Grunwick etc
Sir: The events at Grunwick demonstrate the folly and weakness of Mr Reginald Maudling in surrendering to the picketers of the power-stations when he was Home Secretary and thus creating the myth of the invincibility of the trade unions. It is clear from a letter written to The Times by Lord Shaweross that the picketers were guilty of obstruction,. breach of the peace, riot and conspiracy to commit these offences. Yet Mr Maudling, instead of sending police trained in mob-control, together with suitable weapons such as rubber bullets and tear gas,, meekly threw in the sponge and had the audacity to tell the House of Commons that the picketers were not committing any criminal offence.
Now that Mr Maudling has been dropped from the Shadow Cabinet, it is greatly to be hoped that his spirit will be extirpated from the Conservative Party.
R. D. Travers 5c Artillery Mansions, London SW1 Sir: How excellent the current series of your leading articles is. But, five-eights of the way through the piece of 2 July, you have: 'APEX should be allowed to recruit and to organise at Grunwick'.
No, of course they shouldn't. Neither the proprietor nor any of his present contented employees want anything to do with APEX. Once let the union in and it will cause severe trouble — you can't have a half-unionised shop. I know, from my own experience.
My own family's hundred-year old firm was forced to become union-dominated in 1948, when we employed about forty folk, all reasonably happy and content to work for us. But because, as you say, it became the unions who controlled who was engaged or discharged, the company slowly wilted and ceased trading.
In this district we have two additional Grunwicks. CBM Ltd of Eaglescliffe — Commercial Business Machines, a beneficent Canadian-based employer of local labour (I know this firm well, from personal experience — it's a splendid concern and has conferred the boon of employment on Eaglescliffe). Then there's the Northern Echo at Darlington, which as you know employs one woman journalist who doesn't wish to be NUJ'd. There, the Mayor of Darlington has been among the so-called pickets, trying to stop the newspaper's vans from leaving the works.
A sad state, all this. It will come right in time, but only very painfully, I fear.
C. H. Hood Airyholme Lane, Middlesbrough.
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