Tories block deal fories bi

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cases of proven exhaustion and will resist run downs. With privatisation, the legislation has already been altered to allow privately-owned pits to employ twice as many employees, though still in limited numbers. Yet new technology means 150 people can now produce coal on a mass scale. Things like the sellingoff of Selby coalfield which is a prime site, would probably need another election mandate before being tried. Such a move would be fought against very bitterly.

Things have gone no way far enough for them to be allowed to get away with that. The same goes for attacking the closed shop. THE Tory government is helping Rowtons in their long war of attrition with TGWU strikers at Rowton's Arlington House hostel in Camden.

Camden Labour council is ready and willing to buy the hostel and employ the TGWU members at a decent rate of pay — not the £30-odd a week that they struck to improve. But to buy it needs permission from the Department of the Environment, and that is being blocked.

In an effort to speed the purchase, on January the strikers, jointly with the Residents' Association, the Chalk Farm ward Labour party, and the Arlington Action Group,, presented the council's Labour group with proposals to pressurise Rowtons under public health regulations.

The strikers still need money, and support on their picket lines - at Arlington House, Arlington Road| and at the hotels also run by Rowtons, the Mount Pleasant in Calthorpe St and (from 12 to 2 the Grand in Southampton Row.

Donations to Arlington House Strike Fund, c/o 8 Camden Road, London NW1.

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