Extend threshold gains | IMGpapers 1968

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RALLY

SPEAKERS CORNER - SUNDAY, 9 JUNE - 2.30 pm RETURN THE IRISH POLITICAL PRISONERS year.

further increases will be granted next year.

At the same lime they should fight for renegotiation of the amount of the threshold increases (the present 40p is totally inadoquate), and for threshold rises to be taken into acoount in calcu Inting overtime and honus payments PLANS must be laid to extend the present threshold agreements This should be treated as a key question at every union conference this The aim must be for a 'nil norm' threshold that provides 100% protec tion of all wages against inflation. Trade unionists must reject any idea that the present agreements end when the next round of wage negotiations open. They must fight any attempt to scrap the threshold protection, or to impose another 'threshold' which must be reached before The trade unions must also mount a vigurous campaien to demand full protection of the inoume of all thos dependent on state benefits- pensioners, students, the poor, the uncmployed

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The Ulster Workers Council strike may well enter the bourgeois history books as an example of the power of workers action.

But to adapt Mark Twain's dictumthere are lies, damn lies and history. This particular lie is exposed not just by the reactionary political nature of the strike, but by an examination of the reasons for its victory.

The strike could not, in fact, have succeeded without the support of the of life. middle-class, who were outraged because the Army was able to distribute less petrol than the UWC had done With the farmers joining in surrounding the Stormont parliament buildings with their tractors- Faulkner was advised by top Northern Ireland civil servants that a total poser shut-down would, in a tew days, lead to chaos and drastic loss When his demand for negotiations with the UWC was refused, he Government's actions In his resignation letter he stated that he had told Rees that he would not remain in charge of a Department which was being used to paralyse rent and rates strikers, without evidence that internment and detention were being phased out.

He complained of assaults against internees hy the Army, the Increasing numbers detained, failure to keep promises about large-scale