U.K. rail strike called off

Press, 30 June 1982, Page 8

U.K. rail strike called off

NZPA-Reuter London Britain’s national rail strike is scheduled to end at 11 a.m. today (New Zealand time), only 48 hours after it started.

A groundswell of protests from reluctant strikers led the National Union of Railwaymen to call off the strike yesterday — just a few hours after it started.

Rail officials had feared the strike would last many weeks.

Its back-to-work decision was taken by the union’s annual conference, which overruled the national executive. It agreed to take the dispute over pay and work methods to an independent tribunal.

But delegates at the union’s conference in Plymouth voted to continue the separate London Underground train strike, called in protest against cuts in services. Many buses also joined the strike.

Until the railwaymen go back to work, the country’s public transport system will remain largely paralysed, and London faces a second day of congested roads. Roads into the capital were choked with traffic long before the normal rush hour yesterday, and some drivers were still struggling towards their destinations when early starters began jamming the outbound roads. British Rail and the underground carry more than 800,000 commuters to jobs in London on normal wbrking days. Public parks were turned into vast parking lots, and police estimated that some 600,000 drivers tried to fight their way into the city Centre.