L N LAING D STRIKES (From page 1)
days NATSOPA machine-men succeeded in closing down Fleet Street completely. In many ways this was decisive since the absence of papers showed very clearly that it was not at all a case of "business as usual': the working class was preparing to fight back.
STRIKE SPREADS On Monday, the first working day since the arrests, the strike began to spread to all parts of the country and all sections of industry. Its immediate effect was to some extent hampered by the annual holidays, which meant that most men in traditionally militant sections such as the Scottish miners and Midlands carworkers were not involved. Nevertheless every port in the country was closed, market porters came out in Grimsby and at Covent Garden and Smithfield in London, lorry drivers, container workers and warehouse men shelved their dispute with the dockers to strike "alongside our brother trade unionists", construction sites not already out over the UCATT claim started to shut down and so the strike spread.
This took place, though, without any real