A Challenge to the Slanderers

WORKING CLASS HERO still seems to upset some people eight years after he died.

FORMER building worker Des Warren died eight years ago, on April 24, 2004, after years of illness, a shadow of his former self, due to drugs administered him in prison bringing on a severe form of Parkinson's Disease.

Des, a steel fixer by trade, had been jailed for three years for his part in the 1972 builders' strike, when he fought for a £1 an hour minimum wage, and against the notorious "lump" system, which enabled employers to evade legal responsibilities for insurance, and health and safety, and to undermine trade unionism in the industry, by paying workers a lump sum and pretending they were self-employed.

During the strike Des Warren, Ricky Tomlinson (now a famous actor) and colleagues from North Wales and Chester took a bus to Shrewsbury, touring sites there and in nearby Telford new town, to persuade men still working to come out and join them. During that visit they were accompanied by police wherever they went. Nobody was arrested. In fact, as Ricky Tomlinson recalls, a senior police officer congratulated the pickets at the end of the day on the way their effort had been conducted!

Months after the strike had ended police acting on orders from Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr were sent to North Wales and Chester and two dozen men were rounded up from their homes and taken to Shrewsbury to face trial. They were charged with "conspiracy". At his trial, Des Warren told the court there had been a conspiracy - between the government, the police and the employers. He was sentenced to three years, Eric Tomlinson as he then was got two years, and others received suspended sentences, among them Terry Renshaw (four months) who would go on later to become mayor of Flint.

There was a campaign to free the Shrewsbury Two, but it received scant support from the builders' union UCATT, or the TUC, especially after Labour had become the government and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins refused to consider it. As Ricky Tomlinson points out, "We ended up spending more time in jail under Labour than we had under the Conservatives". After his release he joined those campaigning for Des Warren to be freed, and tried to address the TUC in Blackpool, but was denied a platform. He and his companions had to listen to a speaker denouncing the pickets, and were thrown out of the public gallery when they protested.

Des Warren, who had been in the Communist Party, switched to the Workers Revolutionary Party after his release. The WRP published his book, The Key To My Cell, about his experiences. It pulls no punches about his persecutors and those who let him down politically, but does give credit where due to people who had tried to help him. Though I did see Des Warren at an event in Brixton after the WRP split in the 1980s, his chronic illness made it impossible for him to keep up public activity, and he increasingly came to need convalescence and nursing.

For some years now there has been a campaign to have the Shrewsbury convictions squashed and the pickets' names cleared. The Justice for Shrewsbury 24 campaign has held marches in Shrewsbury and mass meetings in London, it has lobbied MPs at Westminster and demanded that the government release documents and material information about the trial which remains hidden in the interests of so-called "national security".

As a contribution to the campaign and to educating new generations, Des Warren's The Key to My Cell was republished a few years ago, and members of the Warren family have played a part in campaigning. Along with militants involved in the original campaign in the 1970s march comrades who were not even born then , and members of both building unions, Unite and UCATT. Ricky Tomlinson is a supporter of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party and the former miners' leader has spoken at campaign meetings. So has Bob Crow of the RMT. Others involved include Labour and Communist Party members, former members of the WRP, activists in the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, and others simply concerned with defending workers' rights and fighting injustice.

Yet some people who call themselves trade unionists don't seem happy about this campaign, and beneath the genuine unity and enthusiasm it has aroused, there seem to be some out to divide and undermine it. Rather than open opposition, this takes the form of smears and rumour-mongering aimed at sapping confidence, and it would be interesting to know where this is coming from. Apparently one of the targets attacked is Des Warren's book, and thus its author, who it is suggested wasn't capable of expressing his own experiences and thoughts, but was just some kind of stooge for outside forces. It says something for Des Warren and his book that they can still awaken such antagonism, and it says a lot about his detractors that they have waited so long to smear someone who is dead, and even now are too cowardly to come out into the open.

Anyway, I am pleased to see that journalist Chris Corrigan, who worked with Des on the book and whom I know as a man of quiet and decent integrity, has decided to reply to this smear, and here, with an introductory letter from Gerry Downing, is Chris's statement, as it appears in
Weekly Worker 914 , Thursday May 17 2012

Chris Corrigan sets the record straight about Des Warren

The ideals fought for by Des Warren and his comrades during and after the 1972 building workers’ strike need to be clearly restated. By far the best way to honour the memory of those who were surely amongst the foremost class warriors of the last century is not simply to legally ‘clear the names’ of the falsely criminalised and jailed Shrewsbury pickets, but to organise to finish the fight against the ‘lump’, which led them into sharp conflict not only with the building employers and Tory government of the day, but also with the Ucatt union bureaucracy, the TUC cowards and their apologists.

