CAMPAIGN The aim of the Tory campaign is quite clear. First of all, they want to intimidate the pickets by the use of press smears, the courts and open brutality. The police are being encouraged to use the same tactics on steel pickets as they used - only a year ago - on Black Youth in Southall who were beaten up in large numbers and then carted off to the courts.
Secondly, they want to whip up an anti-union hysteria that will enable them to introduce their Employment Bill as a means of restoring 'law and order. In reality of course, such a Bill is aimed at destroying elementary union rights to make victory almost impossible. As Winston Campbell again put it: "They want to smash flying and secondary pickets so that effective strikes become impossible".
FIGHT-BACK There can be no doubt that the Tories see the steel strike as a test case. Only if they win this one can they introduce their anti-union laws and bring the axe down on workers in a number of other plants.
Thatcher faces quite a problem, however. The strike action by steelworkers • the first in over 50 years - has given them a first-hand experience of the Tory government, its courts and its police. It has made them more determined than ever to win a strike in defence of the right to work.
The best way to ensure that the struggle is won is to extend support throughout the labour movement. The support given by the miners -ilarly those from South Wales and Yorkshire - showed the possibility of united action. In the coming period, that united action has to be extended still further. The steelworkers mustn't be left to stand alone. discover. As sectors of the labour movement begin to radicalise, they do not look-as did the unattached radicals - to the peripheral organisations such as the SWP for a solution the unions and the Labour Party.
the anti-cuts demonstration last the party they built, vote for and The reason for this is not hard to but to their traditional organisations:
The thousands who marched on November or the hundred-thousand who supported the TUC Day of Action out. on March 9th look for leadership not to small groupings at this stage but to IRONICAL finance: the Labour Party. They know that, in the real world, it remains the Kids the Way!
& THE April 80
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STEEL WORKERS
Don't Moke vur Show Islington Council Fight for more money from central Goverment -not Cuts