A FARCE - that's what the Right to Work Campaign calls the trials of the 43 marchers for alleged police assault. After the police attack on the Right to WORK March at Staples Corner, Hendon, 42 of the 43 marchers have been charged with offences under the Public Order Act. This means that they have no right to elect for trial by jury.
The trial of the first seven marchers ended last week. Mike Lynch, chairman of Dunfermline Labour Party was sentenced to six months imprisonment he was later released on bail pending appeal. Two of the other marchers were acquitted, while others received suspended sentences and fines.
to Work believes that a jury acquitted all the defendants. magistrates trial is being used to protect the Hendon police, role in the Carib case and Notting Hill Carnival has come under public ехатіпанол.
John Deason, the Campaign Secretary, is tne only marcher able to elect for trial by jury. present on £2,500 bail, he is waiting for trial at the Old Bailey.
Central The question of a national defence campaign to free convicted marchers although will be raised at against Cuts and Unemployment in Manchester on 6 November. Further details from: Right to Work Campaign, 265a Seven Sisters Campaign London N4.
LETTERS would have WHOSE who is the Conference TWO MAJOR POINTS have been raised in the correspondence on the Right to Work March. First, that we have no right to criticise because we did nothing to Road, build the campaign. "You demand the right to speak? Earn it by hard work, wrote Alan Gibbons in last week's issue.
But right from the start, when we knew that the march had been called, we said (and still say) that the march was one way to fight back, and should be supported and built. Red Weekly argued for that on Its Iront page and us supporters tough for support for the march up and down the country in labour movement bodies.
The second and more honest argument is that we are wrong in our criticisms of democracy on the march, and that those criticisms are just nit-picking.
Attempting to refute the argument that contingents lor tne right or women and and Stalinist misleaders will require more than saying 'we are the only ones organis ing a fight back', and denouncing them with slogans of we are angry' and out of work with Labour'. It will be done by first of all being the best fighters for united action, consistently trying to force the 'lefts' to involve themselves and their base in action; and secondly, by conducting a political fight in the course of that united action with the reformists about how to take that action forward.
In practice the Right to Work Campaign moved away from this. It excluded