Govt. Calls [unclear: in Army]

[unclear: Med ] Forces Called in to Break; [unclear: ike]

[unclear: t] Friday the Government used a tactic that we [unclear: ect] to see more of in the coming months: the [unclear: y] was called in to scab on striking workers.

[unclear: The] Lyttleton tunnel was closed on Tuesday [unclear: it] at midnight by tunnel workers on strike [unclear: r] redundancy offers made to them. Eleven [unclear: kers] were due to be made redundant at the [unclear: of] the week when the Lyttleton Tunnel Au[unclear: nty] went out of existence. Originally these [unclear: kers] had been led to believe that they would [unclear: iffered] new jobs by the Christchurch local [unclear: lority]. Fourteen of their fellow workers have [unclear: i] given new work; the rest have been told to [unclear: pt] a meagre redundancy allowance and take [unclear: r] chances with all the others in the growing [unclear: ber] of Christchurch unemployed.

[unclear: it] midnight on Tuesday the tunnel workers [unclear: nised] a picket to stop vehicles using the tu[unclear: I]. They gained the support of many unions [unclear: he] region and the Christchurch Trades Coun[unclear: TV1] interviews with people stopped from using the tunnel showed that there was support for the workers in the local community.

The Government's decision to call in the army was announced after a meeting of Jim Bolger (Minister of Labour), Kill Young (Minister of Works) and Frank Gill (Minister of Defence). After the meeting Young stated that he had also met with the Commissioner of Police, and had given instruction to the police to get the tunnel open. He left it to the "services" to decide exactly what strategy to use.

As it happened, the main use of the army was intended to be technical, that is to go into the tunnel and get it functioning ready for use. Army personnel was not meant to be used to forcibly break up the picket, but it was supposed to do the jobs of regular tunnel employees. This is similar to what happened in 1951, when the armed force broke picket lines to work the wharves. It is always but a short hop from doing workers' jobs to breaking workers' pickets. Again, the 1951 example provides all the evidence for this.

The use of the army at Lyttleton, coming close on the heels of the forced eviction from Bastian Point last year, suggests that we will see this tactic used more and more frequently as the Government attempts to crush resistance to its policies. During the 1951 waterfront lockout students made a name for themselves helping the Government against the workers. The question for all of us is: what role are we going to take now?