Defend the Newham

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The Newham 8 - Asian The Newham 8 - Asian youths aged between 15 and 21 — face charges of conspiracy as well as threatening behaviour and actual bodily harm.

They were arrested on September 24 1982 after an incident with plain-clothes police officers. In the previous week there had been three major racist attacks on Asian schoolchildren at Little Ilford School, in Nowham, and an incident where 60 or 70 white youth with iron bars and sticks went on the rampage in East Ham and Manor Park.

Send invitations for speakors, or resolutions of support, to Nowham 8 Defence Campaign, c/o PO ox 273, London E7 9JN. é śi POLICE CONSPIRACY NO CONSPIRACY OLICE CONSPIRACY

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FOR the 6,000 workers at Michelin's Stoke plant it will be strike and lock-out from July 11 when the annual two-week holiday is due to end. The Lightweight Production Department is due to strike and in retaliation management will lock out the rest of the factory.

Hard class war will inevitably be the approach of the bosses towards the working class following the Tories' election victory. The management at the Michelin plant in Stoke is in the front line of the employers' offensive, along with BL and Ford.

Some months ago Socialist Organiser reported on the redundancies Michelin were pushing through at various plants in Britain and Northern Ireland. The full-scale confrontation at Michelin's main British plant in Stoke comes about because they are now following up these redundancies with rationalisation' and speedup.

Speed-up is being done Speed-up and work, to get your union to give this undertaking", that is that they accept four-shift working. Interestingly only 19 people have signed a petition calling for a special meeting.

Some TGWU members think that the Company planned the dispute as a pretext to close the plant. Last year Michelin had a trading loss of £11.6 million and an overall loss of £53 million. Some workers believe that Michelin want to transfer production to France, reducing Stoke to just a tyre distribution centre. The example of Timex has been quoted on a number of occasions.

It is certainly true that production methods at the Stoke plant are old compared to newer factories, and that the only major investment has been in wareBut Michelin is a multinational company concerned with maximising its profits, and if production costs are lower in Britain than France they are not likely to transfer production.

The present attack on condiyet, the Stoke convenor has just returned from Geneval, but I've been told this. In Turin, one factory was closed because workers resisted management plans. The Company then opened another factory, just across the river. In Holland, the Company will not recognise the union, and workers have to organise underground. The same is true for Spain. In fact the Spanish delegates would not give their names in case it got back. The unions are not recognised in Canada, and they have just opened a new factory in one of the Southern states in Amerp ica which are notoriously anti-union. Interestingly though, in Brazil the factory is 100% unionised.

ge Socialist Organiser July Page FIFTY percent of employers dis criminate against black applican:: for jobs, according to the lates: Annual Report of the Commis sion for Racial Equality.

One result of this is a muc: higher level of unemploymen: amongst black youth compared with young whites.

A CRE survey showed 59° of young West Indians as agains: 41% of whites.

Spot checks on 300 London based firms found "discrimination in promotion and redundancie: and widespread misunderstanding and intolerance of the cultural and religious needs of ethni: minority employees."

But in the face of this brazer discrimination, the trade unior movement has fallen far short o: the action needed to defend it black members and comba racism on the shop floor.

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-Fighting report