Chips are down in Fleet Street STOP THE PRESSES!
Editorial: Rupert "I liked the US film industry, so i bought it* Murdoch has set his sights on smashing the centuries-old fabric of trade unionism in the print. He has been romping about the ring for some time now, exhibiting punches that have had all the commentators gasping.
Up against this press baron - who is leading the pack of Fleet Street bosses — is the combined weight of the print unions. But for all their size and strength, SOGAT and the NGA have grown flabby and are out of condition. SOGAT in particular has been losing out heavily even in the pre-match knock-about sparring contests with the number two contender, Robert Maxwell. Sporting black eyes and bruises, SOGAT leaders have tried every way possible to postpone the Murdoch fight - or duck it altogether by handing him more than half the prize money.
Even so, many punters would have more reservations about Murdoch's chances if he did not have extra help. In the "Dirty Digger's" corner -and ready to stick the boot in to the unions should they hit the canvas — is Eric "CBI"' Hammond, leader of the EETPU.
The confrontation could be historic in more than one way. Not only is the very future of printing in Fleet Street and the survival of the print unions at stake, but this could be the first major dispute in Britain in which one "union" - the EETPU - places itself at the complete disposal of management to wipe out all others in an industry-
Recruited through the EETPU's offices in Southampton, trained to steel the jobs of print workers, determined to cross picket lines, the Wapping workforce is a scab army which stands in opposition to every trade union principle.
Up to now, the EETPU had established a position so far to the right of the rest of the labour movement it was almost out of sight: it has shamelessly courted the employers and the right wing press, broken ranks on the Tory anti-union laws, signed no-strike deals for its own members, linked up with the scabs and opposed the slightest support to the miners, and buttressed the reactionary leaders of the AUEW in their defiance of TUC policies. They have for years played a scurrilous role: but not until now had they gone onto the offensive in a joint attempt with a major employer to destroy trade unionism.
The Fleet Street battle involves far more than the thousands of jobs at stake: it involves the fight against the emergence of an extreme version of US-style "business unionism', , verging on the thoroughly reactionary "yellow" company unions set up in Japan and elsewhere to destroy all working class organisation.
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Enc Hammond
Yet still the TUC has taken no action against the EETPU. Hovering fearfully on the edge of a major class battle, and faced with a 30-page dossier of complaints against the EETPU, the General Council decided... to shelve the matter, postponing for a week a decision on whether even to investigate the EETPU's scabbing activities!
Since last year's TUC pulled back from disciplinary action against the AUEW and EETPU over their breach of Congress policy on the Tory anti-union laws, these ultra right wing forces have become increasingly arrogant in their attitude to the labour movement. It is quite clear that if they are not firmly resisted, they will hogtie the TUC and step up their sabotage - focussing on the promotion of the scab miners "union" and acting as the focal point for a hard line right wing opposed to any action at all against the employers.
In this light, appeals to preserve the "unity" of the TUC amounts to a renunciation of class struggle and acceptance of the leadership of the EETU. While unnecessary splits and divisions within the workers' movement are to be avoided, the expulsion of the EETPU over its scabbing in the print industry is now crucial to draw the line between workers' and employers' organisations.
The EETPU boasts that it is regarded by Norman Tebbitt as embodying the Tory Party's view of a "progressive approach on the shop floor and elsewhere". It holds fringe meetings at the CBI conference, touts for "sweetheart" deals with Japanese and other firms, and on virtually every basic issue identifies more with the ruling class than the workers.
Until and unless the working class membership of the EETPU ousts their vicious right wing leaders, and abandons the union's role as a scab army, the organisation should be kicked out of the TUC, and stripped of any protection from
Watch out! There's a
"poaching" under the Bridlington agreements. Indeed, other TUC unions should be urged to recruit EETU rank and file members.
