Solidarity Network conference in Leeds last month. Becky Sawbridge from Dover gave the 120-strong conference a moving account of the dispute and the need for continuing support.
As with the miners and others, some of the striking seafarers have Tos their homes because they have refused to give up or be bought off. The media and the official trade union leaderships are silent about the P&O strike, hoping we will just forget that it is still going on.
Other key contributions to the conference came from postal workers, striking nurses, and a Bradford councillor. The common theme throughout the day was the lack of any will by the trade union and Labour party leaderships for a
In Bradford, where working class people face massive cuts, Increased school meal charges, and loss of hasic services - and coun cil workers face the sack - the Dis trict Labour Party strategy is tocall a 'mock election" - in the ward they lost in the real election!
COUP
HELP US TO
1988
MAKE THE FERRIES SAFER
THE
Linking up the
struggles
Afternoon workshops, on the NHS, local govemment, GCHQ. women's struggles and building support groups, took forward the themes from the moming and produced positive suggestions for building support for strugeles locally and keeping the national link-up growing.
The Solidarity Network itself was launched in autumn 1987 lollowing a request from the Silentnight strikers who were sold cut by the leadership of the Fumiture Trades Union (FTAT), and left isolated in their fight for union conditions and rates of pay. They had already made their own links with miners, printworkers, the Hangers striker, Women Against Pit Closures and many other dis-
The feeling after the wave of disputes in 1986-7 was that a nelwork should be kept going to help organise support for future strikes.
The Solidarity Network does not intend to substitute itself for mass action or to become an alternative to fighting the frustrating trade union bureaucracy, It is a support structure for workers and for communities in struggle, helping them link up, spreading inforgiving advice on
Strange line-up in