WESTM NSTER HAUL
Page 7
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PASSPORTS or certificates of cleanliness which will allow lorries to pass through secondary picket lines ... call them what you like, Labour's. idea of labels to make life easier for both drivers and strikers is not likely to become widespread practise.
Certainly it will not become law, for the Commons did not like the Opposition suggestion that lorries executing contracts should carry notices "visible to persons attending on the highway near them" stating clearly the description of the contract and the name of the subcontractor.
According to Opposition spokesman Eric Varley, this was the least that could be done, for with thousands of workers who had never been on strike in their lives possibly coming "into a strike situation" and thousands of customers and suppliers perhaps involved, how were the people in the dispute to know which firm has a contract with a supplier or a customer?
Mr Varley obviously believes that the magic word "contract" will make secondary pickets draw back respectfully, doff their caps, and let the lorry proceed on its lawful business.
Other MPs apparently did not — vocally at least — share his belief in strikers' respect for the sanctity of contracts.
Employment Secretary Jim Prior, even though much of his speech seemed to please Labour more than Tories.
"Lorries bringing in key goods or materials can be turned away and the workers intimidated not to go into work by the threat of the loss of their union card" . .. and that was it.
John Evans, the Labour Member for Newton, had a great deal more to say. After a scathing attack on the effects which European legislation was having on the working lives of British lorry drivers — and he spoke with all the authority of two years' chairmanship of the regional policy and transport committee of the European Parliament — he drew a weird picture of what would happen if Mr Prior's interpretation of the Employment Bill was correct.
"In any future dispute the lorry drivers will be free to stand outside their wagon compounds, where absolutely nothing else is happening, but other lorries will be able to run up and down the country, and the drivers involved in the dispute will be on strike for ever more."
Pity he didn't explain who would be driving those "other lorries."