Heseltine runs from CND challenge

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Published by the Socialist Organiser Alliance, 28 Middle Lane, London N8. Printed by East End Offset (TU]. Registered as a newspaper at the GPO. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the SOA. ing Edgbaston water workers to organise a delegation to the works committee.

Also in Birmingham, local Socialist Organiser supporters are arranging visits by water workers to Labour Party ward meetings.

Emergency In Coventry, AUEW branches and Coventry South West Labour Party have protested at a statement to the local press by Coventry West AUEW district president Mel Griffin. Griffin told the press that the water workers should accept the offer and their strike was a 'disgrace'!

Emergency cover is being withdrawn in more and more areas after abuse by management.

At Frankley works in Birmingham, workers got an agreement with management for monitoring emergency cover, and under this supplies to a number of hospitals were maintained. • Then management demanded that one chlorination tank be closed and another opened.-A mass supplies of clean water to hospitals directly in tankers. Management refused to accept and the monitors were told to leave the works.

At Edgbaston, also in Birmingham, pickets were largely in favour of cutting emergency cover down to hospitals and dialysis machines, though at present they are also installing stand pipes where mains fail.

In Leicester emergency cover is still on, but feeling for withdrawal is growing.

In Burslem, Graham Atkinson of the GMBU told us that in return for putting a hospital back on as an emergency, the strikers are demanding a meeting with management to put an end to NÄLGO members doing chlorination work.

• Reports from Carla Jamison, Mike Foley, Pat Lally, Arthur Bough, Jim Denham, Dave Spencer, and Mick Jarmaine. Please phone in reports from your ocar picket lines to next week' s Socialist Organiser - 01-609 3071, on Monday and Tuesday evening. FROM one gaffe to the next, the Tory leaders scarcely seem to put a foot right in their attempts to quell the growing movement against Cruise missiles.

First came the ludicrously leaked plan to spend El million of taxpayers' money explaining to them why they should pay even more for the chance of being blown to bits in nuclear war.

When the uproar over this became too embarrassing for the campaign to have any positive effect, there came a humiliating climbdown. Meanwhile, as the new Defence Secretary, the supposedly charismatic Michael Heseltine has been struggling to find his feet in the debate.

This was not made any easier when he ran into an angry crowd of Greenham Common women outside a Tory meeting in Berkshire.

Refuting those who have suggested they are simply limp pacifists, the women knocked him to the ground, and severely dented his image.

Nor did he do anything to repair the damage when in his speech he arrogantly refused to debate the missiles question with CND speakers.

His argument? Those opposed to the Cruise missiles - a majority of the population according to every recent opinion poll -have 'closed minds' and would not listen to his

by Harry Sloan

arguments.

These are dandy tacties indeed to win over the "don't knows" whom the Tories need to persuade of their case for supporting Reagan's arms drive.

Nothing is more calculated to enrage and harden the attitudes of Heseltine's opponents than this lordly accusation that we have 'closed minds' Once again the impact of the Greenham Common struggle is shown - the way it has generated a new climate of discussion reaching into and beyond the organised labour movement, and driving forward the fight for unilateral nuclear disarmament. • Background on the arms talks - see page five