE full time official.

Immediately the occupation was made known, the NUPE full time official went down to the hospital to try to persuade the operators to call off their action. This was unanimously rejected.

When the staff providing the emergency • cover arrived for work, they were invited by management to sit in the committee room, NHS UNION leaders in Coventry responded quickiy to the TUC. Health Services Committee's call for a day of action on September 22 by appealing to other unions to strike for the whole day.

Next Tuesday September 14 a meeting of stewards from throughout the Coventry labour movement will discuss how to maximise solidarity action.

Unfortunately the 22nd falls in the industrial holiday week, and this severely restricts the potential for supporting strike action. Plans have been laid, however, to leaflet bus drivers and a strike which brought public transport to a halt would obviously have a big effect.

Every angle is being sought to maximise the action. Coventry South West CLP passed the following motion. proposed by Julia Redman, a Socialist Organiser supporter who is also a hospital worker.

'In line with the exist ing polic! of support for NHS workers in their present dispute over pay this Go resolves to: leader Sean Geraghty was hauled into the courts to face a possible jail sentence for the 'crime' of staging a solidarity strike with the NHS workers.

But then nobody seems to have asked right-wingers like Terry Duffy or former Labour leader Jim Callaghan how they square their effect. ive calls to break the new law with their vicious witch-hunting of propsective Bermondsey Labour candidate Peter Tatchell for advocating 'extra-parliamentary action' Evans' wolf-skin, however, quickly began to slip loose, and a woolly ear was exposed, as he announced his willingness to discuss a further round of wage controls under a re-elected Labour government.

The significance of this shift - a clear breach of TGWU policy - is that with the combined support of the while talks were going on between management and the NUPE official.

After 36 hours of occupation management conceded to the demands of the occupiers. They agreed to pay the machine operators for the duration of the sit in, and also to pay the wages of the rest of the workforce - who had supported the action to the full.

It was moved by one of the members that the occupation should continue in support of the national NHS pay claim of 12%, and this fell only on a casting vote.

a) send an official delegation to the meeting called by the local TUC Health Service action committee for September 14, b) call on delegates to seek support in their workplaces for the TUC Health Service action committee appeal for sympathy strike action on September 22.

c) calls on Labour councillors to cancel all council business on September 22 and gather to show their Two teeth loose, one broken; bruising to testicles burst lips: severe chest pains: grazing, bruises.

These were the injuries to Mick Docherty, a COHSE member and activist in the Nottingham 'Health workers for the full claim' group, after he was stopped by police for allegedly stealing his own car. He waS later charged with criminal damage and refusTGWU with the AUEW and other right wing unions, a resolution to make such discussions TUC policy could be carried today (Wednesday).

And the implementation of such discussions would be placed in the hands of a General Council which from next year will be dominated ny an even more entrenched right wing majority, as a result of the undemocratic changes in its structure rammed through by.the right wing this week.

On top of that, next year's TUC could even be chaired by EETPU leader Frank Chapple, whose union is the only substantial one to abstain on the resolution calling for resistance to the Nevertheless, the occupation has shown the type of initiative that must be taken throughout the NHS, independent of the wheeling and dealings of the national full time officials, in order to win the full 12% claim. support.

• Furthermore this GC calls on councillors to show sympathy for any counci employees taking industrial action on September 22, and pledge that no disciplinary measures will result' Early indications are that counciliors will be sympathetic - but a big show of active support is needed, not just taking the day off.

KEITH WHITE ing tests, and suspended by Highbury hospital management for 'professional misconduct' Activists and militants have also been harassed in Halifax, Accrington, Liverpool, Bolton and Glasgow. The attack on basic union rights to organise is going ahead in other ways than the Tebbit Bill.

Nottingham H.W.F.C. have started a campaign to:

Tebbit law. a bleak prospect indeed for solidarity!

Behind a smokescreen of 'militant' rhetoric, TUC and abour leaders are preparing I SICk re-run of the social contract which under Wilson and Callaghan brought a catastrophic drop in working class living standards and prepared the way for the el ection of the Thatcher government.

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Yet the fact that they feel obliged to resort to such rhetoric is further confirmation of the level of militancy among health workers and other sections of the working class.

It is that militancy, and the ability which it offers to mobilise action at shop floor level and to confront the st hours). il defend Mick and publicise the attack, ii) get Mick's lifted, ili) oppose all victimisations of trade unionists during this dispute.

Two Labour county councillors, Mohammed Aslam and Mick Warner, have agreed to take up Mick Docherty's case, and Nottingham Trades Council Executive Committee are to treachery of the bureaucratic official leadership; which is the most significant element underlying this year's TUC Congress. be approached to discuss the matter at an 'extended trades council meeting .

And there is a call for strike action on Tuesdar September 7th at Highburs Hospital.

Union branches anc Labour Parties are asked to sponsor the campaigr Write to 228 Queens Roac. Beeston, or phone Penny: 603656 - home. 45989-work

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Fight the Tories, not Socialists!

Open to delegates from all labour movement

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IN PETENCE SUMMITTEE 3w4002273 TRADE UNION RIGHTS

STOP THE

TORY BOATBOY!