TUC right wing's trail of betrayal What makes Murray run?

Scan page 2

THE VICIOUS attack by Len Murray upon the limited but important show of support for the NGA by Monday's meeting of the TUC Economic Committee should come as no surprise.

As far back as October 19 the TUC's Economic Committee discussed the first injunctions granted to Selim Shah - one banning the NGA from writing to Shah's advertisers urging them not to patronise his papers; the other against secondary picketing of Shah's Bury and Warrington plants. The first injunction was granted under Tebbit's 1982 Act, the second under the earlier 1980 Prior Act.

The TUC decided to give limited, legal, and therefore verbal, "support" to the NGA - but to call on the union to end its mass picketing.

This stance has been maintained as the threat to the very essence of trade union solidarity action has become crystal clear.

On Monday November 28, following the two-day Fleet Street stoppage by NGA members, the TUC Economic Committee met: thousands of printworkers had been locked out by management, and the Newspaper Publishers' • Association had made it clear they would seek damages of up to £3 million from the NGA: but TUC leaders decided to put off any decision.

Right wingers grouped around Len Murray, including CPSA leader Alastair Graham, GMBU leader David Basnett, Gerry Russell (AUEW), Eric Hammond (EETPU), Bill Whatley (USDAW) and Roy Grantham (APEX), had made it clear that they favoured withholding any support at all from the NGA so long as it remained "outside the law." This was also the view argued on television by Bill Sirs (steelworkers) and Terry Duffy.

But conspicuous among the silences has been that of the leadership of SOGAT '82, the other big print union, itself facing High Court injunctions from Labour Party member and millionaire Robert Maxwell's publishing firm BPCC.

SOGAT leader Bill Keys chairs the TUC Employment Committee: but his own union has made no public offer of assistance or solidarity with the NGA, and Keys himself has SCORES of extra police have been drafted into London to try to stop a repeat of ghastly scenes outside the TUC headquarters which shocked the nation.

Thousands of lawyers gathered By Harry Sloan JOHN HARRIS Murray simply stated that the NGA would receive support "from the TUC"

After staving off a decision on the Monday, the TUC inner circle came out on Tuesday night with a unanimous mealy-mouthed statement which amounted to a stab in the back for the NGA.

Amid vague calls for affiliated unions to 'support" the NGA, it pledged TUC financial support "so that the NGA could carry out its lawful functions on behalf of its members."

This carefully chosen formula was a deliberate blow against the mass picketing, the sympathy strikes, and the defiance of the injunctions — all of which are obviously against Tory law.

Indeed, the TUC wording is a carbon copy of the initial appeal court ruling by Sir John Donaldson that not all the NGA's assets should be sequestered at first — but that the union should be allowed to retain sufficient money to 'maintain its lawful functions' The next day the High ordered the seizure of the entire assets of the NGA.

Seven national newspapers were also granted injunctions barring the NGA from any further walkouts along the lines of the previous week.

Tony Dubbins of the pointed out that:

Daily Blail EXPRESS "If the print unions are deteated, the whole trade union movement is, too. If we can't defeat this legislation, nobody else can.

"If we pay, employer atter employer will be coming to the courts to make sure we are impotent in every dispute."

True enough - but this has long ago been accepted by the TUC leaders, who above all wish to maintain their new 'realistic" relationship with the Tory government, and in particular the talks with current anti-union boss Tom King.

Accordingly the statement drawn up for the TUC General Council meeting • on Friday December 2 was vetted by legal advisors.

An explicit NGA appeal for the TUC to call on affiliated unions to mobilise for the mass pickets was rejected out of hand - in the event, the NGA was forced to send out its own appeal.

The High Court was becoming ever more arrogant. NGA auditors were ordered to disclose the whereabouts of union assets and told "It is quite irrelevant whether the officers do or do not consent."

The NUJ, too, was brought into the dock for its struggle with Dimbleby papers. As the NGA assets froze, so it became impossible to pay wages and salaries to union staff, or pensions and other benefits to union members.

Plainly the hidden hand of TUC arm-twisters can be seen behind the crazy NGA initiative for a "truce" on Friday December 2.

Pickets were called off for seven days in Warrington while an improbable deal was searched for with Shah. The court played ball, and a delighted TUC General Council met for a convinced they had bludgeoned the NGA into a climbdown.

Norman Tebbit, questioned that night on the "truce" declared that he detected the good sense of the TUC.

NGA leaders, however, would not openly attack the TUC role in the dispute. Tony Dubbins effectively withdrew from critical statements about the TUC, claiming that he had referred only to Duffy and Graham who publicly opposed the NGA action.

There is no doubt that TUC sabotage has combined with the natural conservatism and narrowness of the NGA leadership to produce a succession of disastrous retreats that have encouraged the employers and emboldened the courts to inflict Friday's astronomical £525,000 tine.

The statements of support from a number of individual unions — seldom backed up by any officially organised action -have not been sufficient to counteract the organised, systematic and ruthless sabotage by the TUC right wing.

But while doing their best to isolate and ditch the NGA, TUC leaders have continued to trek meekly into their discussions with King and seek even to extend their links "with the Tory government.

Last Wednesday saw TUC leaders sit down with CBI bosses and Chancellor Lawson in a routine meeting of the National Economic Development Council meeting - and agree to set up a new tripartite committee on unemployment.

The committee signifies nothing more or less than the TUC's servile attitude to the Tories.

It is plain that in their confidential backroom chats with King, Murray and Keys, the TUČ's chosen delegates, have been told quite bluntly that further collaboration could depend upon them delivering the NGA's head on a plate as a token of goodwill.

Murray's fury at being partially cheated of this by the Economic Committee meeting's 9-7 vote to back the one-day national NGA strike call is an indication of how far he now sees his role as a policeman for the Tories.

If Murray and his pals get their way in the General Council meeting taking place as we go to press, we can be sure that the betrayal of the NGA will be merely a bitter foretaste of the treachery to come from the present TUC leadership. It is upon such leaders in the workers movement that the Tories pin their hopes of further victories in 1984. circumstances.

"I am defending the right of ordinary trade unionists to have their unions, assets and leaders taken away from them," he declared.