EAST LONDON FLYING PIC 3S HOURS employers are capable of fighting on many fronts. After eleven weeks the press is finally joining battle. The building employers have picked up a tip from the Engineering Employers' Federation, and, on Laing's initiative, have started to produce a joint paper on 'intimidation" in the strike. In every press statement they have plugged the 'violent few' who force everybody to keep striking. And this has had its effect. STRIKE BITING All that other workers could get from the TV and newspapers about the strike is that many pickets are being arrested and some employers are finding new ways to get workers to work. The Basildon employer who flew his workers onto his site by helicopter was treated as a genius by the mass media. Nobody asked him how he got the money for such expensive travel. The real reason for such antics is actually the failure of the employers' tactic for breaking the strike. They had pinned their hopes on the hundreds of thousands of subcontractors to destroy the unity and militancy of the workers, and by the eleventh week this had failed. So they turned in new directions.
The employers have turned to the press whom can the workers turn to? At the momMAGUIRE (From page 1)
releases, a phoney peace movement, and a slander campaign aimed at undermining the credibility of Mac Stiofain and at dividing the IRA on a North-South basis.
Kitson was overruled on this occasion, and only the parts of the plan calling for direct rule and reform, plus the phoney peace movement, were implemented. Only when it became clear that this policy too was doomed to failure did they begin to implement the full plan.
But the broad foundations for this had been laid long ago.
"BLOODY ENGLISHMAN"
As early as 7 April Gery Fitt, the Social Democratic leader, brought up on BBC Radio 4 for the first time the "Bloody Englishman" slander against MacStiofain.
This had been preceded on 25 March in the Irish Times by a failed Fianna Fail candidate, John Healy, writing in his Backbencher column of "the risk that Englishman takes for Ireland". The Stormontsubsidised Women Together movement was used to purvey this slander.
But it was only in late July, after the ending of the bi-lateral cease fire, that this campaign was put into top gear. In the lobby briefing describing the meeting between Whitelaw and the Provisional leaders, Whitelaw went out of his way to praise David O'Connell as a reasonable man, and to describe Mac Stiofain as "intransigent"
Taking their cue from this source, the British press went to work. But what finally brought out all the stops on the campaign was the need for Heath to have something with which to pressurise Lynch into further arrests of Republicans in the South.
Very conveniently, a few days before Heath was due to meet Lynch in Munich, Miss Maguire, whose liberal views on sex were not exactly a secret, suddenly recoiled in horror when Sean Mac Stiofain "put his hand on mine", and fell, not for the first time, into the arms of a man called Colin Smith.
MAGUIRE AND GHOST Smith is a special correspondent for the Foreign Office's favourite newspaper, the Observer, who came to Dublin twelve months ago, fresh from assignments in FOREIGN SUBS: Asia/Africa/ Australia/N. & S. America: £6 per year (airmail); £4 per year (ordinary). Western Europe: E4 per year, ant dispute in the country. And at this time each big strike affects the whole of the working class's ability to fight the challenge of capitalists to the living standards and organisations of working people.
The winning of £30 for 35 hours would be a step forward for millions of workers. And the shortening of the working week would be one way of reducing unemployment, to the benefit of every worker, By campaigning for this demand in the rest of the labour movement, tremendous support could be won. Financial and other forms of solidarity could be gained if the issue were explaind. This, surely, is the role of Charter. The politics of Charter were explained in the last issue of The Red Mole. And here is another example of the correct use of a rank and file newspaper: a special issue could be produced for sale to other workers. Campaigning meetings and actions up and down the country are required. Charter's non-activity on this and a whole series of other questions is little short of criminal. NEW MOVES The employers' desperation can be measured by the frenzied wayin which they are hawkthe union side agreed to consider the offer of a £26 basic rate, saying that it amounts to a 30 per cent increase. The official leadershipare going to make every effort to get a settlement on this offer. But the key point on which building workers could show the way to the rest of the working class -reduction of the working week - is not even mentioned! As we go to press, news is coming in that the union officials in Birmingham have accepted the employers' offer. With Charter liquidating itself into the union bureaucracy, the danger is that the rank and file will have no means of expressing their wishes. This is the decisive hour for the success of the strike.
STOP PRESS
As we go to press, the deal between the unions and the employers federation has been announced. This is the picture: claim for £30 - deal gives £26; claim for 35 hours - deal gives nothing but a review next year; claim for one week's extra holiday -deal gives one day; claim for a oneyear agreement deal gives a 2% agreement; a clause has been written in stopping cost of living increases unless prices rise by more than 8%%.
3 SEPTEMBER 1972