400 at Roberts Arundel Anniversary Picket

Nearly four hundred pickets stood outside the Roberts Arundel factory at Stockport on Tuesday, to celebrate the first anniversary of the strike. Eighty policemen guarded the factory throughout the demonstration. Most of the pickets were workers and students, but several Roberts Arundel employees were there. Union officials said that they believed that employees of the firm had been given permission to please themselves about when they report for work, One man drove his car right through the demonstration and took with him on the bonnet a picket who was unable to get out of the way in time; other than that incident there were no further provocations, The demonstration ended with a meeting at which Mr John Tocker, Stockport district secretary of the AEU , called for legislation to ensure that foreign employers would fit in with the national industrial agreements for the recognition of trade unions and collective bargaining. The chairman of Roberts Arundel, R.Pomeranz, wrote a letter to The Guardian in which he severely criticisedThe Guardian's Editorial on the affair. Re fering to The Guardian's criticism of his companys refusal to recognise trade unions, Mr Pomeranz said "implication that American methods or American ownership are the guilty ones clearly is falling into a communist propaganda trap".