peaceful and orderly; winding the police the up, and then leaving so others get the Not long ago one of the marches was proceeding down Commercial Road, the Now, that the lorries. and scab once they leave the
PHOTO: Andrew Wiard (Report) coach came towards the march. People surrounded it. There were not enough police to control the situation so the CCG stepped in and regrouped the march to go down a side road away from the scabs and the lorries! They were literally doing the police's job for them.
The wonder of Wapping is not that the marches are small now but that people continue to come week after week despite such demoralising tactics.
Living in Tower Hamlets where the plant is situated, the strike is part of everyday life. Every time you go to work you see the scabs and the lorries. The coaches are parked outside the tube, picking up and dropping off their filth.
The roads are blocked off at least twice a week. If you refuse to show identification you don't get home. Police on horses in
Bride through working class housing estates on their way to and from
The plant itself dominates the landscape throughout much of Wapping and every time we look at it the anger rises. The Tower Hamlets Support Group has been active since day one of this dispute.
Is evolution is probably a miniature of what has happened with this dispute throughout the rest of London. meetings were packed with 60 to 70 people from all political groups and trade unions. It was a new and exciting dispute on our
The first meetings got little practical support work organised, as everyone was keen to make a speech about how they saw
dispute being and won. The sacked printers who attended (and who are still with us) must have wondered what they had walked into.
nine months later, the support group is a core of 6 to 10 activists and the printers. The polemic has stopped and sc has the influence of almost every other
political group in the borough. general feeling seems dispute is going to be sold out anyway so why bother?
The left press still write about it every week and the papers sellers are picket — but only to sell their papers and not really to give any practical support and solidarity to the sacked workers.
The left generally seems to have learned little from the miners' strike. It cannot get itself together to support workers in struggle unless they are clearly onto a winner.
The most militant and political of the printers know that this stirke will be sold out. But they are still in there fighting, picketing and marching the trade union and labour movement support from the rest of London? Sitting at home or at a newer picket somewhere with more prospect of winning.
Supporting the printers has always been different from supporting London's labour movement thousands of pounds for the People were travelling to and from coal fields.
But this strike is different. A industrial struggle in the London. Supporting it was never about organising collections of money. It was much harder. It is about getting other workers who are low paid and work in terrible conditions to listen to what the well paid printers are saying about losing their jobs. about a continual presence outside the Wapping plant every week for eight months. Not just one romanticised trips to a striking pit village every week.
It is about going down to Wapping and being infuriated by the sexism. racism and anti-gay sentiments Paul Mattson/Frame.
The to be that the the Street out... back. more involved in dispute than others. recognise us. - and where its fight which daily gets harder to win. incredible. Some of the the miners. raised clerical workes miners. the mass heart of been fronts. food and demonstration in it women on It was expressed. two or of with Socialist Viewpoint No. 14 November-December 1986 рб
many of the workers you are there to women support and having to confront that all the time. It is about constantly talking with the workers (and not just the rest of the left) about the need to get Fleet a dispute right here on road doorstep and it is being ignored. The May local elections took a lot of people away to canvass and to work in their boroughs. Many of those never came Possibly living in Tower Hamlets we get of the the emotions There are scores of printers who we recognise now and they We don't know their names or anything about them except that they are there every week on the marches and outside the plant. They are comrades in a The women in this dispute have been strongest and woman sharpest of the strikers are the women - in marked contrast to Brenda Dean. Always at the bottom end in terms of the union's organisation but at the whole top in terms of the strike. They have been excluded from having any organised say as women in this strike by the bureaucrats. Even the women's demonstrations have The last women's are fighting July tightly was controlled by the officials to ensure that against none of the anger of the thousands of Metropolitan could be effectively right-moving It was the first demonstration to be held after the high court injunction banning the right of the marchers to proceed down the Highway. The atmosphere was lively and the ground. good. Unlike the usual marches, there was again. loud singing and chanting. Many of us women like her. were glad that the timing had coincided the women's march, feeling that
would be less likely to be controlled than the men.
But as the march got to the plant the leaders of it (Stalinists) halted it 150 yards away from the police and made no attempt to insist on our right to proceed down the
The rally which should have taken place a half mile away started exactly where the police told the chief stewards to stop. Women had been betrayed. To add insult to injury we were supposed to stand there and listen to Brenda Dean tell us all about the "fight for our people"
Marching through the streets of London on a day time march with the printers in July when the sun was shining and the atmosphere was strong and solid was a moving experience.
As we walked past the Times building in Grays Inn Road scabs had put copies of the Times and Sun in the windows. One
who has been on every march, always with her placard and a strong voice
- stood there. She was not going to move until the papers were taken down. The
march cane together and determined not to move.
The police went into the building and removed the papers from the windows. The woman was jubilant. It was a small victory. A tiny victory. But for people who
with everything they have the might of Murdoch, the Police, Thatcher and her thugs, the cusioned union leaders and the
Labour party and TUC, it was a significant victory.
That woman is what struggle is about. She will not give in even if she is beaten to
She will get up and fight The left has a lot to learn from
Showing the folly of Labour's pledges on ballots: Sealink workers walked straight out on unofficial strike when faced with redundancy - would a Labour Is