More importantly, the rank and e were unable to develop a national vement to organise the left in the ons and settle accounts with the our leaders like Feather and Len Tay who continued to seek a deal the Tories, or like Reg Prentice • had attacked the dockers and Lared that 'the law 'Free the Five' struggle had C, ASTMS and USDAW to abantheir support for the Act and come off the register. But the trade anion bureaucracy was determined to aroid a fight with the Tories, and the Act remained in force, much weakened, until the Tories fell.
The need for a national alternative capable of fighting the leadership, and leading independent actions soon became clear on the Jones, transport union leader, still livpreparing a sell-out deal on the docks which had been behind the confrontation with the IR Act. THURSDAY 27 JULY: it was the morning after the Pentonville 5 had been released. Dockers were lobbying Transport House waiting to hear the recommendations of Aldington Report.
Jack Jones was general secretary of the transport Aldington was a former Tory MP and chairperson of the Port of London Authority. Together they had formed joint union/employer which had been established to deal with the jobs crisis in the docks.
This had been caused massive introduction freight. The off-port container dépots were a threat to thousands of dockers' jobs. It was the picketing of these container depots that had led to the jailing of the five dockers.
The Jones-Aldington report did nothing to save jobs. Instead it offered improved redundancy The delegates rejected it, dockers launched an immediate all-out strike.
After the freeing of the five the mood was militant. Flying pickets and clashes with the police were the order of the day. A state of emergency was Jones-Aldington hastily produced a new report. Although only slightly changed, Jones packed the delegates' meeting with representatives from the Srider and dockers lost the fight to control the container depots. Over the next few years the docks were decimated.
The tremendous militancy of the ship.
bureaucracy.
lost.
should be EEPTU, docks. Jack dockers had not been sufficient to withstand the sell-outs of the leaderIndustrial militancy alone was not enough to deal with the right wing The rank and leadership had no effective counter to Jones. Tens of thousands of jobs were Only a fight to fully nationalise the ports and major sections of road could have stopped the disas aus feis of standardia on hat living sandares was lacking was a nationally ordinated left wing. The right wing lived to sell out another day.
This was file cond world war.
TUC that they preparations cofor a Labour government. At the September, comes policy.
tions Act that DOSCU action General said that traditions LAKe government.
But the based organisations Communist workers action. The defeated This shop Broad had the support victory workers.
left the building high bureaucrats.
The rank mainly have been very different.
massive the foe Tories eventually militancy They blow being to organise itiative.
proved on govern working class world war. the Industrial Relation Ailson's Harold 'Social Contract' which was to lead to the fastest fall in living standards and the most rapid rise in unemployment since the seThe depth and breadth of the anti-Tory struggles on the part of the rank and file so alarmed the began to make for Labour government equally committed to policies for saving capitalism. In fact the TUC couldn't even wait Congress in wage controls were decisively rejected. One month the TUC General Council was engaged in tripartite talks with government and CBl on inBut it was the Industrial Reladominated this whole period. The TUC had opagainst the Act.
Secretary Vic Feather such action was unconstitutional and contrary to the action against an elected Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, the shop stewards and led by the Party, called for action. Hundreds of thousands of struck in two days of TUC was forced to move but it channelled the action into protest demonstrations.
Scanlon, under pressure from stewards, called number of one day actions which of over 1.5m But the trade union leaders were not prepared to fundamentally challenge the governmenthe LCDTU, and the broad and unions, abdicated leadership of the struggle to the The enormous potential of those struggles to br ing down the Tories and replace them with a Labour government tied to defending the interests of the working class was lost.
Had the LCDTU and the broad left, which quickly lost support, fought both to win the officials to action and to organise as a consistent opposition at the base of the unions, the recent history of our labour movement could The labour movement, despite organisational strength and fighting spirit, had a deadly weakness. It had a leadership which refused to build on the the strength of the class to defeat the anti-working class policies of Tories' defeated by she gre by the gull working class, ell in 1974 with the fina miners. But the eare or the the delivered an effective opposition to the right during the struggles against the Tories, allowed the Labour right to take up the inThe deal that had been ap Wednesday 26 July 1972 was put into operation. The Social Contract led to the fastest fall in the living standards of the since the second Bernie Steer Anthony Merrick Sir John Donaldson was president of the hated National Industrial Relations Court. As he jailed the dockers he said. 'Inhe purpose of this court is to promote good in.
dustrial relations'. The issue was, he claimed, whether these men are to be allowed to opt out of the rule of law.' This man, now Lord Donaldson, is a fitting successor to Lord Denning as Master of the Rolls.
Welsh miners 5 on their release from Pentonville Prison. union movement that got us out.' Derek Watkins Cornelius Clancy The Pentonville 5.
Their imprisonment tional strike action. It forced the TUC to selle nude goner SUING weren't prepared to wait.
Vic Turne were only part of tremendous demonstration that marched from the Industrial Relations Court to greet the Bernie Steer addresses the jubilant crowd outside the prison: 'We were put in prison by political court and it was the trade Socialist Challango 30 July 1982 pago 9
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"ELATIONS COURI Dockers contained: the morning after