[AN occupation started on Sunday night, November 13…]

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AN occupation started on Sunday night, November 13, by about a dozen members of the print union SOGAT 82 was joined by more than a hundred other workers, after scab engineers tried to dismantle two presses.

This followed an announcement at the weekend of the immediate closure of Robert Maxwell's British Printing and Communications Corporation printing plant at Park Royal, West London. The 400 workers there are now effectively sacked.

At the time of writing it appears that Maxwell has sent in a gang of thugs - "removal engineers" - with 14 l hammers, to smash up the printing presses in the plant.

Management plans to "rationalise" production by shifting work to East Kilbride and Leeds may well come unstuck though, if SOGAT members there adhere to SOGAT instructions and stick to their previous refusal to print extra copies of publications arising from the London shortfall. This means that amongst other publications the Christmas edition of the Radio Times may be missing this year! Get Name Address Become a supporter of the Socialist Organiser Alliance - groups are established in most large towns. We ask £1.50 a month minimum (20p unwaged) contribution from supporters.

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connives at Join the ORGANISEI Party ORGANISER tunt Scargill gets it right inşıde A local NUPE full-timer has played a scurrillous role in the victimisation of a hospital union militant.

Last Tuesday, 10th, management sacked NUPE branch secretary Martin Barclay from Cardiff Royal Infirmary. The reason for the sacking was given as "gross misconduct" - he was physically assaulted by another member of staff and was forced to defend himself.

In normal circumstances as a first offence and under this kind of provocation it would have led to a final written warning, but clearly there was a political decision to get rid of a leading militant in the NHS in South Glamorgan.

Local management are obliged to consult with their superiors at area level in these circumstances and it is likely that the decision was taken at the top.

THERE WAS no reason for workers in the Scott Lithgow shipyards on the Lower Clyde to rejoice at the deal on pay and productivity which union leaders and the management of British hipbuilders (BS) agreed to on 2 November.

Not only is the deal bad enough in itself, since it makes payment of a mere £7 per week increase conditional upon productivity increases of up to 50%. But for workers at Scott Lithgow, the deal spells the green light for even more attacks on jobs and working conditions in the yard.

For three months, ever since the announcement of last year's losses, workers at the yard have been subject to a tirade of abuse in the local media and management attempts to foist a so-called "survival plan" on them.

The main features of the plan involve: increased job flexibility, leading to inevitable job losses; an ongoing programme of voluntary redundancies; and the introduction of three-shift working, meaning effective abolition of overtime with no pay rise in compensation.

Rundown

With privatisation looming next year on top of a 3% cut in NHS spending, management obviously grasped the opportunity with both hands.

NUPE members reacted by walking off the job at 8am Friday morning to attend a meeting.

There they decided to come out on strike on Monday 14 November and demand that Martin Barclay be reinstated.

But then, with the connivance of management, the NUPE area officer, Stewart Barber, called a further meeting on the Friday completely against the rules, and, in the absence of the branch secretary, got the strike decision overturned.

The case is now due to go to appeal - which is likely to be just as fixed as the interview.

But the only serious hope of restoring Martin Barclay's job is through industrial action at his place of work.

By STAN CROOKE would mean complete Scott Lithgow.

The following day, the eve of the union-management meeting, Tory ministers George Younger and Norman Lamont announced in the Commons that the contract might just be saved - if productivity was increased and the BS offer on pay and productivity was accepted by the unions the following day.

Whether the threat of Britoil withdrawing the contract made union leaders accept the management offer is questionable. Given their lousy record, they would have accepted whatever management had on offer anyway.

But Britoil's threats have had a very real impact on the situation at Scott Lithgow itself. They have provided additional and "lazy" workforce, and also another stick with which management can bludgeon the Scott Lithgow workers into acceptance of the much-vaunted sackings BL's Land Rover subsidiary is to axe 1,560 jobs and close nine plants over the next two years.

The decision was not part of BL's 1983 corporate plan and was first announced to union representatives at a meeting on Saturday.

Doug Gray of the TGWU National Committee, who is steward at Land Rovers, said:

•The meeting should have been dealing with annual pay and conditions - but the redundancies were virtually sprung on us."

