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From International Socialism, No. 62, September 1973, p. 8.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Paul Blackledge.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THE TRIAL of 24 building workers, due to begin in Shrewsbury at the beginning of October, is part of the back-up being provided to Phase Three. At stake is the question of the flying picket, which has played a key role in almost all the industrial disputes in the last 18 months.
The government found last summer that to take on pickets face on, using the industrial Relations Act, was to ask for trouble. Since then, the role of the Industrial Relations Court has been deliberately played down, with it usually refusing to give judgement until further negotiations between employers and union have taken place.
Instead, the attack on pickets is taking place through use of the criminal courts, in a relatively remote part of the country, under old Conspiracy Laws. The aim is to keep the attack on the right to picket out of the limelight until it is too late for militant action to be taken. And if the threat of such actions does force the case to be abandoned or the men acquitted, the government itself will not seem to have been openly defeated.
But if there are convictions and prison sentences, the trial would assume massive importance after the event. Fear of prosecution would then make workers think twice before engaging in militant picketing of any sort. The balance of power in industrial disputes would shift perceptibly [1] in the employers’ direction.
Trade union leaders show every sign of allowing this manoeuvre to be carried through successfully. The executive of the main builders’ union, UCATT, has so far refused assistance to the men facing trial and has even instructed its branches not to give financial support to them. There is little hope of industrial action from that direction. Yet there is little doubt that if the significance of the Shrewsbury trial is brought home to union activists, a storm of protest could develop sufficient to prevent any sentences being imposed.
In various parts of the country union branches, trades councils and delegate meetings have already been taking up the Shrewsbury issue. But efforts in this direction must be redoubled if the campaign is to be successful.
The best way to push the issue to the fore, is to try and ensure that at least a few powerful groups of workers strike in solidarity with the Shrewsbury 24 when their trial begins on 3 October. It will then be much more difficult for the Shrewsbury issue to be buried in a shroud of silence until it is too late.
1. In the printed version this word was “perceptively”.
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Last updated on 1 March 2015