A STRIKE be tragic glorious, bitter and beautiful. A strike can bring out qualities ISTC Llanwern ON MONDAY the steel unions rejected the NUM's call to stop steel production. Bill Sirs, general secretary of the ISTC, said the miners demand was 'not practical'. It would be damaging to the industry and unacceptable' to his members.
But the truth is that the NUM has defended the jobs of steelworkers far more than Bill Sirs ever has. The mining and steel industries are inseperable.
On the morning Sirs was making his declaration South Wales Steel Sheet, produced by South Wales steel workers, was spelling out at Llanwern why ISTC members should support the NUM.
We reprinting the article by RAY DAVIES, ISTC Llanwern, which replied to British Steel and Bill Sir's case.
CAROL TURNER looks at how Bill Sirs sold his members down the river, and the support the NUM gave in the 1980 steel and how Sirs can be defeated. and instead calling for a day of action for 14 May months away. The solidarity moves collapsed.
By Easter 1980 Sirs' misleadership of the strike and the TUC's lack of solidarity, had brought the workers to defeat. / for weeks By the MacGregor Corporate Plan for Steel was in place the forerunner for MacGregor's run down proposals for the By 1982 BSC employed just over 100,000 workers • 60 per cent down on a decade earlier. By 1983 half the jobs had gone in the industry. The ISTC under Sirs put up no fight.
And this is the union leader who now claims to be giving advice to the NUM on how to save jobs!
The real way forward for the steel workers was being spelt out the militants in South Wales last week. Continuing the struggle which Bill Sirs and the TUC broke up in 1980 Mass picketing must be mounted at Llanwern and the other steel plants The TGWÙ must be made to hold to its Mon day promise to block road support. It has the power to bovcott the scab firms whose lorries and see the steel run, UID pickets at other places they deliver to, to make sure the actions a success. But in doing that remember that was George Wright, TGWU regional secretary in Wales, who played a ke role in the 1980 sell out.
There is support for the miners in the South Wales steel plants - the militants there confirm it. But officials are blocking mass meetings. Fighting Ior mass meelings in u plants is a way to begin to get over solidarity even if it is a minority view at first The steel blockade is beginning to bite. Even the 109 lorrie: BSC " was using in its South Wales convoys on Tuesday could still only move less than half the steel plants' needs for iron ore It is the steel workers combined with the NUM who will defend the steel Plaills the BSC management. If the steel workers miners the defeat of 1980 can be undone For the future not onl of the NUM but of th steel workers.
SOLIDARITY WITH THE NUM!
STOP ALL STEEL!