Des is very clear in his book, The key to my cell, that it was these latter three who held that key, which they refused to turn in order to maintain their rotten, corrupt, class-compromise positions of defending capitalism as the source of their privilege.

Following divisions in the Justice for the Shrewsbury Pickets campaign, allies of these have attempted to undermine the authenticity of Des’s book. A rumour has been spread that the book was not really Des’s work at all or that in writing it he was ‘spoon-fed’ by the Workers Revolutionary Party, which organisation he joined after he was released from jail. Here, the record is set straight by Chris Corrigan, who assisted Des in the production of the book.

Gerry Downing

I am a life member of the NUJ and have been a journalist for 48 years. For the past three I have been a contract sub-editor at The Guardian newspaper. Prior to that I was a staff sub-editor at The Independent for 22 years.

Previously I was a news reporter on the Western Mail, then the Birmingham Post, and then, from 1969 to 1974, in Fleet Street with the Press Association news agency, where I was a high court and central criminal court/Old Bailey reporter. Needless to say, you require very high skills in shorthand for such tasks, in terms of accuracy and speed. In fact, I still have my Pitman’s shorthand certificates from the 1960s.

It was these shorthand skills that led to me to cover the appeal court case in the Strand, where Des and Ricky Tomlinson were seeking to overturn their Shrewsbury convictions. I got talking to Des during the many lunch breaks and adjournments - they were temporarily out on bail - and liked him enormously. Any trade unionist would - he was an extremely impressive man with very high principles which he powerfully expressed. No wonder employers did not like him.

By this time I resigned from the PA, which was increasingly departing from its traditional role as an impartial national news agency and joining in the general rightwing media campaign: eg, against the early-70s miners’ strikes and vilifying so-called dossing, card-playing, night-shift workers at Cowley and Longbridge. I worked freelance, and contributed news stories to various papers as well as, when possible, to the Workers Press, the WRP’s paper. I eventually joined the WRP in early 1975, when the Americans had to leave Saigon in a hurry.

I also got to know Des’s family, including Elsa, who worked tirelessly, speaking for the Shrewsbury campaign to free Des and his fellow defendants. As is known, their appeal was rejected.

After Des’s eventual release from jail, I kept in touch. He was anxious to bring out a book about his experiences. I offered to put my shorthand skills at his disposal - it must be emphasised he was unable to hold a pen still for even a second, or use a typewriter, because of his continuous shakes from the onset of Parkinson’s disease brought on by prison authorities administering Largactil and other heavy tranquilisers. (Largactil was later superseded by drugs which did not cause the same level of side-effects, which continual large doses often brought about.)

So Des needed help to write his book. When he was ready, and when I was available, I spent six weeks with him, sometimes staying at his house in Buckley, North Wales, or travelling by moped each day from Runcorn.

It went like this. Des spoke - I recorded what he said. Each night I would transcribe my shorthand notes onto printed sheets. These proofs would be checked by Des. We eventually had a full manuscript. After about a fortnight, I returned and Des had gone through the manuscript and made additions and changes during the next two weeks. He was ill, but his mind was still sharp, as was his memory, and he had full control of the content - every sentence of it. Nobody else except Des contributed to, or had any control, over its content. He wrote it - even the title, The key to my cell.

My role was as shorthand writer and secretary, and also as a researcher when dates and times needed checking or court transcripts and newspaper cuttings needed finding. All of which Des collated and chose where to insert in the book.

Finally, if anyone wants to challenge the integrity of the above account they can face the consequences or I am willing to meet them to sensibly discuss it. This includes Mr Terry Renshaw - if he is able to absent himself from his work as a highly active member of the North Wales Police Authority, which, in a previous form, helped put Des, Ricky and others behind bars in the first place.

To order copies of the book contact justice4pickets@yahoo.co.uk

Chris Corrigan

Further reading:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/des-warren-6170658.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/may/01/guardianobituaries.politics

http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/misc/reviews/key_to_cell.php

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g47X53TtkVE

Legal News:
http://www.flintshirechronicle.co.uk/flintshire-news/local-flintshire-news/2012/04/05/step-forward-in-flintshire-workers-fight-against-injustice-51352-30693575/

"Conspiracy"? Yes, but whose?

IT must have been a long day for building worker Derek Warren. He had set out early that morning with his fellows from North Wales and Chester, going down to Shrewsbury area to help persuade those still working on sites to join the national building workers' strike.
It was September 6, 1972.

At Kingswood a man came out of the site office brandishing a loaded shotgun at them. With quick presence of mind and sharp footwork one of the pickets managed to grab the gun off this man - the contractor's son -before anybody was harmed.

