Free Citizen: Vol. 2 no. 15, 15 January 1971

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15 JAN 1971

Thousands in Britain march against Anti Union Laws

1.C.1.U.‘PROTEST - A FARCE

BY JOHN GRAY

TUESDAY JANUARY 12TH WAS A DAY FOR TRADE UNIONISTS IN

GREAT BRITAIN TO REMEMBER. OVER A QUARTER-MILLION

OF THEM MARCHED AGAINST THE ANTI-UNION LEGISLATION NOW

BEFORE WESTMINSTER. MOST PEOPLE THINK IT IS ONLY A MAT-

TER OF TIME BEFORE THE SAME LAWS ARE INTRODUCED IN THE

6-COUNTIES (LYNCH IS ALREADY INTRODUCING ANTI-UNION LAWS

IN THE 26-COUNTIES).

MILITANT WORKERS THROUGHOUT THE 6-COUNTIES WANTED TO

SHOW THEIR SOLIDARITY AGAINST THE ANTI-UNION LAWS. THE

ONLY DEMONSTRATION WHICH THE IRISH CONGRESS OF TRADE

UNIONS (I.C.T.U.) NORTHERN COMMITTEE COULD COME UP WITH

WAS A MEETING (OUTSIDE WORKING HOURS) IN THE GEORGE IV

MEMORIAL HALL.

William Blease, Brendan Harkin, Jimmy Graham and all members of the Northern Committee of the I.C.T.U. will remember Tuesday 300. Then they tried mystificat- January 12th as a day of shame. ion. Instead of discussing how to For four hours they faced angry By use new bill my stepewewe rank and file workers and shop legal and economic experts of stewards in the King George VI international repute to deliver Memorial Hall, Their pitifal re- lectures on the minutiae of the cede é bill. Finally at 7.55p.m. Billy cord of collaboration with the Un- : : .

Sieihian t d bi Blease announced that it was cold seis < sepia a aee’ il on the stage so the meeting would speak at i Nasa end at 8p.m. (it was scheduled to ttiaiaiee aaah pote ascent - end at 9.30p.m.). However if Why did these dignatories have to pegged de — eran Si : the crowd was warming up. By face this rare exposure? January t} ; } : rth, hide nan Ahadey envebicha dent ne time the Northern Committee er of a million British workers boring and irrelevant speeches succeeded in driving away a fair proportion of the original crowd of had thankfully slunk off at 9.15p.m went on strike against the new Tery legislation. On December 8th several thousand N. Ireland workers had struck in protest against the new bill. Blease and his colleagues feared that more would take similar determined action on the 12th. They had to siphon off this militancy, hence, whatever the agony, the necessity for their prolonged public meeting.

Their tactics have temporarily succeeded - very few N. Ireland workers went on strike. However their meeting enforced the uselessness of the Northern Committee.

It was their meeting, they organised it, but they did their best to destroy it. Prolonged exposure to rank and file workers, could only be, and ultimately was, acutely embarassing. First they tried the tactic of the filibuster, and indeed one-and-a-half hc urs of prolonged, most of their dirty linen had been deservedly washed in public.

Blease explained the Northern Committee's policy of opposition to the Tory Bill. They had asked the Unionist government not to introduce it here. They had explained to the Unionists that they could operate a voluntery system of control here. The Northern Committee lay themselves open to attack on three counts here. Firstly, as Jimmy Graham, himself a member of the Northern Committee, explained, there is a "snowball's chance in hell" that the legislation will not be introduced here. Bradford's industrial policies based on the attraction of foreign investors and supported by the I.C.T.U. is unsuccessful enough - if he fails to introduce the British legislation All the s who bother to his policies are doomed. Unionist M.P.' Brian Vallelyexibition Brian Vallely - one of the four P,D. members jailed for their part in an industrial dispute - was released on two days’ parole on Wednesday to put on an exhibition of his paintings at the Arts Council Gallery in Belfast. On Friday Brian returns to Crumlin Road Jail to serve the rest of his six months sentence, imposed for being present at a meeting in support of the cement strike - a meeting which was attacked and broken up by R.U.C. scabs and thugs. Most of Brian's paintings are on the subject of Irish traditional music, and the men who play it, but the collection includes three sy drawings inspired -old ironwork spiral staircase by the grim, century of the prison interior. attend Westminster voted for the bill. Blease explained "they have been written to by the I.C.T.U."

as if that will make them change their minds,

CONTINUED INSIDE)

LETTER

lrish Congress of Trade Unions

NORTHERN

IRELAND COMMITTEE

In seeking to imply that we are allowing the Government to ‘spy' on the I.C.1.U. for a fee, you portray the usual ?P.D.

facility for fantasy as well as misrepresentation.

