OHNSTO PRINTWORKERS OCCUPY Hard on the heels of the Crosfields occupation comes news of a new occupation in the same area. After several months of wrangling with management over redundancy plans and wage rises, the 39 workers at the litho plate-making firm of Mabbutt & Johnston in Islington suddenly received a polite little note by post telling them that their company was being closed down overnight. That was on Saturday 3 May.
Although John Alexander-the main shareholder and a director of Hill Samuel, th merchant bank-had brought in a security firm, the workers gained admittance on Tuesday via the roof and are now firmly in occupation. They found however that over the weekend management had removed the financial records, cut off the phones and even taken away the lenses from the litho-cameras!
On Wednesday 7 May the, workers organised flying pickets round other local printing firms, and pulled out over 100 people on a demonstration down to Alexander's den in the City. Their unions-SLADE, NGA and SOGAT-have made the dis Trade union and Labour Party members are urge wherever it appears. Solidarity telegrams and donations to the dispute-fund would be very gratefully received- the Crosfields workers, who have been occupying their factory for seven weeks, have already sent £10! (Write c/o Chairman of the Joint Action Committee, Mabbutt & Johnston, Ironmonger Row, London EC1). The Mabbutt and Johnston dispute is just one more example of the need for the Conference against Redundancies in the Printing, Publishing and Broadcasting Industries, which is taking place on Saturday 17 May at the London College of Printing, starting at 10.00 a m. There will be speakers from Mabbutt & Johnston, Crosfields, and other redundancy-hit firms such as Penguin Books.
now! Support this conference. For further details: phone Carl Gardner (01-837 9987, PICKET OF PRIVATE HOSPITAL pute official and actions are going ahead slowly to get the transferred work boycottedG the Florence Nightingale Hospital in Lisson Grove, London. BUPA has paid a cool one and a half million pounds for the Florence Nightingale, which it intends to reThe Borough of Westminster now has 14 private hospitals within its boundaries, providing 1,040 beds, and planning permission has already been given for two more In contrast, the NHS hospitals in the Borough are under-staffed and underfinanced. Two experienced nursing sisters have just left Moorfields Hospital for jobs at the luxury Wellington private hospital in St John's Wood. At St Mary's Hospital in Paddington the rebuilding programme has been postponed indefinitely because of A picket of the Florence Nightingale has been organised by the Medical Commit tee Against Private Practice in conjunction with the Marylébone branch of the AUEW NALGO health services officer Steve Johnson, and NUPE branch secretary Alan Ellis.
local MP, Labour councillor Jean Mereton, and Jamie Morris of NUPE.
The picket and meeting is on Saturday 17 May, beginning at 11am, at the Florence Nightingale Hospital, Lisson Grove, N.W.1 Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson's vice-president, as a "friend of labour' was met with boos and catcalls from large sections of the rally. Hundreds of young workers swarmed out of the stadium and advanced towards the speakers platform in the centre of the playing field, heckling the invited dignitaries. The rally soon dissolved in The Socialist Workers Party, the American Trotskyists, expressed full solidarity with the objectives of the march-'Jobs for All Now' -and proposed a programme to advance this goal through anti-capitalist struggle This includes demands for a massive emergency public works programme at union wage rates; an end to US militarv spending: a shorter working REPAYS LOYAITY 55 SACKED Help fight the sack clauses for all union contracts; and an escalator clause on all social welfare benefits, including pensions and unemployment benefits.
The capitalist class took the 26 April action very seriously. The editors of the New York Times wrote: *There was no mistaking the message that putting the jobless back to work is the country's primary task.' The capitalists cannot put the jobless back to work', however. And that is why there will be more mass labour demonstrations in Washington, bigger and more militant On 26 April the sleeping giant of American labour began to stir. Every political current, from the capitalists to the revolutionary socialists. is