Industral Special The bosses who daily flout the la

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WITH futs Sloan WAGE-CUT PLAN [Hefter inscribe!

for 3 months; £8.50 for 6 months; and £16 Please send me ... months' sub, I enclose £ lease send me... months' sub, I enclose &.. To: Socialist Organiser, 28, Middle Lane, London N8 8PL o: Socialist Organiser, 28, Middle Lane, London I DIVED into my local last Friday and picked up my pint and my Manchester Evening News. Having swiftly scrutinised the City formation for the following day's tourney at Chelsea, I was mightily relieved as any god-fearing citizen would be, to see that Len Murray was all over page one, aggressively telling the world that he was giving the NGA all the support he could short of breaking the law of course.

For Murray, breaking the law is unthinkable. We all know that!

I nearly choked on my Boddingtons bitter, however, when on turning to page 15 of one of the most reactionary reads north of the Trent I beheld, large as life, right above the names of 23 more villains charged with offences arising out of the Warrington fracas the bold headline 'Gas Tragedy Firm Fined' - swiltly scoured the story. Three men had died in a vain attempt to save a workmate, dying in a gas-filled manhole, whilst at work on Carsington reservoir, Derbyshire, last May.

The magistrates were informed that there was no airtesting equipment or breathing apparatus available.

Three partners in the company, Peter Eccles, Derek Ormerod and John Massey each admitted "two very serious offences of contravening health ICSTOKE BASIN This new pamphlet tells the story of the victimisation of Socialist Organiser supporter Alan Fraser and how the fight to defend him was sold out by the union officials. 25p plus postage from 75 Freemantle Close, Basingstoke. Massive fines for picketing are not matched by any draconian punishment for employers who breach health and safety laws, reports John Mellroy.

and safety regulations."

Breaking the law, and unlike the NGA, breaking the criminal law. Also unlike the NGA, guilty of offences leading to three deaths.

If you were Woodrow Wyatt, you just might call it murder.

Yet when these employers broke the law, they were each fined just £1,000 a piece. Cost of mass picketing which loses employers production? £150,000. Cost of criminal negligence? £1,000 a life.

Robert Colclough, aged 26, Mark Hughes, 20, Peter Haynes 26, and Anthony Meakin, 20, will all no doubt rest easy in their graves knowing just retribution for their unnecessary deaths has been enacted.

Of course - and somebody ought to tell Len Murray this -when I thought a little bit about it I realised that employers break the law every hour of every day. Any factory inspector will tell you that when he or she enters almost any workplace they can immediately spot three or four breaches of the criminal A study, a decade ago, of 200 randomly selected employers found that out of 630 enforcement decisions, 198 involved offences detected for the second or third time.

Less than 3% of these decisions, by the way, actually involved prosecution. In the rest of the cases, the employers committing criminal offences were simply sent warning Today, serious criminal offences at work are on the increase. Yet whilst factory deaths are up from 127 in 1981 to 140 this year and whilst the government is spending millions on the enforcement of its anti-union legislation, it is directly weakening the enforcement of its antiemployer legislation.

The staff at the Health and Safety Executive has been cut from 4,250 in 1979 to 3,600 today.

Of course it's not only in this area that employers break the law. Every year hundreds of bosses commit breaches of Wages Council legislation by paying lower levels of pay than those laid down by law -unprosecuted.

Over 12% of firms inspected by Wages Council staff fail to keep adequate wages records and nearly 50% adequate time records. What about the rule of law here?

Woodrow Wyatt's newspaper, the News of the World, described the results just a few Sundays ago. 'Britain's economic depression has led to a new slave trade with thousands of women risking their lives in backstreet sweat shops to help boost family budgets. They are desperate to earn money - even as little as 10p an hour. But the women are being exploited by unscrupulous employers who laught at the law ... The perils were tragically highlighted last weekend when three women and three children died in a blaze in Gravesend, Kent. An illicit shoemaking business operated from the basement. Five other people died when an unlicensed clothing factory burned down in Stepney, East London."

Rogue employers. But what about the very well-known firms?

The 1967 Companies Act makes it a criminal offence for the directors of a limited company not to disclose company political donations.

The Observer on 28 November last year carried a small story detailing violations of the law by a number of large building firms such as Wates and Costains.

There was little hue and cry and, as far as we know, no follow up. Yet the Tories and employers are so incensed about alleged abuses of the political levy that in the face of a mere 15 to 20 complaints a year, we now have an anti-Labour bill going through Parliament.

But that's the essential difference between capital and labour. If capital doesn't like the laws in a particular country, it can get out, close factories, cause a run on the pound.

Political strikes by workers are illegal - as illegal as can be.

For Len Murray they are even more unthinkable than ordinary "law-breaking"

Yet capital, too, can go on political strike. It can, with impunity, bring down governments.

'Business strike may be last shove for Schmidt'l headlined the Sunday Times on 12 September 1982. ''A determined campaign by West German big business against the government it has come to despise was a major factor behind the crisis that is expected to topple Helmut Schmidt' s eight year old coalition ... The industrialists trace the roots of the 'investment strike" that is pushing unemployment towards two million to the deceptive euphoria that folinand Inhmidt'. 100n 1980 victory."

And if capital cannot achieve its ends by breaking laws or bringing down governments by peaceful means then it can resort to force, as it did in Chile in 1973.

Most of the time, of course, it doesn't need to. Because the law is there to guarantee the rights of those who own and control the means of production. the conse that lays the golden eggs. The law is made for these people. Its administration is in the hands of those, the Sir John Donaldsons and Lord Dennings, who share those interests.

Law in our society is class law. Even though, at times, restrains or limits the rights of capital, according to the tempo and necessities of class struggle, it does so ultimately to maintain the electorate.

If the Tolpuddle Martyrs had not broken the law in their day, we would not have any unions today. And if we are not prepared to break anti-union laws today, unions, certainly independent, militant unions won't be around very much longer.

Yes, perhaps somebody ought to tell len Murray about this. But I've got a feeling Murray already knows.

It was, after all, only eleven years ago that the TUC called a 24 hour general strike to support dockers who had been sent to prison for law-breaking.

Murray broke the law then, Join the Prar ty Labour ORGANISER By Harry door by post!

RATES: £5 for a year.

Name • Address even though the five dockers' were arcordina to tha later " criminals.

Eighteen months ago, Murray supported the TUC NHS committee in asking for secondary action from other groups of workers. For a law-abiding citizen he's got a bit of a record.

He'd break the law now if the rank and file had the power to push for a repeat of the spontaneous strikes that greeted the jailing of the Pentonville Five.

Faraway as that seems now, we have to strain every sinew to put a re-run on the agenda in the period ahead.

Dini the ORGANISER hunt

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