Any interested trade unionist will know that all affiliated organisations and conference delegates receive a copy of the

I.C.T.U.

annual accounts and balance sheet.

Copies are also deposited with public libraries where they are available for any interested outside party to scrutinize.

Though to what wicked use they would put this information only the lurid imagination of the 'Free Citizen' can tell.

How we spend trade union finance is no concern of the Government. But we willing accept the obligation, to the Government, the general public - and to trade unionists to account for the public finance expended on the trade vnion training and advisory service. I take it that those members of the ?.D. who are in receipt of Government grants and salaries paid from public funds are | immune from your own warped conclusions, that otherswho accept public money are tainted.

mo rights in this respect, The absence of any specific example of how and when we acted Perhaps you consider such public finance is yours by ‘'right', but trade unionists and others have against the best interest of workers is an indication of your blatant innuendoes. Your narrow political outlook contributes othing to a meaningful approach to trade unionism or the problems of the Province.

I am sure, quite a few could cite actions taken by the P.D.

which were not in the best interests of workers - but no one suggests that you are in the pockets of Ian Paisley and William Craig, who mey have benefited most by some P.)D. activities.

At the same time, I suggest, that such an assertion could be more easily sustained than your childish misrepresentation that the Northern Ireland Committee is not motiveted to seek genuine results and benefits for workers.

Yours faithfully, weal : / We look forwerd to this letter bein nypiahod in full llth January, 1971. NB: in your next issue.

WE REPLY

af the I.C.T.U.'s accounts are so readily available why bother to send them to the Government at all? Unless, of course, they are to be sent before they are presented to the Annual Conference, or unless they are to be used as the basis for discussion of future spend ing of the grant. Perhaps Mr.

Blease could enlighten us about this? The accounts are not the important issue, the Stormont Government's £10,00 per annum subsidy to the Northern Committee of the I.C.T.U. is. The Unionist Party have no love for Trade Unions and less for the working class. For years they refused to recognise the I.C.T.U. and for 50 years they have condemned the working people to live in slums, earn low wages an” go constantly haunted by the fear of unemployaio

WIB.

ment and emigration. These gangsters don't give away thousands of pounds for nothing. Mr.

Blease is concerned about P.D.

members whose pay (because they are employed as, say, nurses or teachers) comes from Government funds. Nurses and teachers are paid for doing a job of work. We want to know what job of work is the ILC. T.U. being paid for doing for the Government? There may be no overt strings to the grant - the union members would never accept it if there were - but it places the I.C.T.U.

under an obligation to Stormont.

And it makes them dependent on the Unionists. The I.C.T.U. is employing new staff on the strength of the money, nearly a third of their income; Stormont can easily blackmail them by threatening to withdraw it. And already 1.C.T.UW is far too closely tied up with Stormont. There is hardly a union official who is not on some Government Board and six of them FREE CITIZEN 15th JANUARY 1971 are on the N.Ireland Economic Council. I1.C,.T.U. spokesmen are even praising Brian Faulkner.

The reason for the grant is given in the Government's current Economic programme, drawn up by high Tory economist Professor Thomas Wilson. I.C.T.U. fulltime officials are so busy co-opering with the Government that they have been "unable to devote all the time and resources they would doubtless have wished to the task of creating and maintaining good relations....and of identifying and tackling potential industrial trouble before it results in industrial action". What Stormont wants is a group of industrial policemen to watch out for and prevent workers striking, and they're paying the I.C.T.U. to provide them.

payroll We believe that employers exploit workers; and capitalist governments support them and use force against the workers whenever they get out of hand. The job of Trade Unions is not to mediate between workers and their exploiters, much less to help to implement the policies of a capitalist government by staffing its own committees. Their job is to fight exploiters and the system that permits them to operate. And that task is particularly urgent in N.Ireland where exploitation is chronic and the workers are divided and suppressed by a particularly vicious, sectarian and reactionary clique of political gangsters. You don't fight a war by joining the enemy's payroll, betrayal Mr. Blease asks for a specific example of the I.C.T.U. acting against the interests of workers.