At the next site they went to, a company director challenged Derek to a fight. Des told the man he had better things to do, and carried on with the business of holding a short meeting, urging the workers to stop work and join the pickets, and then moving on.

Police were accompanying the pickets wherever they went. No arrests were made. At the biggest site, McAlpines at Brookside, reached towards the end of the day, Chief Superintendent Meredith shook Des by the hand, and congratulated him on the way things had been conducted, without any trouble (apart from that shotgun incident, hardly the union members' fault, since it was them who were threatened).

When Des Warren got home to Prestatyn that evening he found two strangers waiting. Reporters from the Sunday People. His wife Elsa said they had been there since 2 o'clock that afternoon. She had made them tea and sandwiches. They had played with the children. Seemed very pleasant. So Des, tired as he was, agreed to be interviewed. He told them about the issues of the strike, the pay and conditions in the building industry, and the poor safety, with a fatality rate from accidents higher than that in mining and agriculture combined.

They pressed him for more about his own role in the strike. How many men had he personally persuaded to come out? He told them it was hard to say, but they persisted, and he eventually said it was maybe 3,000.

That Sunday, Des bought a copy of the People, and could hardly believe his eyes. There was his picture, under the big heading THE WRECKER'. "He boasts that in the past seven weeks he has persuaded more than 3,000 building workers in North Wales to down tools and leave their sites..." You would not think this was an official, national strike, a perfectly legal form of activity by workers trying to make their industry a better, and safer, place to work. To add a touch of colour, the article mentioned that Warren had a phone to keep in touch with colleagues, a colour telly, and a Jaguar car in the drive. It didn't say that this jag was the only wreck in the story, since it didn't go, only having half an engine, and had been adopted by the cat as the place to have kittens.

What followed was no joke. Those pleasant persons from the People had repaid the Warrens' hospitality by publishing the family's address in their article. The threatening notes and 'phone calls began, "you Communist bastard", "we're going to smash your house", "we'll kill your kids", "we'll rape your wife", "Your house will be blown up, - signed National Front".

But this introduction to the working of the capitalist press was just a start.

On February 14, 1973, at 6,30 in the evening, the police arrived to take Des Warren away. Five other building workers were arrested that day, among them Eric Tomlinson, better known today as actor Ricky Tomlinson, on TV. Altogether two dozen men were to stand trial for alleged offences related to picketing in Shrewsbury five months before, even though there had been no arrests back then. In those days, as he freely admits, Ricky Tomlinson's political views were very different from those of Des Warren, but the two of them were accused of "conspiracy" and sent to jail.

"Was there a conspiracy?" asked Des Warren in his speech from the dock. "There was a conspiracy, but not by the pickets. . . The conspiracy was between the Home Secretary, the employers and the police".
(The Key to My Cell, by Des Warren).

"You have the power of speech and the power of leadership which you apparently used to ill purpose," replied the judge, sentencing him to three years.

Des Warren is dead, after suffering long debilitating illness, as a result of drugs administered to him in prison causing Parkinsons Disease. Elsa Warren has not forgiven what was done to him, or to her and the family.

Ricky Tomlinson has described how the jury was given misleading information, and broke into disorder when they heard the custodial sentences announced. In his efforts to find out more about what happened to him and Des Warren, and to a lesser extent the others, he tried to get access to his file, only to be told it remained
closed on "security" grounds.

It seems this "cold case" is still hot.

All the more reason for raising it again, demanding the truth, and the clearing of the pickets' names.

Elsa Warren and Ricky Tomlinson are among those speaking out in a film I've just seen, made for the Justice for the Shrewsbury Pickets campaign. It reminds us of the issues in the building workers' struggle, and the circumstances which led to the pickets being jailed. It also gives some idea of the forces they were up against, from the National federation of Building Trade Employers gathering a dossier, and Tory Home Secretary Sir Robert Carr,"discussing with my Chief Constables", through to Sir Alfred McAlpine's son in law, P.H.Bell, who as a building director had a bank account in the Cayman Islands, it seems, but as High Sheriff of Denbighshire, had a say in the policing of that county, and the arrest of building workers.

The film is available on DVD from Platform.Films@virgin.net

Des Warren's book, The Key to My Cell, first published by New Park in 1982, has been republished and is available at £5 from the campaign:
http://www.shrewsburypicketscampaign.org.uk/

And there's a demonstration and rally in Shrewsbury tomorrow starting from the Abbey Forgate carpark, assemble 10.30am.
Speakers at the rally will include Ricky Tomlinson and Bob Crow from the RMT union.

Return to Shrewsbury

ASSEMBLING for the off at Abbey Foregate.
RICKY TOMLINSON speaking at the rally.
CROWD was swelled by local people.



