SUPPORT THE STEEL STRIKE CORBY, in Northamptonshire, also been the scene of immensely solid strike action. The recent defeats in the struggle to defend steel jobs in the town have sapped шні алсу. MALCOLM IMRIE MARIANNA NAVA were in Corby over the weekend and spoke to MICK SKELTON, ISTC co-ordinator in the How solid is support for the strike in Corby after four days?
Most people in Corby Scotland, so New Year's Day here is more of a celebration than Christmas. I had the shock of my life when 200 blokes turned out for dawn on 2 January, many of them coming straight from parties.
It's getting stronger all the time. We've been sending flying every day to Kings Lynn and now to Boston (where private firms are still trying to get steel Scandinavian ships).
How much effect is the strike having at a national level?
They picked on us because they thought WC were weak, wouldn't go ahead and wouldn't get support if we did. They thought we'd accept because we've accepted 8½ and 7 per cent over the last two years, that we were the weak link. But the ASLEF locally, and the TGWU has gone to the brink of calling a total strike.
How can anyone in their right has workers' and come from the picket at pickets through from and the closures.
Why has there that? that that What happened in someone set cent we've goi NUR and works • 10 January 1980 Page 4 mind not think it's a political fight. It's 100 per cent political, both the pay been such a poor response to the threatened lay-offs at Corby [5000 jobs are to go in March]? Will the support for the strike change Corby is that the hare running.
NUBF (blastfurnacemen) gave up there was no way they were going to support us - and without them we couldn't have made steel anyway.
But we were trying to keep the behalf of tube workers, steel and iron workers. knew that severance pay's no use to → a job's a lot more use. And the town itself was pushing the fact that if the works went, it would be decimated.
But when it went public that one section had given up, Ine Hale wa. away. had to redundancy payments even though acceptance was against instructions, simply because so many people wanted the money. But even if we're going we have to support those who'll be left holding the baby.
Things can change though. Before the strike Corby was like a ghost town, despairing. thereare two factors coming into play. First, if the strike continues the metre furnace at Redcar might take six months to recover, which would mean in effect another six months life for Corby.
Sweet Charity!
rapidly The ISTC has given its seven divisions Now just £1000 each In South £3000 in the first day alone.
The assets of the £10½ million of which £3 million is in liquid assets.
to finance Yorkshire, they spent ISTC run
SOVIET invaders in Kabul. Inset: Babrak Karmal, the newly-installed prime minister Soviet I people, coasts and air security of Soviet citizens.
This absence was, however, one such manual, Coherent national nationalism Czechoslovak mass Stalin whether Brezhnev LUULSC Union and other and will continue to be characterised by resoluteness in defending the state interests of safeguarding inviolability of our land frontiers, maritime space, and in protecting thi dignity of the Soviet flag and the rights and Even the ritual reference to the struggle of the international working class was lacking.
not allowed to remain in Soviet textbooks on foreign policy. In dedicated exclusively to Soviet foreign policy, the authors (including Gromyko) wrote: *Soviet foreign policy reflects the harmonious connection of the internationai interests of the Soviet state and of the Soviet people with the international duties of the working class which has come to power. Soviet oreign policy combines patriotism and servic o the interests of the Soviet homeland wit The first quotation is at least coherent. The second is confused gioberish. There can be no foreign policy based on both a narrow-minder chauvinism and The driving force behind the USSR's role in world politics is its domestic preoccupations. Any event which weakens the power of the buraucracy vis-a-vis the masses inside the Soviet Union is to be dealt with rapidly and brutally. The crushing of the Hungarian and uprisings are a case il point. Tito got away because he threatener with a protracted guerrilla war and armed the Yugoslav workers. It is questionable would have invaded Czechoslovakia if Dubcek had taken a similar But all this does not mean that there is no objective tension between the Soviet Union and The very existence of the Soviet workers states nOW