The closures would reduce Land Rovers' workforce to 9,700 - a 16% cut. Since it was declared a separate business within BL four years ago, Land Rover's workforce has already been reduced from 14,200 to 9,700 at the same production level. In 1982 alone productivity rose by 14%!

1,000 of the jobs to go will be from the hourly paid (manual) workforce, the rest from the white-collar staff. Land Rover managing director Tony Gilroy (whose track record includes cutting the Sherpa workforce in half at Common Lane) claims the closure will save £14 million a year in overheads. and working conditions does not feature amongst its - in any case - limited range of activities.

Scott Lithgow workers are threatened with job losses for refusal to accept the "survival plan". But acceptance of the plan will definitely lead to job losses, given its contents. Defence of jobs at the yard does not therefore hinge on acceptance of the plan, but on mounting a campaigning fight back within the yard, tied up to similar resistance throughout the rest of BS.

If the Boilermakers Broad Left cannot transform itself into a body capable of defending jobs at Scott Lithgow and the rest of BS, then many militants will be left wondering what is the point of it existing anyway.

strike OVER 200 Sandwell school secretaries voted by a 2-1 majority to go on all-out strike last week over a regrading dispute which has gone on for over four still being implemented POEU.

Having seen the Executive crack on this first-ever injunction, management and their Tory mentors will be confident that they will crack every time the courts intervene.

Indeed a new, humiliating blow will be struck in the New Year, when Mercury press their demands for damages.

It was the POEU Executive that was decisive. There was never a chance that the conference would overturn the EC recommendation of surrender.

The whole campaign of industrial action against Mercury and the Privatisation Bill was based on extremely limited action, sustained by paying full average take-home pay to the members in dispute.

That was never a way to build a fighting, angry mass membership - certainly not angry enough to overturn a retreating Executive and defy the courts. At the peak of the action only 2% of the POEU membership was actually taking action at any one time.

The result was predictable and plain to see: most delegates to the conference had come from areas where members have had little or no involvement in the action.

And they had been told by POEU Head Office that the initial High Court ruling in the union's favour had been secured by the Executive's earlier retreat in lifting the "secondary" blacking of Mercury's financial backers.

From this confusion they were confronted by the manoeuvres of the right wing and the inadequacy of the Left. An enormous Broad Left meeting — over 300 strong - showed itself ready to lobby the crucial NEC meeting, but was derailed into a futile lobby of the right wing "Mainstream" faction's open meeting instead.

Meanwhile in the Executive meeting, Bryan Stanley and his cronies plugged away relentlessly from 8 pm until i am before pushing for a vote, confident at last that they had won a majorcourt ruling.

Stanley added a few touches of his own, claiming that it was specified in the POEU's rules that the union's officers, staff and members must "act lawfully". Had this been the case and union militants obeyed anti-union legislation in the early British trade unions of the last century there would, of course, be no POEU or TUC today.

Stanley piled on the threats, warning that the union would be "smashed" and bankrupted if it defied the injunction. A good response to this had come when the night before a delegate had pointed out "I would rather be a member of a union bankrupt of money than one bankrupt of ideas."

Despite strong opposition from the floor, the Executive's motion of surrender was carried by a large 94,000-38,000 majority.

The following day came the news of the lock outs and suspensions, a reaffirmation of the fight against privatisation, and collecting in donations and a £500,000 UCW loan towards the dispute fund. Many delegates were moved to tears as the conference erupted into "We shall not be moved" • Anyone might have thought that the injunction Labpur and the Privatisation Bill hac been smashed.

But it is the union's campaig that is in tatters. When asker how the Executive would now respond to a further injunction Stanley's only reply was 'the campaign will be flexible, we will sometimes call the members out and other times ask them to go back."

The fight against privatisation cannot be won by such Duke of York tactics. 50 members of the union face the immediate threat of dismissal for refusing to cross picket lines. In London pickets report threats of attack from the SPG. BT, Mercury and the Tories are orchestrating their attacks, as the POEU and TUC right wing block involvement of the rank and file.

The almost euphoric solidarity of the last day of the POEU conference must be turned into widespread industrial action.

Unless the left in the leading branches (mostly centred in London) can take a lead and mobilise their membership irrespective of the probable injunctions, the fight could •soon revert to the pathetic letterwriting and parliamentary pressure campaign which the union correctly rejected last June.

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