-The big demonstration on June 23rd shows there's a growing worry about unemployment and yet so far the trade unions don't seem to have shown any real leadership on this question?
The workers are worried though. I myself was getting signatures for the UCS petition yesterday in Cumbernauld town centre. There you have a situation of an American-owned industry, Burroughs, declaring redundancies. A bunch of Burroughs workers, Labour Party boys, left wingers, middle of the road boys, etc. came along and said, "Let's have a meeting" so we went away and got a box and held a meeting.
That's how workers are feeling today about unemployment unplanned meetings. The June 23rd demonstration proved from Scottish industry for UCS?" so we simply called a meeting on the Monday morning of all the shop stewards and we sent word out by the press and phoned around, contacted the Trades Council, etc., and sent word around that we wanted shop stewards from anywhere to come and discuss the question in the Rosevale Cinema. We packed the Rosevale Cinema! A few fellows got up and made militant speeches saying they'd ask the lads to come out and that sort of stuff-well, that's the boys talking. So what happened on that demo? 100,000 workers at least were off their work. There was a 2-mile demo-at least 40,000 strong. Well, that wasn't even organised, that wasn't the result of union action or that of anyone else-that was shop stewards, rank and file boys talking to their rank and file lads on the floor. It was a straight case of "If you want to come with us, join us"-no matter what your organisation is, whether you're parliamentary candidate, trade union official, whatever, come with us, join us, but you're not taking the leadership off our hands." That demo was a straight case of worker participation. We weren't organised. But they came out. -At the demonstration Wedgwood Benn said the Labour Party had a motion before Parliament to nationalise the UCS. Is Parliamentary action sufficient?
No. The fight's got to come from the workers. I think we've reached the stage in Britain right now where the fight is going to be on the side of the workers. We didn't follow Benn, Benn came to us. Any fight that we've got at the moment has got to be a workers', class fight. The fight has got to come from the grass roots. Ideas have not got to come from up down the way they've got to come from down here. —Are the workers in UCS still threatening to occupy the yards if closure comes?
We mean that. We genuinely mean that. As far as I'm concerned and most of the stewards we have never had a loyalty to one yard-most of us have worked in three, four, five or six shipyards we have a loyalty to an industry perhaps and through that industry to our class. This is our industry. In the post-war period it's shrunk to 25% of its former labour force but we recognise its major importance to us and to the rest of the economy of Scotland and we recognise the fact that as workers we're the king pins in this and we also recognise the fact that there's been a bloody murder job done here. -How would the occupation be organised technically? For instance how would you overcome the problem of maintaining supplies?
We'd be working that's the thing. And the government's going to be hellish daft if its workers are working and it's not paying them. As far as equipment's concerned: people say "They'll turn off the electricity." Well, even if they put it off they've got to get somebody to do it, haven't they? Well vou sep the foolina Scotland has ahout unamnlauman! HUNG Y TH TORIES ES
----- pull-quotes -----
that. What happened on that demonstration was that we stewards said, "I wonder how much support we would get