PAT HICKEY (SA 18 August) was right to draw attention to employers copying BL *smash-the unions' tactics.
As he points out, John McKay, former communications director at BL under Sir Michael Edwards, was adviser to the Financial Times board during the 10-week strike there this summer.
But he implies there was a oreci oa ane ween the case of the FT and Cowlev a tortnighi ago with management 'screening militants and expelling them from the workforce'.
The significance of McKay's role was in management's tactics in the battle for the 'hearts and minds' of the rest of the FT workforce.
Mckay helped draft the chief executive's press Teleases. anere were aso personal letters and 'fact Sheets to all statt. anpealing to them directly over the heads of union representatives.
Journalists, ,for instance, learned through one of these documents that they were going to have to make up their minds where their loyalties lay before their chapel officers were informed of plans (later Labour misleaders EVERYBODY understands that Thatcher has not got her majority in Parliament because of the Militant Tendency or because of a socialist manifesto.
The Labour leadership backed the Tories by ac c ckog the left. Those who suffer Minusuce. BaTUsID. unemployment, insecurity do not want the right blaming scapegoats. Red faces at Fleet Street over money. were asseltilg a umon s August, ll carriea a They want the truth.
The voters have rejected leaders who ignored and misled them at the time of the Faiklands war.
Does the right wing want more Labour voters to defect? Is the right wing of the Party aiming to destroy it?
They got it wrong on the Falklands and have it wrong on Ireland.
We who sutier oppression don't want contorm to ine pattern ot This was the sumDefend the 13 cause lor alarm.
Hln COnOde Dyi times: a systematic cere industrial and financial enterprises and notably B.l's own Michael Edwardes.
More seriously still, the language of these emossuwored baiting and spy fiction. Ils emecl Is lo suggest ¿ new kind of 'treason', opiuee SocausE infiltration of employment. As such it is an outrage, exposing who knows how many on the left to 'charges' that are not only anti-democratic but also unanswerable.
How can an active SOCAISEDOVe ERaS/ne has not taken a job for ulterior politica reaons. It is impossible.
We must not alon particular judgements to distract us trom the the Cou ey alicir. Thef the Cowley affair. danger comes not from the luckless 13 but from • those who are already exploiting their misadventure to push us all in the direction of a British McCarthyism.
MARTYN DAY PATRICIA HOLLAND, RALPH MILIBAND FRANCIS MULHERN, JOHN PALMER, LYNNE SEGAL, or the steerin ommittee of the Sociali. Society.