UCATT shop steward, Bardolin's Moray House site, Edinburgh; member of Edinburgh building workers Joint Shop Stewards Committee Edinburgh building workers, led by their Joint Shop Stewards Committee, have been to the fore throughout the campaign against the Shrewsbury show-trials.
The first major initiative was the organising of a conference by the Edinburgh and District Trades Council in response to calls from the JSSC and the Edinburgh Central and Portobello branches of UCATT. This was attended by 150 workplace and trade ution branch delegates, and was preceded by an intensive campaign of leafleting and mass mectings on sites throughout the city.
An attempt by the Trades Council Executive to keep a tight rein on the campaign aller the conference-by confining the Action Committee to a largely self-appointed group of Trades Council offioers and rebresentatives of the major unions— was effectively by passed by the response of the JSSC to the call for action on the day the trial opened (3 October). On lhat das 3.200 menon 13 siles were pulled out thanks to the efforts of the JSSC. and 500 joined a demonstration ourside the Scottish Office, Few cities elsewhere were able to boast of such a response.
Within a day of the sentences the Edinburgh stewards brought out three major sites on a I-day strike and organised a picket with delegations from 11 sites outside the Scottish Office. A meeting of all stewards has now been called for next week to organise a massive campaign of action throughout the local a bout movement Our record in defence of the Shrewshury workers and the right to picket stands in stack contrast to that of those organisations which have counterpored putting pressure on the trade union barcaucracy to the organisation of independent action by the mass of the working class. We are of course absolutely in favour of forcing the burcaucrats to take up the campaign, but the limited moves which the UCATT and T&G lenders have made have all been forced on them procisely by the determined action of large numbers of their members and not by pleas and oompromises.
The decisive factor in breaking the back of the Shrewsbury show trials and releasing the three, will be whether or not bulding workers are prepared to give a clear indication to the Tories and to the fellow-worker that they are determined to free their brothers and defend their right to picket. That action must take the form of a national buikling workers strike and a campaign throughout the working class to make clear the implications of the attack on pickering in relation to the battle against Phase 3. Bill Jones of national Shrewsbury Defence Committee speaking on Edinburgh site sarlier this year the Tory Government.
Strike action the Jrais.
It is by explining the significance of this attack to their own struggles that other sections can be won to generalising the Shrewsbury campaign throughout the cinss, making it a Locus of the mass struggle against It is clear that the line of the Communist Party -of relating action to the line of the buresucracy cuts right across such a campaign and is a direct threat to its development. In the present satnation it is a recipe for token actions which will do nothing to free the three Those militants who up to now have adhered to this approach must consider whether they will continue to do so. or whether instead they will continue to delend the rights of their class in struggle by fighting for nationul may use the court of Appeal. How they do it is their business-but they must be forced to Free the Three- Reverse the Verdiers-Stop The immediate task facing trade union militanb across the country in the organisation of a massive campaien of industrial and political letion lo win these demands. Valuable leads have already been given by building workers in Edinbungh who understand that the key to the situation is an all out national building workers strike. Building workers everywhere bould launch all out strikes as soon in the new year as possible, and demand that the UCATT and T&GWU leaderships call an official strike Around this focus a campaign of protest strikes and demonstrations by other groups of workers must be organised, and preparations laid for the stepping up of the struggle if the Government refuses to back down. Representatives from the entire labour movement in every locality should meet as soon possible to plan such solidarity actions, and every trades council, union branch, and shop stewards committee in the country should send delegates to the forthcoming recall meeting of the conference convened earlier this year by the Liverpool Trades Council in defence of the Shrewsbury workers, in under to develop astional coordination of the campaign. (The Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions has also decided to hold a meeting in Birminghai on 19 January which will take up the Shrewsbury case along with other aspects of the Tory offensive.) The call must go up from every quarter of the movement for the TUC to give fuil backing to such mobilisations This is the only way to defeat that prong of the Tory offensive which has struck at the Shrewsbury building workers. A victory in this struggle would be a massive demonstration to the whole working class of the power of united action, and an inspiration to launch the sort of counter offensive which coald drive the Tory Govemment and their policies off the stage once and for all,
Three years, two years, and nine months in prison for Dennis Warren, Eric Tomlinson and John McKinsie Jones, for offences on the picket line! Nothing of this kind has happened before in Britain in living memory. Surely these men must have done something wholly unsal and outrageous to meet this fate?
A study of this remarkable trial, however shows that they did nothing particularly unusual for trade unionists. The novelty lies not in what they did, but in the application of the the law of crimmal conspiracy to the activities of trade unionists in the class struggle. It is the legal chemistry which alone explaits the spectacular results of the trial.
JOKER IN THE PACK The six men in court each faced three septrate charges: fighting and making an affray, "unlawful assembly", and 'conspiracy to intimidate workers to abstain from work. The joker in the pack is the conspiracy charge The maximum sentence the Courts can give for intimidation" (which generally means use of threats) is three months imprisonment, But there is no such limit on conspiracy charges Thus conviction on conspiracy can be much more serious than conviction for the offence which it is alleged you conspired to do (but may never even have carried out). For Dennis Warren it turned out to be twelve times as serious. The importance of the Shrewsbury case is that trade unionists have been jailed for offences which previously resulted in a moderate fine at worst.
The use of a conspiracy charge so governs the course of a trial that it colours even those offences over which it is not alleged there was any conspiracy. The rules of evidence governing conspiracy cases are so loose that detendants can be character assassinuted with all manner of hearsay, suppositions and allegations about events which have nothing to do with those from which the specific charges arise. Little wonder then that by the time the trial had ended the jury found one man, John McKinsie Jones, guilty of fighting and making an affray even though the judge himself dismissed the evidence against him. He got nine months imprisonment.
