Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Rhagfyr 1973.
I said earlier that my personal view is that the AUEW should appear in court. That is not the subject of the debate. I hope that the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) will take part in the debate. In the meantime, I put it to her that there is a chain of events leading to the sequestration of £100,000. It is not right for anyone to look at one link in the chain and say that that is entirely to blame. The chain begins essentially with the Act. One event in the chain was the action of the judge, which I consider to be inappropriate and unsatisfactory for the reasons which I have given. The hon. Member for Lancaster can argue, if she wishes; that the AUEW should appear in court. In another context I have made that argument myself. As I have said, that is not the subject of the debate.
The Con-Mech dispute is still not settled after all the heavy-handed manoeuvres of the last few weeks, after all the focusing of national publicity on a tiny factory with a handful of employees. It is a dispute which in the old days would hardly have rated mention in the local newspapers. Here we have in a nutshell our complaint against the Act. It causes many problems and difficulties, it causes enormous damage, and it still cannot solve a problem which should have been sorted out locally and in a much smoother fashion.