Flying Pickets:

The 1972 Builders' Strike And The Shrewsbury Trials
by Dave Ayre And Others.

Published/Distributed by Des Warren Trust.
ISBN-13 No: 9781905192359
ISBN-10 No: 1905192355
£ 12.99

In 1972 tens of thousands of building workers won the first national strike in the industry for nearly 50 years. ‘Flying pickets’ left the contractors reeling. The Tory government and the big contractors wanted revenge and 32 North Wales flying pickets, including the ‘Shrewsbury 24’, were put on trial in 1973-74. The unsafe verdicts and savage sentences helped to prepare the ground for Thatcher’s defeat of the miners in 1985. Today, the Tory anti-union laws and the criminalizing of mass picketing are safe in the hands of New Labour.

This new history uses veterans’ memories and a mass of previously unpublished sources to tell the full story of the strike, the trials and the campaign to free the jailed pickets. It asks if this was an unnecessary defeat and raises the question of what is to be done? No justice, no peace.

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