junction against POEU TO UNIONS

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THE chips are down for the leadership of the Post Office Engineering Union, following the Appeal Court injunction giving them 48 hours to call off their "blacking" of the private Mercury Communications network and its backers.

The unanimous iudgement by the three judges was handed down by Sir John Donaldson, formerly the judge who presided over Edward Heath's hated Industrial Relations Court in the early 1970s.

It will almost certainly be followed up by management moves to sack 49 POEU members who have been suspended for refusing to cross picket lines and scab on the union's selective action.

In any event, the legal aling means that the union lust choose between effecively abandoning its struggle gainst Mercury . _* « the ingible expression of its truggle against Tory privatistion of British Telecom - or efying the injunction.

To do so would place the nion's leadership in conempt of court - and soliciors have warned that this ould mean heavy fines, personal bankruptcy or jailing of officers and executive members of the union, or seizure of POEU assets.

The judgement was announced while the POEU's recalled conference was in session in Blackpool. No decision on whether or not to defy the injunction has been taken as we go to press.

But if the union does vote to grasp the nettle and confront the vicious Tory anti-union laws that aim to stifle their struggle and other struggles against privatisation, cuts and closures, it will be essential to abandon the "selective action" strategy which has operated so far, and to prepare the membership for an all-out strike.

Only from such a fighting DNE parocaGan BUZBY HAll stance can the POEU hope to summon the necessary support from other unions in the public and private sectors.

Every union branch, trades council and Labour Party must place the POEU struggle and the fight for solidarity at the top of their agenda. Resolutions urging the POEU to follow the recent example of the NUJ National Executive, defy the injunction and step up the fight should be forwarded to local POEU branches and POEU national head- TLES ON TEL quarters,. together with BETRAVAL pledges of practical and industrial support. SALE Behind Mercury - chaired by Michael Edwardes - and OF THE the Appeal Court ruling CENTURY stands a Tory government hell-bent on smashing the JOHN HARRIS strength of the trade union movement.

It is up to POEU miliDREDE "HELLO - R.S.P.C.A.?"

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у Har Sloan