A particularly good one was the television programme when Brendan Harkin, Vice-Chairman | of the Northern Committee, appeared in alliance with the Director of the Engineering Employers' Association to attack the one-day strike on December 8th in protest against the Industrial Relations Bill. And the Northern Committee are still at it. They are now trying to persuade Northern workers to come to an agreement on strikes with the Unionist government to keep them from introducing the Bilt here. For that reason the 1.C.T.U. urged workers not to take industrial action during the protests of January 12th.

Is this the first result of the £10,000 grant? For years the I.C.T.U. has failed to lead the workers of the North in a militant struggle against the low wages, unemployment and bad housing here. Now that the unions are facing a determined attack from the employers' mouthpiece at Westminster, the I.C.T.U.

still refuses to fight. It's a wonder the Government wasted £10,000 on buying them at all But the fight will go on - and we will support it.

LETTER

Dear Sir, The one and only time I desperately needed the help of an M.P. was some six years ago. It was when I bought a house in a particular district and met with the animosity of my local neighbours. As I had more than my share of broken windows and threatening notes I, in desperation, sought the help of any M.P.

(regardless of party) I could get in contact with. That in itself is a difficult enough job, but the excuses I got ranged from, "I'm seeing the Minister of Home Affairs" (from a Labour Party M.P.) to, "What the hell do you want me to do, stand gaurd over your house?" (from a Senator of the Unionist Party). A certain Republican Labour M.P., now in the S.D.L.P., told me, "I'm ina hurry to get to London - if anything else happens contact me when I return".

This turned out to be quite unneces- ‘sary, for by the time he had returned my house had been set on fire.

Six years ago there was no such thing as financial help for people who had been burnt-out so my family and I had to manage without the help of anyone, including M.P.'s.

Now, I see the same thing nappening again, only this time the need for help is much greater than mine.

It is a petition for the release of a young expectant mother, who has been unjustly sentenced to two years in prison. This is a petition which anybody with a sense of compassion would gladly hand in, in the hope of returning her to her children, instead of her having to return to prison after giving birth. But oh no, the M.P., whose duty is was to hand this petition in, gave the old excuse of "not now, later". The petition is now, at last, in the hands of an M.P. who seems to have the good of his constituents at heart. An M.P. who does not begrudge help when asked, even by those who are not in his constituency. But when are we, the voters of all sections of the community, going to wise up to the "Jam tomorrow, but never Jam today" attitude of most of these so-called representatives of the people’. After all, we are the ones who put them into, as I see it, a cushy job by Northern Ireland standards.

Yours sincerely, Mary Duffin, 49 Leeson Street, Belfast 12. I would like to become a member of the People's Democracy. I enclose a fee of 10 shillings. All letters, gifts, correspondence etc. to:- 88, Ladybrook Park, Belfast. To remit sums of money you can use our giro numper: 68 101 2005 The whole Craigavon project is sagging alarmingly. The growthrate of the 'New City' is now limping further and further behind schedule as the money drains out of Northern Ireland's slowly collapsing economy.

This is painfully clear from a comparsion between the- expertly planned timetable for the new city's growth, detailed in its official publication "Second Report 1967", with the bombastic statement by Craigavon Commission General Manager Ned Cage, just issued. His review of the past year's activity amounts to nothing more than smoothie public-relations waffle to cover up for Craigavon's failure to attract industry, services, people and interest. The truth is less reassuring than Cage's smug ‘1970 was our most successful year to date".

Examine his own figures for the Brownlow Sector, the only area of Craigavon visible to the naked eye.

"In the Brownlow Sector there are 2,500 houses completed or (and note this well) in various stages of completion". In plain language Cage means that he has not been able to complete all the 2,500 houses. But in fact there should have been no less than 3,650 houses fully completed and ready for occupation within the next ten weeks (see ''Second Report", page 59). So now the New City housing is actually 30% behind schedule. Some successful year! On the most important issue population - Cage produces smokescreen statistics. The ''Second Report" requires an intake population of 15,000 in the period 1966-71.

And how is the intake population coming along? "It is expected", says Cage, "that some 3,000 new people will be housed in 1971". So this means that if Craigavon is to make up the planned total of 15,000 by 1971, there must be 12,000 people in Brownlow Sector already!

Just how many now actually live in Brownlow Sector? Cage wisely chooses not to say. And that's because the numbers are nearer 2,000 than 12,000, In the same period 1966-71 the "Second Report" (see page 54) timetables the creation of 6,500 new jobs to give work to the intake population. How, then, is what New City planners call "anticipated job requirement" measuring up to cold reality? Cage churns out no cheerful statistics on this point.

