NUR backs down on closure
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-04-28Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 14 →
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WHILE the NUR's official paper campaign against Serpell goes on under the new General Secretary Jimmy Knapp, 50 guards at Lincoln put words into practice. And on Monday April 25, the NEC called it off.
A few months ago BR closed the 20-mile section of track from March to Spalding, diverting traffic through Peterborough.
The NUR accepted the closure but said they should not lift the track itself as it was a direct linc to the eastern counties and therefore a part of the national rail network: It carried most of the Harwich and Parkenson traffic and would be vital in the event of an end to the recession.
BR agreed not to lift the track and therefore put it in the same situation as around eight other lines existing but not used around the country.
However, on 19 April, local management without consultation, instructed train crews to staff trains to lift the track. They refused and were sent home. The rest of the guards followed. Within days, all trains to and from Lincoln were stopped, and the NEC made the strike official.
The guards at Lincoln were effectively carying the flag for the other A lines, and won the support of guards in Sheffield and Doncaster.
Otherwise, they were left isolated as the NEC did nothing to bring out other rail workers in support. Then at an emergency meeting of the NUR NEC on Monday 25th, they threw out a request for a grant to run the strike and then called it off.
The reason? BR had agreed to hold up the lifting of the track until a national meeting in a week's time. So the guards who had been on strike for nine days had only won a week's reprieve for the line.
A similar course took place in Manchester last Wednesday (20th) when again without consultation management brought in contractors to install new telecoms equipment that would do away with information staff.
Signal and telecoms staff went on strike for the day and again won official endorsement only to have the action called off pending a national meeting.
Jimmy Knapp's election campaign was based on the slogan "Together, a new start'. Yet it was always Weighell's policy to leave isolated any action that he could not stop flaring up.