IN South Yorkshire, scene of some of the biggest picket-line battles strike, the number of pickets has doubled during the past week, Sheridan, member committee in Rotherham.
taken place in Sheffield, hundreds of pickets from South Yorkshire have been dispatched to ports, stockholders, and private steel firms as far afield as Boston in Lincolnshire, Lynn, Manchester, London, and Birmingham.
with more than a dozen arrests at Duncan Hadfields, private beginning of the strike, Hadfields has increased production from 12 to 16 shifts.
co-ordinating Yorkshire area, takes the view that unless the strike is extended to the private sector it cannot be during the steel according to Stan of the ISTC strike While the pitched battles with police have King's In Sheffield itself the struggle has escalated steel firm. Since the The Rotherham strike committee, which is the South the made effective. The consistently refused to accept instructions from ISTC general secretary Bill Sirs that picketing should be restricted to BSC plants.
Despite support from the Transport Union locally, scab lorry drivers continue to try to run the gauntlet of the picket line. 'We've turned back again,' says the secretary of the ISTC's Shepcote No.1 branch on strike is red get de Tory opinion against government,' adds. "They confrontation.' ISTC members are working normally at Duncan Hadfields. They separate agreement from those employed by the steel corporation, and they have not been called out by the steel union executive.
Thanks to this policy encouragement of the mass media, attitudes on shopfloor at Hadfields against the strike. Mick Adams, convenor at Inset: Stan Sheridan of the Rotherham strike committee Well, it's true there are inherited problems. The planned slashing of annual production capacity to 15m tonnes because of the West's crisis has can't But it is the capitalists' balance require steel-making capacity in the West to be destroyed not the needs of the masses of up There was one kind of 'interest' have a - the kind paid to bankers and financiers.
ISTC's newspaper has £1,215m loss declared by the steel corporation over the past four years, £680m of this was A large proportion of this results from the investment undertaken as a result of the ready optimism of the The Sunday Times editorial last that the payments amounted to f1,120 per per year. It added 'there are precedents for writing off the sources of loan liability at the Coal and financiers committee has the local in the dispute.
to join the strike,' doubt approves Lonrho wanted covered by and the any in Europe. have hardened In an DUNCAN HADFIELDS— the privatesteel firm in Sheffield which has been the scene of daily pickets. Hadfields' East Hecla works and secretary of private sector steel maintains that IST members at the plant are saying that they would be justified in ignoring any strike instruction which could involve them 'We are now under pressure from our members to ignore any call from the executive Adams argues. Bill Sirs no this assertion interests against the unity of the steelworkers.
Management at Duncan Hadfields has wheeled out the time-honoured story that if the plant shuts the result would be bankruptcy. This is a little strange since the company was purchased iwo years ago for £15m by Lonrho, which invested £11m to make the plant as advanced as attempt to defuse the Hadfields' management invited ISTC official:
that.
of committee, done.
staying open.' of sectional they'll step in.' proposals were in force. go back to the Dark Ages, he says. the have to arrest thousands of us. since enough' situation mass picket to close the plant, and to inspect the plant to show that they were not doing work which BSC would otherwise have But as Stan Sheridan of the Rotherhar strike committee points out: "They can go i there, but it doesn't make any difference wha they find. These lads won't accept this plac Alan Cooke, a steel worker for 22 years says: 'The police might have been playing it softly so far, but we've had a dozen arrests ad Hadfields. As soon as the action really starts, Cooke considers that there is 'no chasce' of the Tories stopping picketing, even if the Prior 'Thatcher's tryin? t 'But she' Where woul they put us? They couldn't build prisons fast The strike committee is now welcomes any support from local trade unionists.