No wonder he's silent when even Bradford and Faulkner have admitted that the number of jobs from new development has fallen sharply and that outside investment here is at an all-time low. There are no new industries in the pipeline for Craigavon or anywhere else. Any local teacher or parent will remind you sharply that the Craigavon timetable of school building is in ruins. So far, of all the’Primary Printed and Published by Peoples Democracy. 88 Ladvbrook Park. Belfast.

FREE CITIZEN 15th JANUARY 1971 Schools scheduled for completion in 1968, only two have opened. And both of these - one State, one Roman Catholic (the old divisions are perpetuated in the city dedicated to that great divisive influence - Lord Craigavon) - opened only in 1970, two years late. Cows still graze on the sites of all the planned secondary schools (scheduled to open in 1969) and the grandiose Regional Technical College (scheduled to open in 1970) exists only in the mind of the planners. Nor is the organisation of major engineering services, as ''Second Report" calls them, much more than a shambles. According to "Second Report" (see page 58) the "completion of the major sewage works at Ballynacor by 1969 is a critical operation in this field".

Alas, it's too bad about this operation. Here we are in 1971 and at Ballynacor there is a muddle of half-completed and incomplete structures in the centre of a chaos of builders’ huts, piles of muck and huge puddles of water. All two years behind schedule. And there's chaos, too, where there should be roads, as any car driver in the area will tell you. The "Second Report" (see page 57) optimistically proposes a start on the city regional centre near the end of the 1966-71 period. We're in the last year of the period and so far not a brick has been laid.

From all this one plain fact emerges. Craigavon cannot grow while the rest of Northern Ireland declines economically, socially and politically. The new city project is not miraculously insulated against the relunctance of industry to risk capital and plant in an area of seething discontent. Nor against the London Tory Government's economic disdain for its most expensive colony.

Nor against the swindlers and the fly-by-night industrialists. Nor against social injustice that deters immigrants. With rising unemployment and increasing factory closures the question now is not whether the New City will grow to sustain the rest of Northern Ireland, but ‘whether it can only continue to grow at the EXPENSE of the rest of Northern Ireland. Meanwhile as Ulster totters, Craigavon - Faulkner's folly totters with it.

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ALL PALLS TOGETHER

Monday night's "special monthly meeting" of Lurgan Unionist Association (South West Branch) at which Protestant Unionist lan Paisley was guest speaker brought the rats scurrying from their holes. Hundreds of so-called 'official' Unionists displayed their true colours.

The Belfast Telegraph neatly sumnr ed up the actual Official Unionist attitude. It complained that Official Unionism had come to a pretty pass when Paisley, who bitterly opposed them at the polls and whose avowed aim is to oust Chichester-Clark, was chief guest on an Official platformin Lurgan. |. Present, naturally, when a vote of no confidence in Chi-Chi and his government was passed, was anybody's dog-for-a-bone and Lurgan's M.P., Bertie Mitchell (he's now dropped his Territorial Army rank of Captain that he used throughout the progrom periods). The vote of no confidence was unanimous.

Bertie, now desperately flirting with arch-bigot himself, has conveniently forgotten his famous pledge ''I am resolved to give this government the fullest support in bringing into force its programme of reform" (Lurgan Unionist Central Branch meeting October 1969).

It would never do for failed icecream man Bertie to be frozen out when Ian ultimately licks Clark.

Another 'Official' Unionist there was ex-Cork extrovert Stephen Preston who tried to steal the Unionist nomination-for the Armagh seat at Westminster from Jack Maginnis by dashing daringly to the Right (only to be upstaged by Maginnis's deal with Paisley). It's good to see Stephen in there still pitching. Former T.V. interviewer Preston in a guttersnipe Daily Telegraph article last :year sneered that Ballymurphy was hot-bed of Venmereal disease. Doctors staffing Belfast's V.D. clinics floored him.

There's the makings of a good Protestant Unionist M.P. there!

Chief organiser of Paisley's appearance was branch chairman and Lurgan's mayor, Billy Gordon.

