While Heath and his bully-boys have been lecturing the electorate on the need for "firmness and fairness", the courts have been busy dispensing generous fistfuls of this product to building workers" pickets.
Last week another five pickets on various offences, and received suspended sentences. This comparatively mild treatment was dished out to those whom the capitalist courts felt were the 'small fry", those responsible for the actual organisation of pickets being safely behind bars for up to three years.
No one should think that these latest sentences are not serious. All those convicted now carry стеа Tecorus and most DeBare themselves' for as much as two years, This makes them especially vulnerable to blacklisting by employers (= practice well developed in the building trade), and allows the police to haul them in on the most trivial grounds.
Meanwhile the appeals from the first batch of vicious sentences came before the Court of Appeal on 19 February, Hearings are not due to resume until the week of 4 March, but already the main judge in the case, Lord Widgery (who has gained • reputation as an inveterate "pickethasher" in two important recent cases), made it clear that they were not likely to reverse the convictions on the more serious conspiracy"
This means that the most that can come out of the appeal is a reduction in sentence. The principle of being able to use the criminal Law against peaceful pickets will stand, and the trade union movement will be made to swallow the pectacle of trade union militants imprisoned for normal union activity.
This makes it imperative that the OF MILITANT CONVENOR Workers at William Warne, a rubbi component plant in Barking, Essex, are demanding an inquiry -if necessary by the local trades council-into the dismissal of the T&GWU convenor, Terry Barrett (with microphone in photograph) last Monday.
This victimisation was immediataly met by a total walk out of T&GWU trade union movement prepare a determined fight to get the Shrewshury militants out. A delegate conference has been called for 16 March by the construction unions, UCATI and the T&ci construction section. Delegates are expected from all sectrial in Shrewsbury were convicted of On 20 March the "Day of Action" tors of the trade union movement. called by the Liverpool Conference which met carlier this year will take place.
These actions are all very well. But conferences and "days of action' are not cods in themselves: anless they lead towards decisive forms of strugele they only serve to demoralise.
A way forward in the strugele to free the Shrewsbury workers has been pointed out clearly by Jack Collins. Kent Area representative of the NUM executive, who has, on several occasions, said that the miners should not return to wark until the Shrewsbury lads are set tree.
Such a move by the miners would have an electric eticer on the fest of the working class. It would give mehtants in the building trade the kind of example and inspiration they need to organise an all out strike throughout the trade It would provide militants in every other union with a model for organising solidarity. Such a step by the miners would swing open those fast-locked prison doors in a matter of days.
But Jack Collins call has bad no official weight huhind it A campaign should be mounted throughout the NUM immediately to inform its members of the facts of the Shrewsbury case and to get pledges that miners will not return to work as long as rebow babe unponists beam in jail for their picketing activities. Such resolutions should he passed by