Weekly Worker 132 Thursday February 29 1996
In brief
Dockers’ solidarity
International support for the Liverpool dockers was brought together in a meeting in Liverpool last week. Delegates from 20 different ports gathered together to discuss stopping every ship that has passed through the hands of scab labour in the Merseyside docks.
The delegates met in the council’s chambers, provided free, to the Mersey Dock and Harbour Company’s fury. The MDHC is losing an estimated £400,000 per week to the dispute.
International solidarity has already caused a sharp dip in the share price of the company. It is internationalism that is currently the dockers’ best hope of success.
The plan to ‘black’ cargo across the world will test the TGWU. If the union welcomes successful international action, it will show up the lack of support in the UK and from the TGWU in particular. It is the Medway ports that are keeping up the flow of profits in the MDHC which owns them. It is UK lorry drivers that are moving the cargo in and out of both the Medway ports and Liverpool docks.
MDHC showed its fear of international action by taking out a full page advert in the local press. It claimed that the action threatened jobs and the long-term economic base of Merseyside. Perhaps it should have thought of that before sacking the dockers.
Don Calder
Firefighters
Several thousand FBU members from all over the UK marched through Liverpool city centre on February 26. They had come to show continued support for the Merseyside FBU membership in their continuing series of 24-hour strikes against job cuts. The FBU on Merseyside recently requested a further ballot to add two-hour strikes every day to the current series of 24-hour strikes. This would sharply increase the financial cost of the strike action to the Merseyside Fire Authority.
As in every case when the FBU have moved to escalate, the authority has claimed to be willing to negotiate a new offer, circulated in a special news letter. There is still confusion as to whether it has ever been formally made or even agreed by the fire authority.
These delaying tactics threaten to disrupt the focus of the dispute. The action was to preserve jobs, but the ‘offer’ still leaves 20 posts cut from the establishment. This year the authority hopes to break the government-imposed cap on its expenditure. If it does, with the background of already cutting 20 posts, then it will not back down in future. The authority will be back for more jobs in the impending fire risk review. If it fails to break the cap, then again it will be FBU members who will pay.
The fire risk review lies behind the cuts in jobs proposed in London. It is completed in Merseyside and is being held back by councillors fearful of its political consequences.
The Merseyside dispute remains deadlocked. Any settlement now will not be in the FBU members’ long-term interests, or those of residents who will face reductions in service.
Chris Jones
Jobs not Job Seekers Allowance
This October the Tories will abolish unemployment benefit and income support, replacing them with the Job Seekers Allowance. This will amount to state theft on a massive scale - instead of unemployment benefit for a year you will only get contributory JSA for six months. So, who has got all our national insurance contributions then?
JSA will amount to yet another assault on the living conditions of the working class. Young workers aged between 18 and 24 are being particularly victimised, as they will receive just 20% benefit under JSA. The sick and disabled are also going to suffer under the new Incapacity Benefit, which will have much harsher guidelines.
Benefit claimants are soon to be experimented upon. Southall Job Centre is about to implement a ‘JSA trial’, which will see workers being forced into appallingly low paid jobs. The local trades council has called a protest picket at 1.00pm on March 7, at Southall Job Centre, 68 The Broadway. Benefit workers themselves should support this action.
Danny Hammill
Justice for David Ewin
On February 28 1995 David Ewin was shot dead by an officer from the Metropolitan Police SO19 firearms unit in Barnes. Even though the officer responsible was described as “very brave” by the Metropolitan police commissioner, Paul Condon, the Colin Roach Centre described the killing as the “clearest case yet of a pre-meditated murder by a Metropolitan police officer”.
Demands were made that the killer, Patrick Hodgson, be charged by the Criminal Prosecution Service with murder. This has now happened and Hodsgon is currently awaiting trial. For more details of the campaign contact the Colin Roach Centre, 58 Clarence Road, London E5 8HB, or call 0181-533 7111.
Eddie Ford
