NUJ backs down

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ANDREW WIARD (REPORT)

Demonstration in Richmond - 6 March 1984 DAVID Dimbleby's BBC Budget television programme went ahead on Tuesday this week without Labour Party or TUC représentation, and to the accompaniment of an angry picket.

The BBC obtained an injunction against the National Union of Journalists to allow Dimbleby to present the programme. The latest in a long series of injunctions. it instructed the union to lift its boycott on the country's most famous scab of the day.

Two pamphlets DIMBLEBY DOZEN Mcintyre Dimbleby sacked NGA members and transferred production of the Richmond and Twickenham Times to TBF (Printers) at Nottingham - a firm ruled by the House of Lords to be a separate entity from T Bailey Foreman Publishers, the union-busting newspaper firm.

The NUJ issued its blacking instruction after Lime Grove TV members twice voted not to black Dimbleby. Members concerned had then voted to accept the instruction.

The BBC may have been embarrassed by the instruction, but not unduly alarmed. The NUJ National Executive last week collapsed in the face of the House of Lords ruling and refused to defy the courts to make the strike official again. a name for themselves by discovering a long lost tribe on a South Pacific island. Perhaps a TGWU full-timer will one day make a discovery of equal stature by stumbling across the long-lost Carousel dispute in the East End of Glasgow.

For the time being, however, TGWU officials seem more concerned with ensuring that the strikers are left to their own devices in their battle for survival.

The strike, for union recognition, reinstatement and better working conditions, began in July of last year. At first the TGWU Record, the union's national newspaper, did carry reports of the dispute.

By January, the size of the article in the Record had sunk to a mere 28 words. Since then, not a word In the earlier days of the dispute, the strikers received invitations from a broad range of union and Labour Party branches to tailed off too.

The only work now being done by the TGWU full-timers is defending themselves against justified accusations that they have now practically abandoned the strikers.

Three weeks after their appearance before the IGWU Scottish Finance and General Purposes Committee meeting which discussed the future of the dispute, the strikers have yet to informed of the meeting's decision.

Receiving no coverage in the trade union press, no speaking invitations from labour movement bodies, and no support from their own officials, the seven strikers continue nonetheless to picket the factory daily.

Rank and file solidarity is more vital than ever.

Address for donations/ speakers: Carol Rodger, 47 Cuthelton Terrace. Parkhead, Glasgow. A NOTE on import controls The US steel industry, like the British, is in acute decline. And the US steel unions, like the British,, have responded by demanding import controls.

This week they won a 'victory' For rather, the US steel bosses, who also favour protectionist measures, did.

Brazilian steel is now likely to be barred from the US.

Negotiations over a quota on

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