Warrington

THE WARRINGTON DISPUTE

Away from Greenham Common, something altogether different was taking place that was still extremely significant to the way the country was being governed and would prove to have huge repercussions for British workers for evermore. An industrial dispute at a print works in Warrington, near Manchester, had escalated into a state of affairs that no-one – except perhaps Thatcher – could have anticipated after a newspaper entrepreneur called Eddie Shah took on printers union the National Graphical Association (NGA) over the issues of closed shops and the employment of non-union labour.

Less than a fortnight after being elected to government in 1979, Thatcher had started to lay out plans for trade union reform; focussing on picketing, the closed shop and ballots. Her aim was to not just curb but destroy the power of unions and in a bid to do this had devised a raft of new laws and two new Employment Acts.

In Warrington, Eddie Shah had recruited non-union labour for his new printing plant causing NGA members to stage a walkout. Shah sacked the strikers immediately which led to a bout of mass picketing at the plant in support of them. Hundreds of union members were bussed in to take part in the pickets which prompted Shah to cite the new Tory Employment Acts, and to call upon the government for support.

Thatcher was only too pleased to oblige and gave the police the green light to do whatever it took to prevent the pickets having any effect. To Thatcher, not only was this a case of law and order and the pickets acting illegally but also a question of a greater struggle between union and government power.

The NGA was fined huge sums for breaking the rules of the new Employment Acts and finally had their entire funds sequestered for non-compliance. As for the pickets themselves, they were facing a newly equipped, combative police force, trained in the lessons of the riots of '81 and given the go-ahead from the highest level of government to act with impunity.

The strike culminated with the exits of the M6 motorway being blocked by the police to prevent the pickets getting to Warrington and then finally with a full-on battle between the two sides outside the plant where 2,000 baton-wielding police charged, drove at in Range Rovers and fought hand-to-hand with 4,000 workers.

Nobody knew at the time, of course, but this was the shape of things to come in terms of policing future industrial disputes...