THE historic market town of Shrewsbury, and its abbey particularly, will be known to fans of historic crime fiction as the place from which Ellis Peters' detective monk Brother Cadfael sets out to investigate foul deeds and right injustices. The crowd that gathered at the Abbey Foregate on Saturday, July 4, are just as determined to uncover the truth and set right a real injustice that occurred 25 years ago.

It was to Shrewsbury that 32 building workers were brought after the 1972 building workers' strike to stand trial on alleged offences committed when they came to picket and persuade workers on nearby sites to join their strike. Oddly enough, none of them had been arrested on the day they came down from North Wales - indeed as Ricky Tomlinson told Saturday's rally, the police had escorted the pickets from site to site, and when they were about to go home the officer in charge boarded their coach to say thankyou for the way they had conducted themselves!

It was after the strike that police raided homes and took men into custody, and they wound up in the dock on "conspiracy" charges. As Tomlinson revealed, he had initially been approached to act as a prosecution witness
, perhaps because they knew his politics were different ("I wasn't always a left-winger").. As fellow-defendent Des Warren told the court, "There was a conspiracy, but not by the building workers". It was the Tories, the employers, senior police officers and judges who had conspired, and now we know MI5 was also involved.

After appeal, Ricky Tomlinson got a two year sentence, and Des Warren got three. Des died in 2004, having suffered drug-induced Parkinsonism as a result of the way he was treated in prison. Besides describing some of the harassment and frequent moves they went through, Ricky Tomlinson reminded us that a Labour Home Secretary could have freed them, but they spent more of their time inside under Labour than had been under the Tories.

The Shrewsbury pickets campaign wants all the verdicts against the 24 overturned, with an apology, but it also wants a full inquiry into what went on behind the scenes, with all the documents released. The government is still insisting that would endanger "national security!!

Shrewsbury picket Terry Renshaw, who has gone on to become mayor of Flint and, as he pointed out, sits on a police authority, told us "I'm the same man". He has seen Justice Minister Jack Straw in his efforts to obtain an inquiry into the case. Besides local trades union activists, other speakers included miners' leader Arthur Scargill, who had flown back from a meeting in France to attend, and of a newer generation of militants, Rob Williams, reinstated convenor at the Linamar factory in Swansea.

Besides building workers, some of whom had travelled from as far as Crook, in County Durham and Croydon in south London, Saturday's march and rally included sacked Liverpool dockers, with their banner, and members of the Amicus engineering union, and rail union RMT, post office workers, Unison, and PCS civil servants from the Telford and Shrewsbury areas. Des Warren's son and sister were also present. After the speeches we were able to quench our thirst in Unison's social club behind the county hall, and were entertained by Liverpool singer Alun Parry and Birmingham's Banner theatre.

But the unanimous feeling of all assembled was that this was not an end but a new beginning to our campaign; and local people, including some youth who joined us, were very pleased the campaign had come to Shrewsbury.There was applause to the suggestion that this become an annual event.

Des Warren is back in print

THREE years after his tragic death at just 66, Des Warren, the steelfixer from North Wales who became famous as one of the Shrewsbury Two, jailed for their part in the 1972 building workers' strike, is back to inspire and pass on his experience to coming generations.

The Key to My Cell, the book which Des wrote after coming out of prison, describing how he came to find himself in the dock for leading fellow-workers fighting for decent pay and conditions, why the state had come down on them, and what he had learned politically, is once more going into print.

First published by New Park, the publishing firm of the Workers Revolutionary Party which Des joined after disillusionment with the Communist Party, the book often comes up when two or three building workers get talking after a union meeting. While it was out of print it was sought after, and old well-thumbed copies would be borrowed among friends.

Thousands of trade unionists took part in demonstrations and marches to free the Shrewsbury pickets. Two were kept in jail, Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson, now better known as an actor, and Des served longest. The campaign was wound down by union leaders and the Communist Party, with the promise that Labour in government would do something. Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins refused to help, and Des Warren served his full three years.

Des Warren died on April 24, 2004, after long debilitating illness largely brought on by the effect of drugs administered to him in prison.

New Park no longer exists. But thanks to the faith and commitment of some activists, Des Warren's book is being made available again, not just as a tribute to its author, but as a contribution to ongoing struggles.

Ricky Tomlinson, whom we saw on TV recently revisiting sccnes of the 1972 struggles and talking to those involved, is campaigning for the files to be re-opened on the pickets' case, and Justice for the Pickets. He has written a foreword to the new edition of The Key to My Cell, and next month he has been been invited to speak in Croydon, where trades unionists will be celebrating the anniversary of their hall, Ruskin House, on May 10.

