SUCCESSFUL C.N.D. DEMONSTRATION IN BARROW by Alan Rooney
About 100 people took part in the CND demonstration in Barrow-in- Furness last Saturday, 26 September. This was an anti-Polaris demonstration and marks a growing concern with the Polaris issue in the North-West. It was the largest political demonstration in the town in recent years. The demonstration began with a march through the town centre and the Vickers shipyard where Polaris is being built. The local people showed considerable interest and most of them read the leaflets they were given.
The police were everywhere - some in uniform, some in plain-lothes, “When people took photographs of the covered-up Polaris from the public road, they were moved on by the police, Later, at the public meeting, plainclothes men photographed all the speakers and marchers, The speakers attracted quite an audience outside the ~Town Hall. Eric Montgomery, secretary of the Barro trades council and a worker at Vickers, gave the background to the labour situation at Vickers. After a ten weeks! strike the draughtsmen on Polaris have been sacked and now the welders Aave come out because they consider that they are not getting a high enough rate for the job. There are signs that this strike is spreading to the Polaris welders at Cammell Lairds, Birkenhead. It seems likely that Vickers will have a showdown with the welders very soon, The management have threatened to close the entire shipyard if labour troubles continue, As Mr. Montgomery pointed out, this is one way of stopping Polaris production - but it is not the most satisfactory way. Here, he called for a policy of scrap-and-build in the shipbuilding industry; a policy geared to the production of oil tankers, liners and freight carriers. (This is already the policy .of the Lancashite Federation of Trades Councils.)
Other speakers included Dick Nettleton, North West CND organiser, Ray Challinor and Alan Rooney. Later, a CND delegation discussed the situation with the Barrow Labour Party. The delegates urged the local party to press for immediate scrapping of the Polaris project under a Labour Government and the initiation of a 'scrap-and-build' programme for shipbuilding.
The local paper, the Barrow News, which has been touting the slogan “Barrow + Polaris = Prosperity, Barrow = Polaris = Depression" for some time, made the CND demonstration front-page news (in a slanted kind of way). The North West CND are going ahead producing three editions of Focus bulletin Barrow,