Westminster's Christianity in action

Kevin McNamara
TO ALMOST universal applause, it was announced last month that the Westminster diocese was to sell its shares in Consolidated Goldfields, the mining company with extensive operations in South Africa. Good for the Westminster Diocesan Trustees!
We were informed that the reasons for the decision being taken were that in the opinion of the trustees Consolidated Goldfields had not done enough to establish trade unions for black workers, to end the migratory labour system, and continued to pay unacceptably low wages to its African employees. Again I say good for the 'Westminster Diocesan Trustees!
Here was Christianity in action. Westminster diocese was no longer going to benefit from the exploitation of our black brothers. Individual dignity, basic human rights were being affronted by the Africans not being allowed to form their own trade unions or join white ones.
Family life would be denied by the migratory labour system, low wages prevented the workers escaping from the vicious circle of the poverty trap. It was a right and proper thing to show Christian solidarity with our fellow men in South Africa, alien in their own country.
Last week War on Want gave £150 to the Grunwick Strike
Hardship Fund. The money specifically went to help the neediest families of striking workers. Good for War on Want!
War on Want is one of a number of charitable organisations in this country such as CAFOD and Ox
fam who have sought to concentrate our attention upon the
problems of the Third World and the difficulties of people suffering from poverty by neglect, deliberate exploitation by their fellow human beings or a hostile environment.
In such circumstances it is difficult to assert human dignity and maintain basic huthan rights. Was War on Want's £150 to the Grunwick fund a waste of money, a foolhardy act? Should War on Want be condemned for taking sides in an industrial dispute? Certainly not. The action of War on Want was, I submit, merely an application on
the British scene of the same principles which persuaded the Westminster Diocesan Trustees to recognise their responsibilities and take their money out of Consolidated Goldfields, Conditions at Grunwick before thestrike began were poor. Pay of £28 for a 40-hour week: compulsory overtime had to be worked, often
without advance notice and at the flat rate.
The managment employed mainly immigrant workers, those who find it most difficult to get jobs in the United Kingdon and are easily exploitable.
They work in humiliating conditions, having to get permission to go to the lavatory and to indicate their desire by raising their hand.
Eventually 170 of the workers walked out and joined a union, APEX. The penalty they suffered for this revolutionary action was immediate dismissal.
The dispute dragged on unnoticed for almost a year, until it burst into our living-roonfs with the rowdy scenes at the picket line depicted in amazing colour — or in my case black and white.
Since television and the extremist clement of the Left and Right have taken over the dispute, the fundamental issue underlying the strike at Grunwick has been submerged in a flood of emotion and a deluge of contradictory propaganda.
My sympathies are well known. There is no trade unionist who could not support them.
Let us now apply the Westminster Diocesan Trustees' criterion to the Grunwick dispute. Consolidated Goldfields had not done enough to encourage black trade unions. At Grunwick the workers were dismissed for joining a trade union.
Consolidated Goldfields were condemned for their use of the migratory labour system and its denials of family life. It is true that the Grunwick workers were not migratory labour, but they were largely immigrants, easily exploitable to the detriment of their own families. Consolidated Goldfields continued to pay unacceptably low wages. That hat, too, fits Grunwick.
If a trade unionist automatically supports the Grunwick strike, what then, on the criteria of the Westminster Diocesan Trustees, should a Catholic do?
I suggest he/she can do no other than support the action of War on Want. The principles are universal. It is one of those cases where charity begins at home, where we take the beam out of our own eye first. 1 understand that the Christian Affirmation Campaign sent Mr George Ward, the managing director of Grunwick, a dozen red roses. They could have done better by sending him the social encyclicals of some of our Sovereign Pontiffs. After all. I understand that Mr Ward is a Christian.
Again I say: Bravo Westminster Diocesan Trustees, and Bravo War on Want.