Ritchie Hunter writes from Liverpool:

Dear All,

Find attached an A4 poster advertising 'The Key to My Cell' out in May 2007. Please spread this around. WE NEED MONEY to pay for the printing.

Two events in May:

1. 8pm, Thursday 10 May 2007, Ruskin House, Coombe Road, Croydon. Speakers include Ricky Tomlinson.

2. Writing on the Wall (WOW) Festival, History Day, Tuesday 15 May 4.00-5.30 pm, at Dean Walters Building (JMU) Upper Duke St.
Joe Sim, Professor of Criminology at JMU, will discuss the use of legal drugs by the state to control prisoners. Steve Tombs, Professor of Sociology at JMU, will discuss corporate crime and the construction industry today.

Meanwhile there's another way to remember Des Warren and take up again the cause for which he fought. This Saturday, April 28, is Workers Memorial Day, when we think about all those killed or injured in industry. "Remember the Dead and Fight for the Living" is the slogan. There will be events in various parts of the country and around the world. In London, the Construction Safety Campaign will start the day by joining local residents outside the Barret's Construction site at the corner of Thessaly Road, and Battersea Park Rd., Battersea, SW8 where a man was killed by a crane collapse. That's at 9.30am.

Then at 10.45am, marchers will assemble at Holland Street, London SE1, beside the Tate Modern, before marching to Tower Hill for a rally at 12.15pm. Speakers will include relatives of those killed at work, as well as trade unionists and campaigners.

There's also a picket on Monday morning, April 30, outside the Health and Safety Executive head offices on Southwark Bridge Road, from 8am to 9am, to demand more effective measures over the use of cranes, after three people were killed last year in crane collapses.

For more information about Des Warren's book and the Justice for Pickets campaign see:
http://www.billhunterweb.org.uk/des_warren/des_warren_home.htm

Blood, sweat and tears that made Liverpool

AFTER THE BOMBING. Digging for survivors, Scotland Road.

AS Liverpool prepares for its stint as European City of Culture, due in 2008, people are keen to make it a success. I was given my badge for the event last year, which shows they are looking ahead. Liverpool has a rich history of course, and plenty of culture to show, from its fine buildings to the Philharmonic and the "Fab Four", as well as providing most of the comedians I listened to on the radio as a lad, and many of the actors we see on TV.

But some people are concerned now to make sure the "Year of Culture" does not omit Merseyside's greatest asset, its working people, and their struggle against adversity, which gave rise to humour, but to great resilience and courage as well.

Most films and books dealing with the World War II blitz concentrate on London, but as Britain's biggest westward facing seaport, handling vitally needed supplies from the United States, and Canada, Liverpool was a major target for German bombing, suffering and eventually triumphing at least as much as London. During the worst week, seven nights from 1st-7th May, 1941 around 681 planes dropped 870 tonnes of high explosives and over 112,000 incendiaries on the area, killing over 1,700 people and making around 76,000 homeless.*

When I first visited Liverpool with my parents as a child, whole areas around the city centre were still blackened ruins. On a later visit I was treated to a ride on the elevated railway along the waterfront, nicknamed "the dockers umbrella". Gazeing in delight on all the ships we passed, and the cargoes being unloaded, I amused the grown-ups by recognising the flags of so many nations in port, and trying to identify funnel markings.

The bomb damage has been cleared. But so, sadly, due to shifts in trade but also to economic policies, has the thriving maritime industry of which Liverpool was so justly proud. The overhead railway, which had once carried millions of passengers, closed on December 30, 1956 because neither the city council nor the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board came up with money for its maintenance.

It was not just ships that came and went from Liverpool, of course. To its shore came those fleeing Irish famine and European tyrrany. Many went on to the Americas and Australia and other places, not always voluntarily. Like Bristol, the city was a player in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Later, along with working people from Wales and Scotland and England came the African, Somali and Chinese seafarers to settle and found communities. Like the scouse, or stew, from which they take their name, your Scousers are made up of many flavours and ingrediants.

These are the people who built Liverpool, and Merseyside, who kept its port and factories runing through the blitz and provided many of the crew on Atlantic convoys without which Britain would have been denied munitions and daily bread. After the war the government set about deporting no longer wanted Chinese seafarers just as it had done Africans before. There was also the shameful post-war episode of orphan children shipped out and abused as cheap labour to sustain the "White Australia" policy.

But intelligent working people have resisted attempts to divide them, whether by religion or "race". They know the value of solidarity. Even the Toxteth "race riots" of 1981, sparked by a clash between police and black youth fed up with discrimination and poverty, became an "integrated" riot, of young people united against the police.