The Fleet Street episode has resulted in a split even between the EETPU and their right wing cronies in the AUEW, whose print industry members suffer from the Murdoch plan. While the AUEW has joined the NGA, NUJ and SOGAT in complaining against the EETPU acting "in a way detrimental to the interests of the trade union movement" , other right wing unions, including the steelworkers, have warned that they cannot endorse Hammond's scabbing for Murdoch.
This is precisely the time to hit the EETPU hard
with what solidarity can mustered by the miserable "new realists" on the TUC General Council. If they do not fight now, the door will be opened to a wholesale demolition of trade unionism.
It is equally clear that the TUC, which betrayed the NGA at Warrington, and sold out the miners strike, is petrified of such a confrontation and will focus its efforts on defusing the fight.
But with the Telegraph's new management democrat about! RONALD REAGAN, sponsor of the "contra" murder gangs which are fighting to oust a democratically elected government in Nicaragua, declares a holy offensive against the "terrorist" Colonel Gaddafi.
What is Gaddafi accused of this time? Lending practical support to a misguided section of the Palestinian liberation movement, fighting for the right of the dispossessed Palestinians to return to their homeland which has been seized — in effect hi-jacked - by the Zionist state of Israel.
Israel's armed forces are among the most notorious exponents of terrorism in the whole world: scarcely a day or an hour goes by without an Israeli shot being fired: its military strikes against foreign targets are legendary.
To this 40-year, organised, systematic, state terror by a nationally exclusive state, Reagan's response is multi-billion dollar aid. When - for all his faults - Gaddafi has the temerity to defend the other side, the USA threatens military action and seeks to impose an economic blockade!
The same logic applies to imperialist dealings with South Africa. Thatcher refuses to discuss with the "terrorists" African National Congress, which represents the oppressed black majority who daily suffer brutal violence. Instead she meets and swaps plans with Botha's apartheid regime which whips, shoots and imprisons the blacks, and which is engaged in daily armed pro-
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waiting in the wings; and with Maxwell and others looking nervously at the forthcoming Daily Shah and weighing up their chances of following Murdoch, it is clear that to win the Battle of Wapping it is necessary to pull out all the stops, and shut down Fleet Street. Supporting action from transport workers, supply firms, shop workers and others will also be needed to halt Murdoch's scab papers which will roll out of the Wapping plant. This in turn will involve TUC unions in defying the anti-union laws and the courts by taking "secondary" action.
Any real compromies in this situation seems highly unlikely. There are two possible scenarios: • Either the trade union movement will mobilise against this new challenge to its very existence, and inflict a mighty defeat on Murdoch and his • Or the TUC leaders and their capitulationist "new realism" will help the employers to inflict yet another crushing defeat on the workers' movement and in the process smash the two most powerful of the print unions, with repercussions that will linger for years.
It is the task of socialists within the movement to ensure that the first scenario prevails. vocations against all of the states on its borders - invading Angola, occupying Namibia, sponsoring murder squads in Mozambique and now toppling the government in Lesotho. Who is the "terrorist": who are the "democrats"?
It is almost inevitable that when they use the words "terrorism'' or "democracy", imperialist governments are seeking to crush a progressive cause and promote a repressive one.
Our noble "democrats" in the Tory Party propose a most eminently those scabs who flout a majority decision of their colleagues, and break a strike, should be exempt from any disciplinary action! Yet when Michael Heseltine went out on a limb (or a rotor blade) over the absurd Westland helicopter scandal, he was forced out of the Cabinet! As ever, Thatcher's gang shows its own form of class solidarity and class consciousness while trying to stamp out any class response from the workers' movement.
While the servile Kinnock meekly echoes the bourgeois conceptions of individual "democracy" . it is high time socialists began to focus attention on the collective, class action and solidarity which built the workers' movement in the teeth of opposition even fiercer than Thatcher. When the majority of society have power in their hands, we will give a fresh lesson in real democracy, and strike deserved terror into the hearts of today's oppressors.