A Workers reader who was recently with the striking oil refinery workers in Lincolnshire has sent the following report.
Back in 1969-70 I worked on the Lindsey Oil Refinery site as a JCB driver. The icy winds howled in from the River Humber, just as they did on Wednesday 4th February last as I gave out Workers leaflets to the striking contractors. I was glad the CPBML was showing them support and opposing mass migration.
When we built the first phase of that refinery a good friend of mine was site convenor, a pipe fitter. The main contractor, Lummus (US company, like the present one, Jacobs) offered him all kinds of bribes to get him to sell out, to no avail. He was a good cartoonist, so they asked him to draw safety cartoons in a nice warm office, or would he like to take charge of a contract in South America maybe? The convenor stayed with the lads, fitting pipes in that Arctic blast.
The accommodation barge occupied by the imported workers is moored in Grimsby’s old fish dock, now disused. It was Hattersley and Callaghan, incidentally, who ruined the fishing industry by trying to bully Iceland. There’s not much new about “New Labour”. Refusing Iceland’s generous offer of 70,000 tons of fish a year, they sent in the navy. After a few weeks of this flag-wagging stupidity, Iceland threatened to withdraw from NATO and to expel the USAF from Keflavik. On US orders, Britain gave in. “Can we still have the 70,000 ton catch per year?” asked Callaghan. “You can catch nothing,” came the reply.
Grimsby is now a very depressed town. The engineers at Total-Fina’s Lindsey refinery have returned to work after winning 100 new jobs. “We gave them something to think about,” said one fitter.
The leftover leaflets I pushed through doors in Scunthorpe, another North Lincolnshire town under pressure from abroad. Indian steel baron Ratan Tata demands wage cuts and de-manning. In 1967 the giant Scunthorpe steelworks was nationalised to bail out United Steel before being modernised and re-privatised. We should take it back.
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