Obituary: Des Warren

Submitted by Anon on 22 May, 2004 - 10:13

Des Warren, who died on 24 April aged 66, was one of the "Shrewsbury pickets", a group of building workers who were jailed by the then Conservative government in 1973 after a bitter dispute. Warren was a steel fixer and a member of the Communist Party. He later joined the Workers' Revolutionary Party.
In 1969 Warren was a UCATT shop steward on the Barbican site in central London and was involved in a major battle over the "lump" a cash payment system for building workers. Between 1968 and 1969 he was actively involved in the Building Workers Charter, which called for an end to the lump.

During the summer of 1972 picketing had stopped work on hundreds of building sites across the UK. Warren, one of the strike leaders, was fighting for a minimum wage of £1 an hour for building workers, an end to the "lump", better employment rights and an improvement in safety.

Under pressure from the National Federation of Building Trades Employers, the govenment ordered the police to compile evidence against ringleaders in the dispute. Warren was among six people arrested one morning in February 1973 (another was the actor Ricky Tomlinson). They were charged under an obscure nineteen century law: the Conspiracy And Protection Of Property Act. Their crime? To send a flying picket to Shrewsbury.

From the dock, after the jury returned guilty verdicts, Warren declared: "The conspiracy was between the government, the employers and the police. When was the decision taken to proceed? What instructions were issued to the police, and by whom? There was your conspiracy."

Warren was sentenced to three years, Tomlinson to two. An appeal failed. Both wore only blankets in protest, refused to do prison work and tried hunger strikes. Elsa, Warren's wife, organised demonstrations outside the jail while Lancashire building workers marched from Liverpool to London demanding the release of the Shrewsbury men.

But TUC, wanting to avoid a confrontation with Harold Wilson's Labour government, elected in February 1974, did not organise the solidarity the men needed.

From Ricky Tomlinson: "If we had been miners, maybe [we would have got out of jail]. Arthur Scargill would have organised a demonstration - he would probably have led it. But we weren't miners."

Warren was punished with solitary confinement in jail. When he later in life developed symptoms similar to the Parkinson's disease he blamed the onset of his ill-health on the tranquilliser drugs administered to awkward prisoners. For the permanent damage to his health Des received only £3,000 compensation from the Home Office.

After his release from jail, Warren was blacklisted. Warren and all the heroic working class militants who have gone to jail to fight for their class have never been exonerated. Warren did not expect to be, because he understood how the capitalist system works, yet he did not flinch in the face of a fight for the right of workers to organise.

Ernest Bailey

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