The one specific allegation of violence made.
agains! Eric Tomlinson and Dennis Warren was that they pulled a lump worker off a road roller. The jury convicted them of fighting and making an affray, even though defence witnesses testifies that the man got off the vehicle without any help from anyone chie. In such an instance, one might normally have expected the jury to dismiss the charge on grounds of teasonable doubt. But not after the two men had been ceaselessly grilled as conspirators for nearly three months. 'AGREEMENT' The conspiracy charge dominated the trial According to the prosecution, these six men went to Shrewsbury to picket building sites with a common purpose, an agreement between them to intimidate blacklegs. This agreement consituted conspiracy But, as the judge pointed out, the prosecution didn't have to prove to the jury that these men actually intimidated anybody. Nor was it necessary for the prosecution to say when or where the alleged agroement was made, it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove that they sat down and worked it out, said the Judge. When the defence protested that, Some of these men met for the first time on these sites", the judge interrupted: You know very well it can be a conspiracy when they never met and never knew each other". A wink and a nod is enough, it seems.
There was no evidence at all brought to show an agreement, but then evidence isn't necessary. As the judge put it: It can be conspiracy by inference of all the circunstances". In other words, the jury were being asked to convict on suspicon.
Anything and everything can be adduced as grounds for believing a conspiracy to have Decurred, including the alleged actions of other unknown persons. Thus a violent confrontation of some sort took place on the Kingswood site in Shrewsbury on & Septemher -the identity of those taking part could not be established, only that they were part of a picket squad which had heen organised by the six men in court. By virtue of the fact that these six men, all union branch secretaries or chairmen, undertook the organisation of flying pickets to make the strike more effective. they assumed criminal responsibility for the actions of each and every one of those DIENCES The same logie lies behind the charge of unlawful assembly. If more than three people are pursuing a purpose, even by legal means, which in the opinion of the police is likely to cause a breach of the peace, then they are guilty of unlawful assembly, Wity, said the they were encouraging the others.
OFFENCE TO ORGANISE it was so opened in October. court.
Workers from all across the country demonstrated their solidarity with the Shrewsbury 24 last 15 May defenor, charge these particular men out of the several hundred present? Because as organisers and leaders by their presence So the jury were being asked to say that the mere act of organising a picket or demonstration can be an offence. Working class organisation itself becomes an offence. Few people would agree with such a view, ver the jury voted by a majorityof ten to two that After three months of listening to a farrago of allegations from hundreds of witnesses, in a trial costing £500,000, the jury must no doubt have felt that "maybe there's something in all this after all". Possibly thete were even some hostile anti-trade unionists among the jury. We shall never know. because the Government abolished the right of defence counsels to with Warren. question the occupation of the jurors...... a few weeks before the Shrewsbury trial To make it all credible to the jury, the prosecution tried to show that there was no explanation for the events at Shrewsbury on 6 September otber than a conspiracy by a small group of men to make sure that violence and intimidation occurred whatever happenod. To do this, judge and prosecution tried to keep the realities of the class struggle out of the The delence could only counter by continually reminding the jury what the class struggle is really like. For example, the tace that these men were leaders does not at all mean they could be held responsible for everything done by those they led. In a workers organisstion, leaders are, or should be, continually subject to the discipline of the rank and tile. In a bourgeois army or a capitalist firm, the commander or the boss cin order people about and can reasonably be held responsible for his suhordinates actions. But if unknown workers did commit violence, it does not follow at all that it was on the instructions of the leaders. The large number of pickets itself would constitute intimidation, said the prosecution. Why else would hundreds of workers go to picket a site if not with the intention of fighting? Des Warren explained to the jury that the purpose of numbers was to show those still at work that if chey joined the strike, they were not joining a futile enterprise, Also, there would be safety in numbers if the em players tried to intimidate them after they had joined the strike.
The prosecution again attacked Warren: Wasn't it your technique to first intimidate other workers, then rope them into a meeting and get them to sote (to strike) under duress? Apparently, according to the prosecution, this lad heen the 'usual pattern" fon many weeks. The pickets had gone about the job of bringing thousands of Jump workers into the strike on hundreds of sites by systematic intimidation. Despite the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever of this, and that the police said they saw no damage being done even on 6 September itscif, the judge nevertheless accepted the prosecution line in bis summing up. He told the jury that £5,000 of damage had been done by the pickets, who then tounded up' the remaining workers for a mecting JOIN THE UNION Warren's reply to all this was very simple. "Every worker in the building industry is a potential trade unionist and you are not going to wir people round by frightening them. The alm was to get men to renounce the well paid lump, join the union and fight for the aims of low paid strikers. Violence would not achieve The judge tried to rule that all discussion of the lump was irrelevant' to the case. But the defence had to show that slogans like 'Kill, kill, kill the lump" were not evidence that the strikers intended to kill lumpers. The defence also had to show that lumpers were often hostile to trade unions and were not innocents or neutral witnesses It thus proved impossible to keep the class struggle our of the courtroom entirely, It was the evidence from tbese lumpers which was most resealing. For there is one truly astonishing thing about this trial which its architects forgot. The net they have tried to throw over the six defendants is so wide that-on the basis of testimonies in court it could have been applied with equal, if not more, justice to the other side in the struggle.
First there were the open admissions. One Jumper cheerfully recalled how he had thrown bricks at the pickets, while another remembered that they had threatened to cut off a man's head with a shovel. Most startling of all was the man who threatened pickets with a shot-
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