“Her of million British workers went on strike against…”
The headline could not be read by machine (it read “Brian Vallely- exibition”); the title shown is the article’s opening words. Read the scan for the printed headline.
Free Citizen1971Trade unions and workers' strugglesLoyalism and unionismTrade unions and workers' strugglesLoyalism and unionism
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Her of a million British workers 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, 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- : : . Si : the crowd was warming up. By face this rare exposure? January t} ; } : rth, 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 his policies are doomed.
Unionist M.P.' had thankfully slunk off at 9.15p.m their minds, All the s who bother to 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 spiral staircase by the grim, century -old ironwork 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 CONTINUED INSIDE)
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FREE CITIZEN 15th JANUARY 1971