During the dockers' struggle a decade ago, dockers from Merseyside travelled the world gaining solidarity and support. Had the British labour movement pulled its finger out similarly, and not been tied by leaders who helped 'New Labour' betray the dockers, they would have won. Because they didn't we have all lost.

The bitter lessons learned have not been forgotten. But nor, on the positive side, have the international links built then. At the weekend I was in Liverpool meeting members of the United Socialist Party founded by sacked dockers, and former councillors, and we discussed what could be done about the war in Lebanon, as well as more local issues.

In the afternoon we had a meeting remembering building worker Des Warren, with a very moving film about his experience in prison for fighting for workers' rights, and how it effected his health. A campaign has begun to re-open the Shrewsbury building pickets' case and have their sentences reversed. Much to the discomfort I'm sure of those union leaders who would prefer a quiet life getting along with Blair and Brown, we have our memories.

In between, there was time for a short report from ex-docker Tony Nelson who was just back from a meeting with the Maritime Workers Union of Australia. He went on to speak of an ambitious idea for an event as part of Liverpool's "Year of Culture" - an international event, with a conference at the dockers' social club, the Casa, and exhibitions, celebrating the working class, from wherever they came, who built this city and became the source of so much wealth that others enjoy. I reckon it's the kind of idea that can grow and win enthusiasm and support. Soon as I hear more I'll be posting information about this project and how to get involved.

* For more on Liverpool during the Blitz see:

http://www.diduknow.info/blitz/

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/exhibitions/blitz

http://pages.zdnet.com/hookares/winston-churchills-shoe/index.html

Remembering Des, and demanding justice

DES WARREN on march (centre), flanked on his right by fellow-accused Ricky Tomlinson, now better-known as TV star.
Hairstyles have changed (mercifully!), but other things haven't, unfortunately. Radio Four last night featured a programme on "The Return of the Lump", about exploitation of Polish workers paid "cash in hand" in the building industry.

IT will soon be thirty years since building worker Des Warren was released from prison after serving three years on "conspiracy" charges for his part in the 1972 building workers' strike. Des was one of the pickets jailed at Shrewsbury, for having gone to that town to bring out unorganised sites.

Not only did he serve the longest sentence, but his health never recovered from the effect of tranquiliser drugs administered in jail. Des died in April 2004.

There were undoubtedly people in British politics and the judiciary who hoped the conviction of 24 workers for picketing and the particularly harsh treatment of their "ringleader" would teach trades unionists a lesson. Building employers who flout laws on safety and tax among others were doubtless simply glad "the law" had been enforced.
But the lesson we have learned may not be the one they wanted taught.

There are people in the Labour Party and trade unions who would be happier if the case of the Shrewbury pickets was forgotten, lest it remind us of their inglorious role, and spur our fighting resolve for the future.

But others have stubborn memories, reinforced by the ongoing fight each day for decent pay, conditions and safety in the building trade, for the workers' right to organise, and for the freedoms denied or threatened under this government.

Workers in the north-west, some of whom were involved in the campaign to release the pickets back in the 1970s, have organised an event in Liverpool on Saturday 5 August with the twin slogans
Remember Des Warren
Justice for the Shrewsbury Pickets

A major issue confronted by building workers in the 1970s was "The Lump", whereby workers rights and conditions were undermined with fictitious self-employment. Though forms change, casualisation has spread like cancer through British industry and services. It is usually imposed, by ending proper jobs, and though the work and hours expected from you are anything but casual, observance of your rights, conditions and safety, even prompt payment of your wages, may be.

In the building trade particularly it seems "the Lump" is back, though now the victims may be Polish and other east European workers paid cash in hand, exploited by gangmasters, and cheated of their rights and benefits.

So it is only right that the Liverpool meeting, besides demanding justice for the 24 pickets convicted at Shrewsbury is adding the demand:
"End casualised labour"

It's at 3pm, Saturday 5 August 2006 at the Casa, Hope Street, Liverpool
- Commemorate Des Warren
· Justice for the 24 pickets convicted of conspiracy
· End casualised labour

Contact:: Justice4pickets@yahoo.co.uk
For further information see: www.billhunterweb.org.uk
and http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2006/04/working-class-hero-des-warren.html

Refreshments

Working class hero Des Warren

The man on the right has put on a bit of
weight (ain't we all) since this picture was
taken, leaving the Appeal Court in 1973.

Cue daft joke "What do you call a scouser in a suit?" Back then he was the appellant, Eric Tomlinson, nowadays better known though less often seen in a whistle, as Ricky Tomlinson on TV. (The Royle Family, Mike Basset:Manager, etc).

The man on the left is Des Warren, who died two years ago on April 24, 2004, having been ill for a number of years as a result of his treatment in jail.

Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson were the "Shrewsbury Two", building workers jailed for their part in leading pickets during the national 1972 building workers' strike.

The 1970s had opened with big trade union struggles in which workers took on employers and the state, and sometimes they won. We trades unionists rejoiced over the Battle of Saltley, when striking miners succeeded in closing a Birmingham coke depot. (for any media yuppie readers, this was the grey-black stuff used in furnaces, not the white stuff you take up the nose).

For two days the miners had been kept away from the gates by a heavy police cordon, but on the third morning the workers from Birmingham factories came to join the miners, and the police decided discretion was a better policy and withdrew. "The moment we saw those union banners coming over the hill I knew we were beaten," a young copper who had been on duty at Saltley that day told me a couple of years after.

For building workers, the idea of flying pickets made good sense. They were struggling to organise on scattered sites, in an industry notorious for dividing workers and undermining safety and conditions with fake sub-contracting and the "lump". Blacklisting was (and is) common, to keep out union activists and intimidate the rest. So during the 1972 strike teams of union members would tour weaker areas, encouraging workers to join them. A UCATT branch secretary in Lancashire told me how driving around in a van they chanced upon a site out in the country where workers had posted signs at the end of the lane, and greeted them with "what kept you?" when they arrived at the site to "pull" the workers out.

On September 6, 1972, coachloads of UCATT and Transport and General Workers Union members from North Wales and Chester went to the conservative market town of Shrewsbury to assist trade union members there by picketing the sites. At one place they were greeted by the boss's son brandishing a shotgun, at another site a building company director challenged Des Warren to a fight, but by the end of the day when the men set off for home they felt it hadn't been a bad day's union work, and there had been no trouble with the police.

Des Warren was suprised to find two reporters from the Sunday People waiting at his house. They seemed quite friendly, having played with the kids and accepted tea and sandwiches from Des' wife Elsa. Des told them about the problems in the building industry, the dreadful accident rate, the union's fight for pay and conditions. They pressed for information about his own activity, and how many men he might have brought out. The following Sunday he bought the People, and was confronted by a large photograph of himself headed "The Wrecker", and saying he brought 3,000 men on strike. It also carried his address. The threatening letters and phone calls began. "We're going to kill your kids", "We'll rape your wife", "you Communist bastard", "your house will be blown up" -this one signed "National Front".

Where would we be without a free press?

While we had been toasting the miners' success at Saltley, the bosses, the Tories, and the pillars of "law and order", their order, were planning revenge. If they couldn't take the miners or dockers just yet they would come for the building workers instead. Shortly after dark on February 14, 1973 police swooped on homes in North Wales. Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson were among those taken away. Two dozen men went on trial in Shrewbury, eventually, accused of "conspiracy to intimidate", "unlawful assembly". and "causing an affray". No evidence was given that they had committed violence. The young man with the shotgun was produced as a witness for the Crown.

Although the affray charge was later thrown out on appeal, Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson recieved the stiffest sentences and were sent to jail. Before sentence Des Warren made this speech from the dock:

"I have spent a week in jail, and people in there and various other people, not including my counsel, have told me that it was always a mistake to make a speech from the dock, because whatever you are going to get will be doubled. I tried to explain to them that the system that operates is purely for the upper class, and I don't expect any leniency or mercy from it, so I'll continue anyway.

It has been said in this court that this trial had nothing to do with politics. Among ten million trade unionists in this country I doubt if you would find one who would agree with that statement. It is a fact of life that Acts of Parliament have been passed and picketing and strikes are looked upon as a political act. ... (at this point the Judge interrupted, telling Warren he must not use the court as a political platform, but Des continued) It therefore follows that every action taken in furtherance of an industrial dispute also becomes a political act. There are even those who say it is a challenge to the law of the land if a man decides not to work more than an agreed number of hours, and bans overtime. This is something known to many trade unionists as politically motivated interference by governments acting on behalf of, and under political pressure from the employers, and it now means that no trade unionist can enter freely into negotiations with the employers, and they can't withdraw their labour — the only thing they possess as a bargaining lever — without being accused of setting out to wreck the economy or break the law.

On the other hand, employers, by their contempt of laws governing safety requirements, are guilty of causing the deaths of a great many workers, and yet they are not dealt with before the courts. Mr. Bumble said: "The law is an ass." If he were here now he might draw the conclusion that the law is, quite clearly, an instrument of the state. It is biased; it is class law, and nowhere has that been demonstrated more than in the prosecution case in this trial. The very nature of the charges, the delving into ancient Acts of Parliament, dredging up conspiracy, shows this to be so. Was there a conspiracy? Ten members of the jury have said there was. There was a conspiracy, but not by the pickets. The conspiracy began with the miners giving the government a good hiding last year. It developed when the government was forced to perform legal gymnastics in getting five dockers out of jail after they had only just been put there. The conspiracy was between the Home Secretary, the employers and the police. It was not done with a nod and a wink. It was conceived after pressure from Tory Members of Parliament who demanded changes in picketing laws.

