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Conspiracy Their Arses! Ricky Tomlinson (and Non-Celebrities) Fight Injustice

Neon Black | 09.01.2007 16:16 | Repression | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | Liverpool

Of course you know Ricky Tomlinson from his roles in the Royle Family and Brookside. But you may not know he was one of the Shrewsbury pickets imprisoned in the 1970s for 'conspiracy to intimidate' during a building workers dispute. Well now Ricky has donated £1,000 to a campaign for a public inquiry into the blatantly dodgy arrests, trial, and imprisonments. He will also be presenting a TV documentary later this year in a bid to raise awareness.



Later this month, Tomlinson will join Arthur Scargill at a meeting in Shotton, North Wales, which will be filmed as part of a TV documentary which he hopes will raise awareness of the stitch-up which ultimately cost the life of his fellow defendant, Des Warren.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the poor safety record and low wages was creating anger amongst unionised workers in the construction industry. Non-unionised workers were subjected to a system known as ‘the lump’ – cash-only payment in a lump sum, without any security or employment rights. The Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) proposed a ‘builder’s charter’ – guaranteeing a 35-hour week, a wage of £1 an hour, improved safety and pensions.

The building industry – lead by companies such as McAlpine’s and Laing’s – were terrified by this threat to their profits, as were Ted Heath’s Conservative government. Against the background of the Vietnam War and emerging protest movements, the ruling class was worried alternatives to capitalism gaining popularity. In fact Lord McAlpine was treasurer of the Tories, so he was doubly worried!

The unionised workers began to use ‘flying pickets’ as a tactic to win the lump workers around to their cause. Among the leaders were Des Warren (who worked in Ellesmere Port for a time) and Eric (‘Ricky’) Tomlinson.

On September 6 1972, coachloads of UCATT and Transport and General Workers Union members from North Wales and Chester went to the market town of Shrewsbury to assist trade union members there, by picketing the sites. At one place they were greeted by the son of one boss 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.

Six months later – with the conflict between strikers and government intensifying – the authorities took vicious retribution and recrimination. Warren and Tomlinson were arrested in connection with the Shrewsbury events (along with twenty-two others), and charged with unlawful assembly, affray and conspiracy to intimidate. After a bizarre and blatantly unfair trial, they were found guilty of the conspiracy charge by the capitalist state and a middle class jury.

Warren received three years in prison, and Tomlinson got two years. They became known as the ‘Shrewsbury Two’, and a campaign was launched to set them free. But if the trial had been a deliberate conspiracy of the Employers' Federation, government and state, then the campaign saw a conspiracy by leaders of the Labour Party, the TUC and UCATT to limit the threat to the profit system. Workers were told to vote for a Labour government, but when they got one Harold Wilson and James Callaghan refused to cut short Warren’s sentence or launch an inquiry. Callaghan’s government began the attack on workers’ rights that was accelerated by Thatcher and is still supported by Blair, Brown, and almost every politician you are likely to see on the news.

Warren, who wrote his memoirs 'The Key To My Cell' , was later diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and campaigners believe it was his treatment at the hands of the prison authorities that gave him the illness. He died from pneumonia, aged 66, in April, 2004.

Ricky told the Liverpool Echo: “We are calling for a public inquiry because we want people to know what we all went through – and to clear our names.”

Campaign secretary Mick Abbott added: “This latest event will give the campaign fresh impetus and we expect it to be followed by meetings in Manchester, London and other parts of the country.”

Ricky will speak at The Grosvenor, Nelson Street, Shotton, at 7.30pm on Friday January 26. For tickets – £5, including a buffet – contact Mick Abbott on 07907 307 853.
In Liverpool today, the preparations for the Capital of Culture mean there are construction workers everywhere, but conditions in the industry have not improved since the defeat in the 1970s. The time has come for a new generation of Des Warrens to learn from the mistakes of the past and to organise for a free and fair future.

Visit  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/liverpool/2006/08/346963.html to read a report and see photos of last summer's campaign launch.

