Bridging gaps on dous aur

Scan page 9

John Ledgerton, from the (Merseyside) workplace bı spoke to Socialist Organisi WE formed the branch in May of this year, prompted by the Labour Party national conference decision of 1982. Four of us started off by seeking others who might be interested.

A preliminary meeting heard a speaker from Laird's workplace branch and decided the date for the inaugural meeting.

We advertised the meeting by a leaflet posted on union notice boards. Our original name for the branch was Dista Workplace Branch but the company objected because, they said, they did not contribute to any political organistion. Dista is part of the multi-national Lilley Corporation whose President is George Bush, US Vice President!

We didn't get a very good response to the leaflet, only the bare minimum of ten members of the Labour Party.

Since then we have recruited six members. We organised a factory gate meeting during the election campaign and leafleted the local factories, including Fords.

We held a branch meeting on the reorganisation of the schools in Liverpool, knowing that it is Flem at the Dista factory, going to be one of the main issues of the city elections next May. We planned public meetings to counter the Tory press attacks on the council and socialist ideas.

Our aim is to get the Labour Party policies across to the shop floor. We are starting a newssheet which will accept articles from the workforce as well as Labour Party branch articles.

We are sending a delegate to Garston GMC. The response of the stewards, apart from two of us, has been to refuse to become involved. They claim they are ''non-political""

One of the problems in Dista is that there is no joint stewards committee. USDAW covers the process workers, ASTMS the labs, and the craft unions are UCATT, AUEW, EETPU. Even the craft unions don't have a joint stewards committee.

The workplace Labour Party branch covers most of the unions and the officers are treasurerASTMS, Secretary-USDAW and Chair-Craft. The branch is attempting to bridge the gap in the union relations on the shop floor.

La Jaguar Browns Lane THE idea to set up a workplace branch came from a group of left wing shop stewards who began to set one up immediately after the two-year pay deal went through in November 1982.

They circulated a leailet about the need to fight the Tories and asking people to join the Labour Party and help set up a workplace branch. 25 people expressed interest, the majority of whom were not already Labour Party members. Two informal meetings were held to explain in more detail what was involved and the idea of the thing. About 15 turned up to these:

The original group of stewards took the money and membership forms along to the

----- pull-quotes -----

ning Rd., Garston anch,

BIDBURN JOHN HARRIS sid