the Daily Express offices in Fleet Street on 14 May had a few remarks to address to the newspaper which had begun the tirade against the 'Day of Shame' and then gone to the High Court to have strike action declared illegal.
Their main comment, with fists raised, was 'Rubbish!'. To those journalists who had remained in the Express bulding, behind corrugated iron sheets, 'Scabs!', adding the call for 'Matthews out' to the now standard "Thatcher out'.
The refusal by the leadership of NATSOPA to withdraw its instruction to members at Express Newspapers to strike on the Day of Action represents the first blow to the Tories' Employment Bill.
That is what Mr Justice Griffiths was trying to put into force when he ruled in the High Court that unions had no legal grounds for inducing their members to breach their contracts for a 'political stoppage .
NATSOPA won nelEO Matthews, the boss and in effect editor-in-chief of Express Newspapers, didn't dare go back to the courts when it became clear that the union wouldn't withdraw its circular. He knew that his sheets of shame, as one NATSOPA official described them, would be in jeopardy if any union officer were jailed.
For the same reason, sack printworkers who did not turn up for work on the night of 13 May quickly evaporated.
The print union raised two fingers to the law and by taking their defiance on to the streets they showed that the courts and management are powerless when the price of enforcing the Tories' justice is an industrial standstill.
alnews Express and Daily Star in Manchester on 14 May, and so for good measure the print unions shut down the papers on 15 May in both London and Manchester.
Reg Brady, NATSOPA father of the chapel barricaded they shouted down. Victor 'Matthews' threat to managed to publish the Daily says, acted in in the Sunday Times machine room and one of the speakers at the rally before the Fleet Street march, considers that the union has written another page in trade union history.
'There have been enough occasions,' he 'when the trade union movement has defiance of the law.
Pentonville Five dockers who first put the knife into Heath's Industrial Relations Act. If the has to be changed.
ment Bill's was une for the movement. law isn't accepted as fair, then it's broken and 'There's nothing fair about the Employ: scabs' charter.' Brady 'NATSOPA's action has been a shot in the arm We've received dozens of resolutions supporting the union's stand. It's the sort of response to the law that we need to see thoughout the country.
'My union will
Employment Bill. adds, not ine ena. I nal meals ağilale. organise -movement.' Photo: GEOFFREY SHERIDAN (Socialist Challenge)
comply the wnat we nave to ensurc h that the Day of Action is the beginning of the campaign against all the Tories' policies and , educate, and which has been sadly lacking in the
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