[It would not have been so bad if…]
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-11-25Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 15 →
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It would not have been so bad if Buckle's attacks on the sub-committee had been kept inside the union, but they were not. When ho knew that the Company were trying to get the names of the sub-committee out of Bob Fryer in order to victimise them, Buckle went to management and denounced them in the most damaging terms.
It was the nub of the issuc. By late that day supervisors were on the tracks distributing a new statement from Forster.
Wednesday's Oxford Mai, the edition betore the mass meeting, exploited it to the full - which of course was the way it was planned.
Virtuatly ignoring the shop stewards meeting that morning which had pledged support unanimously, the Mail had a front page headline: "Don't be misled by agitators, BL tells workers" It went on:
•Workers at the Cowley car assembly plant were warned today that an extremist minority was trying to stir up a dispute for its own ends.
"The Austin Rover management has repeated its message that a strike will not get Mr Alan Thornett, sacked last week... back on the payroll.
"Mr lan Forster, in his second letter in two days to the workers, says:
"Extremist organisations outside the Company and outside the union (ie. WRP) are wrongly trying to make out this is a case of victimisation.
"A misleading document has been circulated by a self styled unofficial TGWU shop stewards sub-committee.
"The TGWU District Secretary has denied all