*The incident touching off the whole sequel or violence was an attempt Dy the police to take hold of one of the march leaders and to seize the lead banner.
Why were 44 Right to Work Campaign marchers arrested on une minal lap of their Manchester to London March on ly March. Looking at the wider con text of the march, the conclusion drawn by the Independent Trade Union Committee Inquiry into the events of 19 March is that an unjustified attempt to seize a march leader and grab the lead banner makes no sense unless the aim is to break up the march, discredit the marchers"
cause, and stifle their protest."
The Committee's report was published Svdney Bidwell: MP Jack Collins, EC member: National Union Jack Morrish, Group General Secretary, Society of Civil Servants* Dolly Sewell. Shop Steward, Patent Die Casting Chris Soutar, Convenor, Messrs Oliver Toms Ltd.
Bryan Stanley, General Secretary, Post Office Engineering Union* Make conce memDer GIVE and Public Services Association * lan Macdonald, Barrister; National Union of Journalists. * Chairman:
Vincent Flynn, formerly General Secretary, Society of Graphical and Allied rades"
* Served in their personal capacity DO mum possible involvement and commitment to the struggle.
We must not allow the Broad Left to bury the political lessons of perhaps the most important campaign ever waged by students -over the summer they can be further enriched. The major steps already taken towards developing a classwide opposition to the Labour Government's policies can be consolidated, and the basis for a new phase of mass action in the autumn laid.
This is the kind of perspective we must look to and build for. Sylvia Renilson, Area Chairperson-elect in Merseyside, has decided to approach the Merseyside and North West Areas to campaign for a national conference of all Area Cooromating Committees, Occupation Committees and NUS constituent organisations taking action to meet in Liverpool on 26 June. The idea is to debate the way forward for this campaign over the summer months. Perhaps in building for such a conference the campaign can teren me sroad ber arew lessons too AILEAN O'CALLAGHAN the inquiry, on Monday 14 June. Amongst the evidence the committee took were statements from 46 witnesses, including over twenty passers-by and shop keepers who had nothing to do with the march.
Its conclusions were unanimous.
INCIDENT The incident was certainly not provoked by the marchers. As Ken Montague, Secretary of Barnet Trades Council, told the press: "It is the police who have a case to answer - to answer to the labour movement bodies that supported the agreement between the police and the organisers of the Right to Work March about the route of the march which action - her own, that is. She once trained revolutionaries in China in the Thirties.
a fire risk failed. Indeed, the occupation called in the fire officer - who checked out the rest of the college and found six separate violations of the fire regulations by the authorities!
strike including continuous assessment with tne sumoort or the college lecturers n NATHE, who have agreed to respect picket lines. Daily meetings with all college unions and mass meetings to which the 18-person occupation committee is responsible guarantee mass involvement.
For Ms. Garvey training revolutionaries in China was one thing, but in Furzedown ......! clearly shows that the marchers followed the agreed route.
The Committee's report continues that it has evidence which it accepts of 'excessive and indiscriminate violence by the police during all the incidents. It lists among others beating up an unconscious man", 'indiscriminate use of truncheons, "kneeing a marcher in the groin and delivering a karate chop to his neck, jumping on a man's stomach in the police station, beating with truncheons in the police station, telling a marcher in the ponce station to ger on mis knee and crawl to the cell Barnet Trades Council members are well aware that the report cannot influence the individual trials of the arrested marchers. However, by putting the labour movement on the alert - the report has already been circulated to every Labour MP and General Secretary of trade unions attached to the TUC as well as to sponsors of the inquiry - it can help prevent another Shrewsbury. There the task was explaining what had really happened after the pickets were already in jail.
The report is in no doubt about the threat posed to the right to demonstrate by the attack on the march. It points out that throughout history, since the time of the Peterloo massacre, the Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square riots, and the unemployed meetings and marches of the 1930s, the right to protest has only been established in the face of the repressive violence of the authorities."
Defending the 43 marchers who were eventually charged is part of the fight to retain that hard won right
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THE Him TO WORK