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Post by tonys on Mar 1, 2011 7:51:49 GMT -5
This is a recollection from the 70’s.
I worked in quarrying where we had coal fired lime kilns. So driving to work I had to drive through a picket line. The issues of the strike had nothing to do with myself or my colleagues.
The company had a policy that everyone had to be a member of a union for their own protection. I was then a member of the EETPU. No one turned back at the line.
So why were we subjected to picketing?
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Post by Sam from Kent on Mar 1, 2011 8:01:08 GMT -5
Unfortunately, Thatcher outlawed secondary picketing but the NUM still carried on. With regards to you being in the EEPTU, I remember the traitor, Frank Chappel, you had as a leader.
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Post by John on Mar 1, 2011 8:25:43 GMT -5
Unfortunately, Thatcher outlawed secondary picketing but the NUM still carried on. With regards to you being in the EEPTU, I remember the traitor, Frank Chappel, you had as a leader. Sam, I don't know if you know much about the history of the EEPTU, better known as the ETU during it's early years. During the 50's it was taken over by communists, not only did they hold construction sites up with endless strikes, they were also "cooking the books" Countless thousands of pounds were taken from union funds for illegal use. Chappel was one of the men who brought all this to light, he and a few others who were fed up with how the union was being used by the communist party. Everything hit the fan in the 60's with a police investigation and arrest of the ETU leadership, many did a lot of years behind bars. The ETU was never the same after that, a new constitution was drawn up, and to gain membership, you were introduced at meetings, told to wait outside while the meeting asked questions about you and a vote was taken whether to admit you as a new member. All this to prevent another take over by the communists!! We were lucky they didn't get "their hands" on the power stations back then!! Frank Foulks comes to mind, but I forget the names now, so long back. When I worked for CPL, the parent company demanded you be a member of your trade union, which in my case was the EEPTU, the miners were in the T&GWU as the NUM wouldn't have anything to do with us. |
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Post by Sam from Kent on Mar 1, 2011 9:23:34 GMT -5
I know what you said about the communist take over of he ETU but, when Chapple took over he went too far ther other way, and Like Gormley took the Queens shilling by being elevated to the House of Lords. Indeed, Gormley even hinted to Thatcher that was what he wanted and she gave it to him.
We were opposed to productivity agreements which were devisive, but Gormley pushed them through WITHOUT A BALLOT, yet Scargill was vilified for using the same rules as Gormley used, on a far more important issue, the future of the industry
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Post by tonys on Mar 1, 2011 15:07:42 GMT -5
OK the EEPTU wasn’t clean (the union collage had the 60’s council minutes filed under fiction!) but it cleaned up it’s act. The final straw for me was the amalgamation with the AEU, it broke the union. I resigned as a convener after that.
I suggested at the time it should be the AFU (Any Fu***rs Union). Eric Hammond wasn’t to pleased when I told him as much.
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Post by tonys on Mar 3, 2011 1:12:28 GMT -5
If it was still the ETU snap me in half and the letters would be run through me like Blackpool rock.
Now as Amicus it isn’t interested in it’s members other than to sell them insurance.
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Post by erichall on Aug 4, 2011 4:10:24 GMT -5
Rather surprising that the NUM should secondary picket a workplace which had compulsory membership of a union as a condition of work. Despite what the majority believed, this was never the case in the coal mines. It was never compulsory to join a union to obtain and work in the Coal mines under the NCB.
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