He told 'Official' Unionist to mind L.G.1U. ‘PROTEST’ (etd) Secondly the I.C.T.U. plea to Stormont is based on the argument that they will stifle industrial militancy as effectively as any Tory Bill. It is all very well to boast about our "good" strike record, but when, by the I.C.T.U.'s own admission, wages here average 78% of those in Britain many rank and file workers here would ask why do we have so few strikes and how can we co-operate with capitalists in Stormont. The I.C.T.U. have successfully adopted this strategy in the South, where instead of fighting the Fianna Fail proposals for a wage freeze they have agreed to act as industrial: policemen for the employers ina policy. Blease's legal pundit Frank Hanna let the cat out of the bag when he said "enlightened employers recognise that giving the Trade Unions full scope is in their interests - I can tell you confidentally that at least ten leading employers in Britain oppose-the bill for this reason". With industrial militiamen like Blease offering service, is it any wonder! Thirdly the Northern Committee adopted this strategy, without the support of a single person at Tuesday's meeting. In four hours not one person spoke from the.floor in their favour. Shop-stewards after shop-steward rose to denounce their strategy. It had sown confusion on the shop floor where workers were rightly convinced that the legislation would apply here. Asa shipyard man said "you have acted as the political hatchet men for the .N.I. Tory government". One excuse the Committee put forward for their approach was that they were acting im accord with the desires of the British T.U.C. Obsessed as they are by links with the British T.U.C. they cannot be ignorant of divisions within that body.

They have chosen to ally themselves with the right-wing leadership. In Britain the T.U.C. while talking about fighting the bill tooth and nail is already quietly arranging with Wilson to fight "the bill in parliament alone". As one shopsteward put it on Tuesday "Why should we trail after the British Trade Union Movement". Incidentally if the bill is passed in Britain the Northern Committee sees no point in fighting on here.

Their talk of parity" 1s just a plov to avoid action here.

Blease did eventually admit that "what we are here to decide is what form of action to take" - "if the government betrays us, and we hope it is never necessary, that...

...we may hold a demonstration at Stormont". Note, no talk of industrial action, the real area where the working class have power.

There is little enough time to organise opposition to this bill which will have particularly brutal significance in N.Ireland, where with a reactionary Trade Union leadership, much future action will of bitter necessity be unofficial and hence illegal. The answer is not to call for better leadership from Blease and Co. Elsewhere in Fee Citizen in reply to a letter from him (our criticisms have evidently begun to hurt) we asses the overall reactionary role of the Northern Committee,and the lepord will not change its spots.

There is no point saying that there are left-wingers on the Northern Committee. Jimmy Graham, sectheir own business about the invitation to Paisley to speak. Gordon can't go too far, though. This traitor to his own class - he's employed as a storeman at one of Lurgan's big shops - is a front man for local industrialists who aren't always Paisley fans. Another to emerge badly is poshaccented Jim Morton (Morton Newspapers, Cityweek, Farmweek, Derry Sentinel etc.) whose Lurgan Mail has abandoned its O!Neilite position. Two years ago in an ecstacy of O'Neillism the Mail announced its permanent refusal to accept Paisley advertisements. Under pressure Morton's backbone has jellied.

Last week's Lurgan Mail carried a 3" x 3" Column's advert ("all Loyalists welcome. God Save the Queen") publicising Paisley's guest appearance. Money talks, eventually. Anyway, it's good that the Mad Mayor should know who his friends are in the Craigavon area.

retary of the A.E.F., and a prominent member of the C.P. is indeed on the Committee. He has a better record than that of Brendan Harkin ("there's more than one Harry Midgeley" - heckler) who condemned the electricity workers along with the Chairman of the Engineering Employer's Federation.

but what use is a militant on the Northern Committee who put his loyalty to that Committee before his loyalty to workers as a whole, and is thus reduced to making absurd statements, such as "the T.U.C. and I.C.T.U. are not bulwarks of reaction despite what my personal views may be.”

The existing unofficial liasion committee should make plans for future independent action. P.D.

calls for, and will fully support, a general strike throughout N. Ireland if the bill is introduced here.

In every factory where workers read this paper, they should discuss preparations to oppose the bill. A final word of warning for the Government. This article discussed dissension within the Trade Union Movement - indeed promotes a necessary struggle against a reactionary and useless leadership.

Bradford need take no comfort from this. We can leave him with the words of another shipyard shopsteward "the boys are confused now, but if that bill becomes law they'll come out fighting".

Sir One can understand the anger of the R.U.C. at the wall of silence among people who know something about the tarring and feathering incidents. After all they themselves are experts when it comes to walls (or conspiracies) of silence. "Guilty ex-R.U.C. man’