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World

British seamen battle to preserve their union

By WILLIAM POMEROY
: For the third time in as many years, Brit-
ish workers are in a full-scale confrontation
with employers out to smash their union,
using anti-labour laws passed by the
Thatcher government.

In 1984-85 the courts, an army of police
and wholesale imprisonment were used to
break a year-long strike by the National
Union of Mineworkers. In 1986 huge police
actions and court penalties smothered a
strike against Rupert Murdoch by printing
industry workers, members of the Society of
Graphic and Allied Trades.

Now Britain’s National Union of Seamen
(NUS) has been forced into an unequal bat-
tle with a major British shipping company
that is closely linked with Margaret
Thatcher’s ruling Tory party.

NUS is locked in battle with European
Ferries, a subsidiary of the huge Peninsular
and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
(P&O). European Ferries is one of the chief
operators of the lucrative freight-and-
passenger ferry services between Britain and
the continent.

Claiming that it has to cut costs because
of the sharp competition in the ferry busi-
ness, plus coming competition from the
Channel Tunnel now under construction,
P&O is demanding massive concessions
from its workers. NUS represents 5,000

The political news out of the Soviet
Union is so exciting these days that it is
tempting to fill these weekly columns
strictly with details of the latest develop-
ments — and they still wouldn’t be
enough. Yet often I wonder whether I
am not shortchanging the broader social
tapestry, the background against which
revolution is occurring.

Perestroika did not come out of the
blue. It is the product of a vast accumula-
tion of changes, decades of growth and
an often subtle transformation of expec-
tations and attitudes. Today’s political
processes cannot be understood in isola-
tion from the backdrop.

For instance, it requires a constant
effort of imagination to grasp just how
huge the USSR is. Canadians smugly
believe that we understand distance: after
all, we do have the second largest coun-
try in the world.

But try to picture one almost three
times that big. The Soviet Union strad-
dles 11 time zones and stretches almost
halfway around the world ‘s circumfer-
ence. Later this year I plan to take, and
write about, a trip on the trans-Siberian
express, an eight-day train journey
which, if it went west instead of east,
would carry passengers roughly from
Moscow to Montreal. .

Time zones are simple compared to

Moscow Notebook

_ The vast backdrop
to political change

workers, covered under contracts the union
negotiated with the former owners of Euro-
pean Ferries, which P&O took over abouta
year ago.

Late last December the P&O presented
demands for concessions totalling $11 mil-
lion a year through a sweeping assault on
seafarer jobs, pay and working conditions.
The company proposed to fire 400 workers
initially and have those who remained work
longer hours and earn less.

When NUS rejected the demands and
threatened to defend its members’ interests
with industrial action, P&O immediately
dismissed 181 union members from their
jobs on ferry services to the Isle of Man.
That was on Jan. 28. Two days later, the
union called a national 24-hour strike in
protest.

P&O and Sealink, another company that
would be affected by a national strike, gota
court injunction to block a strike on the
grounds it would violate a law imposed by
the Thatcher government that forbids
“secondary” strike action.

On Feb. 2 NUS defied the injunction and
declared a national strike. The courts retal-
iated by fining the union $200,000. The Isle
of Man dispute was finally settled, but P&O
workers on cross-channel ferries operating
from Dover, the main channel port, voted
to continue striking against the P&O con-

cultural diversity. Every tourist seems to
make the mistake of thinking Moscow is
the Soviet Union. Yet within half an
hour’s drive of the capital are such dis-
parate sights as Russian agricultural vil-
lages that have more in common with the
19th century than the 20th, the space
centre of Kaliningrad which is strictly
21st century, and the gold-domed mon-
asteries of Zagorsk, which are timeless.

The USSR has almost 100 nationali-
ties and ethnic groups — less than half
of all Soviets are “the Russians” — and
is made up of 15 separate republics. Each
is a universe in itself, with its own history,
language, traditions and ambience.
These differences play a profound role in
shaping Soviet politics.

One point little understood in the
West is the extent to which Soviet devel-
opment has knitted together these dis-
parate peoples and given them a sense of
common destiny. Whatever the many
problems coming into the open these
days, only an awesome and historically
unprecedented process of integration
could lead a Lithuanian Catholic rock-
singer, a Russian scientist, a Shiite Azer-
baijani oil-worker and a Yakut reindeer
herdsman to declare in a recent survey
their nationality as “Soviet”.

These are the kinds of things that
deserve more attention in the Tribune.
So does the present ferment in the
world’s largest and potentially most
dynamic intelligentsia. How much do we
know about the output of Soviet writers,
film-makers, artists, musicians, histori-
ans, scientists?

