As one of the dockyard workers who had obeyed the Nationalist Party directives not to report for work on June 29, 1982, L-Imnarja, I disapprove of the light way Stanley J. A. Clews treated the whole episode especially with regards to punishment meted out (December 14).

I would like to briefly recall the facts for those who chose to forget those dark days. When we reported for work the day after, we found our punch cards have been collected by the management from the punching stations. It meant that we were discharged from our work and this also served as information for the thugs from inside and outside the dockyards, led by informers, who picked on us one by one and started beating us without mercy until we were literally kicked out of the dockyard's gates. Days and even weeks were to pass before the wounds inflicted on many of us healed. Needless to say, neither the Dockyard management and nor council members did anything to protect us even though they knew beforehand what was in store for us.

The correspondent, even though he had been part of the management, does not remember the facts correctly. We were not punished with fines. We were discharged from our place of work and we were only admitted back six weeks later after we were forced to sign a declaration of repentance for our actions and promised not to repeat the same in future. During those six weeks we had to meet our daily needs from the collection made by the Nationalist Party from the generous public. In 1987 the Nationalist government back paid us for the six weeks and also removed from our personal records all traces of the event.

Perhaps the word discharge still troubles Maj. Clews' conscience and instead he preferred to use the word fines.

He said that he had the misfortune of being appointed to a disciplinary board to mete out punishments. Being an ex-major in the army we all expected that he would refuse to take part in that shameful exercise whose main aim was to discharge fellow workers (not to fine). As far as I know there was only one person who stood up and refused to sign our shameful discharge notices. He is an ex-trade unionist, an ex-Labourite and he is still alive. It was a testing time for all gentlemen to stand up and be counted.