Of course, there was a very important reason why no police witness said he had seen any evidence of conspiracy, unlawful assembly or affray. The question was hovering over the case from the very first day: why were there no arrests on the 6th September? That would have led to the even more important question of when was the decision to proceed taken?. Where did it come from? What instructions were issued to the police? And by. whom? There was your conspiracy. -

I am innocent of the charges and I shall appeal. But there will be a more important appeal going out to every member of the trade union movement in this country. Nobody here must think they can walk away from here and forget what has happened here. Villains or victims, we are all part of something bigger than this trial. The working class movement cannot allow this verdict to go unchallenged. It is yet one more stop along the road to fascism, and I would rcmind you that the greatest heroes in Nazi Germany were those who challenged the law, when it was used as a political weapon by a fanatical gang for a minority of greedy evil men.

The jury in this trial were asked to look upon the word "intimidation" as having the ordinary everyday meaning. My interpretation is "to make timid", or "to dispirit", and when the pickets came to this town to speak to the building workers it was not with the intention of intimidating them. We came here with the intention of instilling the trade union spirit into them and not to make them timid, but to give them the courage to fight the intimidation of the employers in this area."

Ricky Tomlinson was sentended to two years. Des Warren to three. "You are no martyr," Judge Mais told him. "I regard you as arrogant, vicious and prepared to impose your views on others by violence if need be. You have the power of speech and the power of leadership which you apparently used to ill purpose."

In prison, Des Warren refused to co-operate, spending time in solitary, "on the blanket" (refusing to don prison uniform) and hunger strike. Outside, we signed petitions, went on marches, demanding "Free the Shrewsbury Two!" A group of Wigan building workers marched to London, and we held a rally with them in Trafalgar Square. After Ricky Tomlinson was released he joined the Wigan builders demanding action at the TUC in Blackpool.

But the campaign was largely wound down by building union officials, the TUC, and Des Warren's own "comrades" in the Communist Party leadership (though some rank and file worker members stuck loyally by his campaign). We were told the new Labour government would be more sympathetic. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins made it clear they were not. Des Warren served his full three years. When he came out, knowing that those who led the Wigan campaign were Trotskyists, he joined the Workers Revolutionary Party like them. When the WRP expelled its long time leader Gerry Healy in 1985, Des sided with the members fighting corruption against Healy and his acolytes.

But Des Warren's treatment in prison, specifically the "liquid cosh" tranquiliser administered to "difficult" prisoners like him, which caused symptoms similar to Parkinsons Disease, put a limit on his active political life, eventually causing him to need constant healthcare, provided by supporters. He died of pneumonia and complications caused by the Parkinsons. The gods of capital and state are jealous gods, never forgiving those who stand up to their power.

Des Warren did write a pamphlet about his case, and a book "The Key to My Cell" (New Park 1982), now sadly out of print, but vital reading to understand developments in the workers' movement over the period. Ricky Tomlinson -whose politics were not left-wing at all when he found himself in the dock with Warren - has made a new career in showbiz. But he has not forgotten past struggles, or those he learned were his comrades (he was at a commemoration meeting for Des Warren at the Casa dockers club in Liverpool). It's worth reading his entertaining autobiography, "Ricky" (Time Warner, 2004).

And for an insight into what it's like to be the son of a working-class hero, sitting in the car hoping Dad will remember the packet of crisps he promised, you can read 'Thirty Years in a Turtleneck Sweater', by Nick Warren (Ebury Press, 2005).

Notes:

The Lump - system of pretending workers are self-employed, paying them a lump sum and leaving them to worry about tax and national insurance. Against a background of low wage rates, many were tempted, but employers used it to smash unions, and undermine conditions, setting workers competing with each other, and worsening accident rates. Those on the "lump" had no security or employment rights, and if they dodged their insurance they found themselves in trouble later when sick or unemployed.

UCATT - Union of Construction and Allied Trades and Technicians. Includes carpenters, brickies and plasterers, plus labourers, but not plumbers and electricians.

Workers Revolutionary Party - split in 1985. Those who had been in the majority then eventually disbanded at the end of 1996 in the hope of building a broader movement. Some have since been active in the Socialist Alliance and various campaigns, and joined the new Liverpool-centred United Socialist Party. The group now still calling itself the WRP, with the paper News Line, was formed by people who went with Gerry Healy.