Keith Narey Archive | ETOL Main Page
From Militant, No. 664, 19 August 1983, p. 7.
Transcribed by Iain Dalton.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
|
KEITH NAREY, Trade Union Liaison Officer for Bradford North Labour Party reports on three local battles. |
HALIFAX HEALTH workers are in court again! A not guilty verdict on six pickets charged with obstruction during the health service dispute in Halifax last year has been reversed by the High Court in London.
These workers have been under pressure for a year, and are now to be sentenced by the same magistrates who earlier found them innocent!
The health workers are calling for a mass support picket on Tuesday 22 August at 9.30 am at the Main Magistrates Court, behind the Police Station in Harrison Road, Halifax.
HINDLES WORKERS and their wives remain defiant after twenty-two weeks on strike in pursuit of a pay claim and to halt redundancies.
Mass pickets take place twice a week, on Fridays at 3.30 p.m. and Wednesdays when the wives picket between 4 and 6 p4m.
The strikers now have a caravan parked outside the front gate – to show this reactionary employer they’re here to stay. The sacking of these workers is the first taste of Tebbit’s reactionary law in action. Yet the AUEW Executive has ordered its members not to break the law by picketing Hindle’s subsidiary a few yards away!
Under fear of losing official backing the men have to watch as jobs are brought in which keep Hindle going! One solution may be members of other unions doing the secondary picketing.
The strikers are preparing to lobby the annual conference of the TUC demanding support to beat Hindle and his Tory backers. It is hoped to take a coach full of pickets and wives to Blackpool to lobhy and leaflet for support.
If the union leaders showed a fraction of the courage and determination of these workers, this dispute would have been won months ago.
All support and donations should be sent to Hindles Gears Strike Fund, AUEW Offices, 2 Claremont, Bradford BD7 1BQ.
THE OCCUPATION and work-in is continuing (Militant 663) at Thornton View Psycho-geriatric Hospital in Bradford. All major health unions are now supporting it.
One elderly patient said “why do they want to move us? This is my home, these are my friends”.
The brutal closing 10% of Bradford’s geriatric care, is the answer the Tories have for people whose working life is over.
So much for Thatcher’s promise that “the health service is safe with us”!
Many of the people in Thornton View would not survive the disruption of closure and removal to a strange environment. 30,000 people have signed a petition against the closure.
Send messages of support and donations to the Occupation Committee, c/o Thornton View Hospital, Thornton View Road, Clayton, Bradford.
Keith Narey Archive | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 24 September 2020