Neon Black
- Homepage: http://dreaming-neon-black.blogspot.com

Comments

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Clifford Growcott

09.01.2007 19:29

Presumably when Ricky Tomlinson who led the action committee to confront Clifford Growcott on the buiding site in Shrewsbury he beat himself unconscious, putting himself in hospital for 10 days.

Paul Edwards


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respec' to the tomlinson

10.01.2007 02:17

Sadly the left are inhabited by feminist freaks and other politically correct scum like the SWP.

Why don't we all just accept that socialism is a dead duck?

Not a millionaire


the silent victims

01.02.2007 05:45

I am the daughter of one of the builders brutalised in the furore of the flying pickets attack on the building site in Telford which led to Ricky Tomlinson and cohorts imprisonment seemingly glossed over in your report.

While Tomlinson seems to have found a willing media soapbox for his one-sided protestations there is the untold story of the injuries and long-term effects felt by the real innocent victims of this sad story.

My father suffered long-term health problems directly caused by the attack he suffered and never worked again. His compensation? £120 and long-term disability benefit. I think Tomlinson has financially reaped the rewards with very little thought for those left behind in this sorry tale.

heather blackham
mail e-mail: heatherblackham@mac.com


We support your fight for justice

27.03.2007 22:32

We have just watched the programme on TV and definitely think you were stitched up by the system. Any help you want please email the above address. Good luck with your fight for justice.
Jill and Tim

Jill Goble
mail e-mail: Jill@goblej.freeserve.co.uk


Blackham incident

12.11.2007 19:47

I witnessed the slight injury to Mr Albert Edward Blackham at Telford during the builders strike of 1972. When the pickets arrived at Brookside, by far the largest building site that the police took them that day, they were clearly outnumbered by the building worker. As we entered the site most of the workers were streaming away to the perimeter road, to where their cars were parked. A large group of workers had gathered outside site office 3 for a meeting with the pickets. When we reached the centre of the site I noticed a worker kneeling on a scaffold holding his head. One of the pickets climbed the ladder to help him down. We were all dimayed, that was the last thing we wanted. There had been a few isolated cases where workers and pickets had been throwing stones at each other. Blackham had a graze on his forhead, but when police came across to see how he was, he said he didn't want a fuss and refused there offer to look at his injury.

The collection of transcript evidence of the first trial at Shrewbury, is held at the The Working Class Library at Salford. Four police officers including a sergeant, said in their evidence they were happy to leave Blackham in the care of the pickets who wee looking after him.

The aims of the strike was to defeat the building employers ruthless attempt to impose the lump system on their workers, by tearing up the working rule agreement. The only guarentee for fair wages, safety at work, and decent working conditions. The lump ws responsible for the biggest fraud against the tax payers of this country. The fact that the strike lasted 13 weeks was a measure of the injustice that the strikers felt against the lump system.

I was proud to be a Shrewsbury picket, the strikebreakers and blacklegs should bow their heads in shame.
A Murray

Arthur Murray


WTF is "conspiracy to intimidate"?

14.09.2008 04:17

WTF is "conspiracy to intimidate"?

"Conspiracy" is usually followed by a specific offence, and there's no specific offence of "intimidation". I did a quick web search and all I came up with was "conspiracy to intimidate witnesses".

I've never seen this "conspiracy to intimidate" used before or since. Is it still on the books? Has it ever been used except in this case?

On the other hand, we now see "conspiracy" laws being attached to other dodgy laws and people getting charged with conspiracy to harass, to cause criminal damage, and to blackmail, on very dodgy grounds (eg: campaigning to close down animal abusers by direct action is deemed "conspiracy to blackmail" and carrying basic protest items is deemed "conspiracy to cause criminal damage").

The whole "conspiracy" law needs weeding out or at least drastically reforming - it is absurd that conspiring to do something is considered worse than doing it, that normal restrictions on hearsay are suspended in conspiracy cases, and that speculative accounts of possible motivations for actions are used to turn innocuous protest actions or minor criminal offences into something massive. It's basically a threat to free speech and political activism, a way of convicting people without having to actually prove that they did anything specific.

fuck pigfuckers


conspiracy?

14.09.2008 04:21

fuck pigfuckers


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