12 December is going to remembered in the history of the trade union movement.
The general secretary of the TUC - Murray the scab - has openly sabotaged the decision of the TUC employment committee. Alastair Graham, Alan Tuffin, Len Murray and the right wing of the TUC General Council appeared on television every five minutes to denounce the NGA Less than twelve hours later the NGA National Council called off Wednesday's 24 hour printing strike.
The result is the greatest be ment for fifty years. There should be no illusions on that.
The Stockport Messenger was ordinary struggle. become the spearhead of Thatcher's attempt to ram through the greatest anti-trade union laws since the 1920s. Eddie Shah is just the first of a series of employers queuing up to smash the print unions.
The trade union movement is now faced with a daily barrage of writs and fines which have shown that the Tebbit laws give the courts virtually unlimited powers to prevent industrial action.
action are in practice becoming a dead letter. By It had existence of trade unionism.
sion on the same managing workers to be illegal. unions immunities for industrial simply remaining within the law the TUC is incapable of even defending the circumstances.
Just take the High Court deciNUJ and TBF printers. A publisher and printer the NGA. under the same roof, with the director, declared to be legally separate and any common action between their trade unions In Robert Maxwell's BPCC printers have been ordered not to other even although they are printing the same magazine. No common action of the working class movement is possible under these Yet these are the laws which Murray and the TUC say must be carried out. They have been put into practice by chopping down The reality is clear. If the line of the TUC majority is put into practice different sections of the are going to be defeated one by one. TUC General Council on this line is becoming one for the disorganisamovement.
That vote at the TUC employment committee should be marked well. Every single person who voted not to support the NGA is a saboteur of the trade union move. ment. They must go. The trade unions have to be defended at every level from the rank and file to the TUC General Council.
The fightback has to start now. It is not a sectarian fight to divide the movement. It is a fight for its existence.
• After the NGA sell out - see page 3.
Socialist Action 16 December 1983