lost their voice shouting this in the last two years.
when the tide still kept coming in.
After two years of campaigning. and after the election of two Labour Governments, the pickets are still in jail, Last week, Home Secretary, Jenkins even had the gall to consider moving them from an open to a closed Pron.
The working class, unlike Canute, does have some power to change the coutse of events. Right now a torrent of resolutions are descending on the mion leaders calling for concerted ational strike action to free Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson. If this movewent could get real action from the mers and engineers, the Governat would be forced to immediately et their release.
Time is, however, running out. By May, both Warren and Tomlinson, the ant of the Shrewsbury 24, will be digble for parole.
As time runs out for the Shrewsbury 2, it is also time to lake stock of the campaign over the last two years. I a campaign to get the 2 released before they are paroled is to succeed, then a new and drastically different campaign is needed.
Every time the question is askedWhat is at stake over Shrewsbury?the various organisations active In the campaign all differ on how to get the two brothers out of jail.
When the pickets were arrested and jailed under the Tories, the press, employers and all those trade-union leaders who now want Shrewsbury to be the biggest issue since the Pentonville 5, ganged up to put a wall of silence around the trial. After the miners and the building workers had belted the Tories all over the place by the use of flying pickets, the ruling class were determined to hreak this weapon. To do this the ruling class has to make sure that Shrewsbury did not become another Pentonville.. the beginning of 1973, it was only the 'FREE THE SHREWSBURY PICKETS'. There is no militant who husn't Now the campaign has reached a stage where those who have sweated blood to release these hostages from the claws of the employers, the Tories and the Labour Government, must be feeling rather like Camute role then was to prevent an outery. Now, when the trade union bureaucrats have been forced to raise Shrews. bury, the press has another job to do anarchy and the "rule of law'. In the last few weeks, the capitalist press las employed its hacks like Bernard Levin and company to denounce all trade unionists who are for the release of Warren and Tomlinson as enenties of Taw and order"
ruling class agencies than for its sup port of workers' struggles, printed a vicious two-page smear on the campaign to free the pickets. After the TUCbacked demonstration in London on 14 January, Peter Rost, a Tory MP and member of the Monday Club bitterly complained in Parliament about the waste of E1600 of public money' on extra police to keep the demonhis friends, the cool half a million doled out of the public coffers to pay for the prosecution of the Shrewsbury Pse was oney won spo Since then, every paper has done its bit, Edward Lyons MP, claims in a letter to The Times: "Many good trade unionists have been badly misinformed about the background to the case. He goes on to quote bow Lord Justice James described it as a "terrifying display of force and violence.™ For Mr. Lyons, 'unfortunate facts such as the failure of the police to bring any charges against the pickets order', When the employers and lawlorders scream about militant and effective picketing being a threat to the rule of law, they're dead right. For the TUC, and even the Communi Party, there are 'good" laws and "bad' lawShrewsbury is to plead with Roy Jenkins in this wisdom and mercy' as Len Murray, General-Secretary of They have to build up an hysteria abou the TUC said, to consider whether the was too 'biased and whether or not he could sec his way to finding some and amend the pickeling laws.
Everything the TUC has done since it took up the case, last year, is hased on these sort of ideas. Earlier The Daily Mail, more noted for its in the campaign, the CATT Jeaderlinks with the Special Branch and other ship called the pickets criminals and be a diversion. According to UCATT Teader George Smith, the job was to avoid making martys and concentrate ant getting the law changed.
All laws are good for the ruling class and all laws are bad for the working class. The law has one function in capitalist society: to serve the empl The law has been used to enforce and defend the power of the capitalist employens.
of it and win democratic righis" for strators in good order. But for Rost and the workers' movement, But such Neither are they defended by is a political attack on pickets and saying the main issue is to amend the law. Such a stratesy, relying on Parliameot und Roy Jenkins as the ultimate arbiter of the fate of working class militants rests on a fandamental misunderstanding of the law and has been the basis of the campaien of he Communist Party since last year The task of the trade unions over Tow used against the Shrewsbury picke "Tezal Formula" lo release the men carly said a campaien for their release would To these worthy gertienten we say Yes, there are pood laws and bad laws oyers and all those who support them True, we can fight to change parts rights have never been won hy pleadin with judges or appealing to parliament noring an outright use of the law in NION/SM &' CONDITIDNS ACKLISTING THEI