On Wednesday 21st June, the FOCsl of the Briant Colour Printing Co, were invited in to see the managing director and introduced to the Official Receiver. They were then bluntly told that the company was entering into voluntary liquidation and they "might as well all go home" except for a dozen or so workers who would complete the work in hand.
There was an immediate meeting of all Chapels (Factory Union Branches) where the workers decided to occupy the tactory. conduct a work-in and start the fight to keep their jobs. Within ninety minutes of the liquidator's announcement the factory was completely in the hands of the workers, the gates were secured and manned and the work-in committee was in operation. BACKGROUND BCP is a modern printing factory employing about 150 workers. Although previously successful, the company ran into difficulties in 1970/71 and was taken over in July 1971 by a Mr. D. G. S. Syder who also owned other printing and printing sales companies. The money for the takeover actually came from the Robert Hornes paper merchants group although the deal was handled through a "front" company called "Hurstville Investments". Robert Hornes was one of BCP's major creditors.
The takeover resulted in a great deal of work in the factory, and the workers were led to believe that Syder would be merging all his interests into the one company based at BCP in the Old Kent Road. It was therefore totally unexpected when the Briant workers were told that the company was financially insolvent, that it would be closed down, and that the company couldn't even afford redundancy payments (workers were told to claim from the Board of Trade!).
WIDESPREAD SOLIDARITY It is important to understand that the work-in strategy adopted by the Briant workers accurately reflects both the strengths and the weaknesses of the British trade union movement. The strength of British trade unionism has historically been its militancy and organisation and here the Briant workers have excelled. The examples are numerous: the factory itself is very organised, disciplined and solid; the dockers rang up on the first day of the occupation to ask one simple questionwhat do you want blacked!; the Kent miners have pledged solidarity as has the UCS Joint Shop Stewards Committee. All four print anions have made the dispute official Bernie Steer of the dockers has addressed mass meetings there, UCS stewards have been down to give advice and last but not least, Kevin Halpin of the Liaison Committee has pledged the support of the LCDTU. All this besides the day-to-day solidarity of the local labour movement.
MILITANCY NOT ENOUGH It's not enough, however, just to organise general solidarity. That is only the beginning. Problems such as: who or what is the struggle against; and in what context does the struggle take place, are crucially important in determining the aims of the struggle and the methods employed in carrying it out. This is an area of traditional weakness in the trade union movement and this weakness is reflected in the BCP dispute.
The theory held by the majority of Briant workers is summed up in the following quote from a leaflet they produced: "Up until the announcement today we have been very busy in the Factory, and have had to turn work away, our members have been working overtime and have had in casual labour from our unions. Therefore our attitude is that there is no earthly reason why the company cannot be run on a viable basis, we must therefore conclude that we, like so many other workers, are being conned out of our jobs in the interests of the speculator." (Our emphasis)
This theory says that the problem is one of bad management, and justifies working-in as showing to the employing class at large how modern, efficient and viable the firm is, and how respectable and disciplined the workers there are. The aim of all this is that a new employer will be impressed by this and will wish to buy the firm, and in fact there have already been some discussions in the work-in on the pay and conditions negotiations with any new management.
PROFITABILITY AND CLOSURES There is obviously a confusion here: what does "viable" mean? In a capitalist economy, a firm is viable if it provides an adequate return on capital invested, i.e. if it is profitable. There have been innumerable examples of factories and plants that have had the most modern equipment and skilled work-forces yet employers have closed them because they became unprofitable. The point to get absolutely clear is that it is the operation of the capitalist economy which causes closures, and it is quite unreal to blame one set of employers (the speculators) and simultaneously look to other employers to act against their own class interests to solve workers' problems. THE OCCUPATION-STRIKE The sit-ins at Plessey and Fisher-Bendix were excellent examples of the way to fight closures. The occupations had two functions: to prevent the company removing machinery and to force management to bargain jobs for machines. Since the workers controlled the capital represented in the machines and factory itself, they were in a very strong position. By sitting in, the workers showed in practice that they in no way recognised the right of capitalism to divert capital to where profits are highest, this was clearly understood by the Plessey Convenor when he said, "We're no employees, we're trespassers." A sit-in of this kind is not only highly effective-in both cases the employers capitulated-but it also provides a way forward for working class struggle by making it possible to identify correctly the enemy.
State Intervenes In Stanmore Occupation On May 13th the 130 workers at the Stanmore Engineering (Die-Casting) Ltd. factory in Wembley, Middlesex, began an occupation in support of the national pay claim of the AUEW and also in order to This sums up the general problem with work-ins. To struggle successfully against declining living standards and increasing redundancies, it is essential to struggle against the capitalist system itself. A basic precondition for this is that workers should in no way recognise the right of the capitalist system to operate, nor should they therefore in any way take any responsibility for running a company under capitalism. Any workers occupation which continues to operate commercially therefore does not even begin to lay the basis for serious struggles in defence of the jobs and living standards of the working class.
IMG SUPPORT South London IMG has worked consistently in support of the BCP occupation; members with experience of the Kent Miners Strike Claimants Committee have been aiding the workers in claiming from the state in order to continue the struggle, other members have been active in the local labour movement organising financial and other kinds of support.
All donations and messages of support should be sent to: W. Freeman, Joint Chapels Committee, Briant Colour Printing Company, 651 Old Kent Road, London SE 15. A paper, BCP Workers News, produced by the workers is also available from this address, price what you can afford.
South London IMG NOTES 1. FOC - Father of the Chapel, equivalent to shop steward. 2. Unions involved are NGA, NATSOPA, SOGAT, SLADE, and the AUEW.
The fact that the management used the High Court of Justice rather than the National Industrial Relations Court shows that certain sections of the bourgeoisie have learnt that the militancy of the workers can stop the effective use of the Industrial Relations Act The case of the dockers and the NIRC shows this very well. The present function of the Industrial Relations Act and the NIRC seems to be to force the unions to police their membership. The result of this would be the closer tying of the unions into the State apparatus, which could in no way aid the working class. At the present time the union bureaucrats are afraid to organise their membership to fight this attack because of the very militancy that this would release.
This is well shown by the case of the AUEW and their national pay claim. When negotiations between the Union and the Engineering Employers Federation were broken off the response of Scanlon was to avoid a direct confrontation between the Union and one of the most powerful sections of the bourgeoisie the EEF, by adopting the tactic of plant bargaining. The adoption of such a tactic meant that the AUEW workers lost their greatest strength-solidarity. And all of Scanion's mouthings at the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions conference about more militant plant bargaining are mere words if the Union is going to continue to treat its membership as it did the Stanmore occupiers. By not paying these strikers until after the occupation had ended the Union has concretely shown that it does not condone the tactic of occupation (but what else can more militant plant bargaining mean?). The role of the Communist Party, in seeking a rapprochement with the Labour lefts and the left wing of the TUC (which includes Scanlon), was well shown by the fact that they were conspicuous by their absence throughout the whole of the Stanmore events (obviously you can't seek to work with the union leaders if you also seek to raise the militancy of the rank and file).
The increasing tendency for the owners of industries to seek State intervention in their disputes with workers shows concretely that the State is not impartial in such disputes.
Consequently, only a strategy that clearly identifies the State and is prepared to fight that State will ensure the victory of the workers in their struggles.