tension of the visit makes it worse. Before someone takes a visit, his comrades on the wing call down the messages they want passed out. These are often about arrangements for their own visits.
Kieran desperate
We hadn't anticipated this. When he goes back to his cell he will be asked the 'sceal" (Gaelic for Speaking fast and under his breath he asks us what is happening in what is happening in Zimbabwe and in Palestine, happening England. 'Do people support us there?' he asks.
He asks us whether the Easter march in Belfast really was big. It was ICe Were several thousands out.
Their conditions would be completely intolerable anyone without their clear and strong political motivation. We know from meeting Kieran and for hearing he and others who spent years on the blanket and are now released, psychologically phased tor and are physically in a way that the prisoners with "status' never were.
Kieran tells us that despite really everything there:
protesters will yield. "stinking', he says. going by learning Gaelic. The teacher shouts from behind the The cell door and they scratch the hands with us. Then he is away. led off by a screw We go back, dazed, to the bus with the opaque windows to Gradually the post mortems on Ine start. share their news as we are funnelled back through the system was like signing for bags and belts and from meeting being let out through the turn stile.
As we travel back towards Belfast we recall the Sean O'Casey's Thomas Ashe, 1917 after being force-fed while on hunger-strike. • no way the His cell is You cannot put a rope around ine neck or an They keep
explode over safety tration.
workplaces.
The Labour government didn't say that trades unionists could only depend on their own action to protect their lives and health at work, but that was a conclusion that has been drawn by the workers at Oxygen's depot in Hackney East London - with good reason.
Each day they work among a thousand potential bombs -Sft-high steel cylinders filled with compressed oxygen. If one of the containers, known as BETTER health and safety at work was meant to be one of the presents that the last Labour government gave to the trade unions in return for defeating the Heath adminisThe Health and Safety Executive was set up, chaired by Bill Simpson, former general secretary of the Engineering Union's foundry section, and legal provision was made for union safety representatives to be appointed in most bottles, goes up, like a high explosive.
So you would think that improvements in health and safety would mean more frequent testing of the bottles. In fact BOC has changed the scheme whereby each bottle is tested once in five years. pany is now testing them once every ten years.
Bottles have exploded. One worker at BOC's depot was blown to pieces by an explosion in 1955, and another worker had his stomach smashed.
The remains workers ended up in the streets around the after an explosion while a bottle was being filled in 1965. Six years later another worker was killed in Wembley when a bottie exploded.
Mickey Boulter, the deputy convenor and union safety rep the effect is at the Hackney siders reason why management is cutting the tests workers' position, he adds, is that profit must before safety. 'We should be moving forThe com- wards not backwards, he says.
•We should be testing the bottles every year. We have no idea what happens to the bottles Greenwich when they are out of the depot - they could be dropped from a roof or anything.
of since feel.' Hackney depot week. As a result the at the depot, that there is only one tion.
- money. The implement 10-year tests come side They're a joke.? basic We want more tests not less. That's the way we feel and that's the way the testers here But not the company. Paul acetylene Foot wrote about the danger at BOC in the Daily Mirror last months.
union representatives and the testers Hackney depot hauled in by management and quizzed for several hours and Наскиву threatened with disciplinary acHackney is the only one of BOC's 46 depots refusing to AS Blatant Mickey Boulter puts it: 'We're holding out for all the depots:
And the Health and Safety Executive? 'They don't want to know,' Mickey says. "They play the solidarity against the other.
Tessa Van Gelderen adds: the son, the rights of trade union branch organisation are under attack stewara, at BOC. On Tuesday at the Hackney depot management met all the shop stewards and announced the closure of the department, workers to go in three the The work will go to depots out in Bristol and Cardiff. It just se happens that werkers at the depot have been in the forefront for improving safety conditions in BOC and fighting for better pay and conditions all round.
won't John Walsh, convenor a Hackney, says: 'It's a blatam attack on the union to break at the depot.
scheduled redundancies include the branch chairper.
vice chairperson, shop and assistant conThe cutbacks will be fought, and they are not the only attack by management.
An all-out strike began at Wembley depot on Tuesday, when the plant came after installation engineers were suspended by ment. The engineers used to accept the splitting which t in a weakening of union organisation. 'Manage thinks support the other depots because we have our Walsh. But the wale union problems, says John must support both disputes.
They are linked and defeat of either will be a big blow to the union inside BOC. This is a make or break situa tion and we intend to fight all along the line.'