It is clear that this giant socialist
society has been largely unknown and
misunderstood and, whatever else may
be the impact of perestroika, we now
have the chance to view it up close in all
of its vast, intricate, authentic detail.

cessions demands. On March 15 the com-
pany retaliated by firing all Dover seamen.

As the Dover strike continued through
April, the company resorted to a variety of
strike-breaking moves. It bribed NUS
members to return to work, hired scabs,
and refused to negotiate with the NUS. On
April 25 the P&O withdrew recognition
from the NUS and began advertising for
non-union labour.

Meantime, it was revealed that the com-
pany had increased its pre-tax profits by
$200 million in 1987. P&O made a well-
publicized contribution of $200,000 to the
Tory party. These developments made it
clear that the claim P&O needed to cut costs
were a sham, merely a pretext for breaking
the union.

By the end of April sympathy actions by
NUS members began to spread to other
ports and shipping lines. This had an espe-
cially sharp impact on Sealink, which shares
with P&O the virtual monopoly of ferry
services. Sealink threatened to fire its 2,300
NUS workers and sought an injunction
from Britain’s High Court. When the
workers ignored the injunction, the High
Court used the anti-labour laws to sequester
all union funds and assets, amounting to
over $5 million. It fined the union $275,000.

The ruthlessness and vindictiveness with
which the Tory courts have used the seques-

tration order has aroused anger throughout
the British labour movement. The courts
not only seized union funds, but closed all
NUS offices, confiscated all union-owned
cars, cut all telephone connections, sus-
pended all union wages and even halted
union pension payments to retired seamen
members.

Seafarers Support Groups have sprung
up all over Britain, in workplaces and
communities, to contribute funds to the
striking seamen. A solidarity movement like
the ones built for the miners and print-
workers is growing. Meantime, NUS
members have spread the strike to sea-going
shipping and to all ports. The dispute on
ferry boats is turning into a national class
conflict, and a showdown with the Thatcher
government, which stands behind the
union-busting companies.

NUS General Secretary Sam McCluskie
said that “the union will continue to operate
if we have to use a tent on Clapham Com-
mon,” the London park near the union’s
national offices. “The NUS is not bricks,
mortar, typewriters and desks,” McCluskie
declared. “It is the men and women who go
to sea and stand together to defend their
rights at work and to fight for justice.”

William Pomeroy is London correspondent
for the U.S. People’s Daily World.

Soviet soldiers near Jalalabad on their way home.

Reconciliation policy now

By V. GENERALVO

KABUL (Novosti) — On May 15, the
Geneva Accords came into effect and the
first columns of Soviet units started moving
towards the Soviet-Afghan border. For
Afghans it signals both a new beginning and
a time of uncertainty.

“We realize the accords do not ensure
peace,” says writer Muhammand Umar
Farzad. “They cover only the ‘external’
aspects of Afghanistan’s problem. Inter-
nally it is possible the opposition will mount
a new offensive. There are people who fear
this, but on the whole things are calm.
People have confidence the army and mil-
itia will be able to deal with the rebels.”

Later, in the offices of Fayaz Mekhrain,
first secretary of the Balkh Provincial
Committee of the People’s Democratic
Party of Afghanistan, he expresses his coun-
try’s thanks for the assistance given the
revolution by the Soviets, but agrees it is
time for the troops to leave.

“Perhaps the withdrawal of troops will
influence the situation inside the country.
But I don’t think this is the main issue.
Today the policy of national reconciliation,
and not the presence of Soviet troops, is the
factor which will determine how soon peace
comes to Afghanistan.”

All Afghans are tired of the war, explains -

Mekhrain, and there are signs a lasting

needed for Afghan peace

peace may be possible. In voting for the new
national assembly, 95 per cent of the resi-
dents in.Balkh province voted, including
those who supported the rebels. A ceasefire
continues, and refugees are coming home.

“Soviet troop withdrawal will accelerate
these processes,” Mekhrain adds.

But the Soviets are not the only factors.
There are many rebel leaders, dubbed the
Peshawar Seven, still stationed in Pakistan
who have vowed to keep up the war. But
there are splits in the opposition, and a

- former rebel leader feels that if Pakistan and

the U.S. stop supplying the camps, the
Opposition will dissipate.

Abdel Malik crossed over to the govern-
ment side last year. He is now a deputy
commander of a national regiment in
Fariab province.

He says he joined the rebels not to fight
the Soviets or the current leadership, but to
overthrow the Amin regime — an ultra-
leftist group that arrested and killed many
of the leaders of the April 1976 revolution.

“Many fled the repression carried out by
Amin,” Malik explains. “Although the
situation in the country changed, especially
after the proclamation on national reconci-
liation, not everyone has the guts to break
with the extremists. On the other hand no
one wants a senseless fratricidal war. Time
will show how events will develop.”

Pacific Tribune, May 25, 1988 « 9