UCW betrayal ends fight over sacking

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THE WEEK-LONG strike by said he would meet post office But when the decision was put to UCW postal section workers in management in Basingstoke on them, the strikers voted to carry Rasinostoke ended last firidav. Fridav. and assured the local com- on. THE WEEK-LONG strike by UCW postal section workers in Basingstoke ended last Friday. 9th, thanks to the UCW Executive.

The strike started on Saturday 3rd after the sacking of Alan Fraser, postal section secretary and a Socialist Organiser supporter. The following Wednesday, the second appeal, brought forward and heard in Basingstoke, was bungled by Gerry Casey, the UCW regional officer.

_Casey admitted to the mass meeting on the picket line that the initial brief to him and to the other official, Joe Payne, had been to end the strike.

The postmen voted overwhelmingly to stay out, and resumed a 24 hour picket in strength.

Payne and Casey, together with the local UCW committee, had been in contact all week with UCW national officer John Taylor at the TUC in Blackpool. Taylor said he would meet post office management in Basingstoke on Friday, and assured the local committee that the bottom line was getting Alan's job back. :

In the event, after six hours, Taylor urged Alan to accept a £7000 pay-off from the Post Office. When he refused, officials called in Alan's wife Angela to make him accept it. She told them to stuff it, too.

Taylor then phoned around several different postal district to get Alan transferred. Of course, no-one would take him.

A branch meeting was called for 6pm. The postmen wanted the outside supporters, including Socialist Organiser and GMBU hospital workers, inside with them. But Taylor insisted on members only, even excluding a UCW delegation from Croydon.

The committee, sworn not to mention the attempted pay-off, were exhausted and shattered.

Taylor, who at the start of the day had said he would escalate the strike, put an end to that by claiming that the majority was not enough. It was the end of the road and they had to return to work.

The local officials, confused by the sudden change in Taylor's words and emotionally wrecked, were helpless as a second vote narrowly overturned the first.

Emotion, frustration and exhaustion broke, and as Angela Fraser finally managed to reach the platform to say that if they had voted to continue they would win, many broke down and wept openly.

A full account of the victimisation and the betrayal by the UCW bureaucrats will appear in next week's Socialist Organiser.

Government plans racist

monitoring IT HAS been announced it: week that the government is to ge ahead with plans to divide peopia who claim benefit into 13i groups. This would be done E clerks on an 'individual and viaz assessment of the claimani. l: is very unlikely that people =7 know they are being assessei unless they read the poster whitshould be displayed telling ther of the checks.

Already office managers ans officials from the CPSA have said they are opposed to the plans. but the ironically-named Commission for Racial Equality has accepted them.

CPSA officials described the plans as 'colour-tabbing' and say that local staff, already under great pressure, will become quasiimmigration police.

It's quite possible that the results from the monitoring system will be used by the government