The crisis of the British motor industry-which today means the British Leyland Motor Corporation has reached the town of Basingstoke with a vengeance. For the second time in the space of a year, the workers of Transport Equipment Thornycroft's Ltd are confronted with the prospect of redundancies. But this time the proposed sackings are of the scale that their implementation would double unemployment in the town.
RATIONALISATION For several years British Leyland, under increasing competition from the Common Market (French and German) and Japanese motor industries have been getting into deeper and deeper financial difficulties. In this situation, and reacting to the growing pressure of their main creditors, Barclays, British Leyland have adopted a policy of intense rationalisation, with the aim of reducing the number of plants in this country from the present 60 to "under 20", with no loss of production. One subsidiary planned to go to the wall is Thornycrofts of Basingstoke.
BLMC have already sold the site for £2½ million to a firm called English & Continental, and the plant itself to the Eaton Corporation of Ohio, for a further £2½ million. Eatons have taken out a 3-year lease from English & Continental for the land on which the factory stands. However, when Eatons take over on 1 October, they plan only to operate in the transmission section (producing gearboxes for BLMC!)with an immediate loss of 350 jobs. An interesting point about English & Continental, a "property development" company, is that through an intermediary firm called Four Millbank Investments and a number of interlocking directorships, it happens to be controlled pany. One is compelled to suspect that all of this is no coincidence, and that there is some sort of deal between BLMC and the government concerning the proposed rundown of Thorny's. Another consideration is that the 3-year lease taken out by Eatons would be just about the right period of time in which to close down a factory of this capacity altogether, given its relationship to BLMC production plans. QUICK REACTION With the experience of a long strike last year, the Thorny's workers reacted quickly. (At the end of the last strike management promised that there would be no redundancies without prior consultation with the trade unions an agreement which was followed by a steady trickle of red undancies totalling 300 over the next year!) An official work-to-rule was imposed immediately, and this has been supplemented by a number of unofficial, and rather more useful actions, including sit-ins.
On top of this, the idea of an occupation of the whole factory has been put forward, most forcefully by the local Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions and its weekly publication The Spark. The LCDTU has also been explaining that the "Thornys" problem" is not just a problem for the workers at Thorny's, bat for all workers in Basingstoke, and for all the workers in the whole BLMC combine. There is very considerable confusion as to how exactly to fight against the proposed redundancies. The officials of the unions involved seem to think that the work-to-rule, and perhaps an eventual strike (in October!) is somehow sufficient: This sort of position has been taken to its extreme by Pat Farrelly, district secretary of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions and well-known member of the Communist Party. Farrelly argued in a public meeting that the work-to-rule is effective because if the deal were to be undone, then the interest that would have to be paid on the money returned would be less than the cost to BLMC of the work-torule!
In opposition to this approach, the Liaison Committee has consistently said that if the Thornycroft workers are to be successful in their fight, then they must challenge the right of the capitalists, BLMC, Eatons, or otherwise, to in any way close-down or move out their capital. In other words, the factory must be Lord Stokes, chairman of British Leyland occupied in order to check the plans of the old and new owners. Such an occupation would need the active support of the widest possible sections of the labour movement in Basingstoke and throughout the country.
At the time of writing (1 August) Thornycrofts is having its annual 2-week shutdown, and so Whether or not an occupation is actually put into effect will not be known at least until Monday 7th, when the factory re-opens. But the signs are that the workers of Thornycrofts are looking for an effective way to struggle against the BLMC plan to rationalise them out of their jobs, and a sit-down occupation is certainly being widely considered.
Paul Hunter
dous boost for the morale of working class militants. It has further reduced the credibility of the Heath government, and has no doubt sharpened policy antagonisms within the ruling class. But we must be careful not to confuse this with a decisive shift in the relation of forces in favour of the working class, a decisive defeat for the ruling class; rather the meaning of the freeing of the five is to pose more sharply the continuing stale-mate in thi class struggle in Britain, a stale-mate which cannot last for ever and to which neither clas has yet found a solution. What the freeing of the five means is that the battle is now going to be joined that much more in earnest and therefore those elements which like to sit in the middle and mediate-the trade union bureaucracy in particular are now going to find life getting pretty rough.
The strategic necessities of the capitalist class corresponding to its turn to the Common Market are: the transformation and rationalisation of the productive apparatus; and the qualitative weakening of the bargaining power of the working class. The first objective can generally speaking be carried through without direct confrontations with the trade unions since redundancy struggles are extremely difficult. Nevertheless there have been important struggles-UCS, some of the other occupations and the struggle that is going on now in the docks as well as the looming struggle in steeland the resulting unemployment puts a strong electoral pressure on the Tories. The result has been some retreat on the lame duck' front. What room for retreat the ruling class has on this front we do not know very clearly and it is possible the government doesn't know either. On the front of directly weakening the bargaining power of the working class the government began with the dual tactic of crushing defeats being set up in the public sector against individual unions taking advantage of the unemployment situation combined with the Act which would force chastened trade union leaderships to crack down on their militant rank and file. Where does this line of attack stand now? The miners' victory and the railwaymen's deal both constituted defeats for the government's confrontation policy of steadily reducing public sector pay deals. Secondly there are signs of the economy again picking up and although this will not reduce unemployment to 1960s levels it should strengthen the positions of the unions to some extent. This has meant that the Act was introduced before the weakening of the trade unions and not after it. This has created a situation which sections of the ruling class, particularly the Bernie Steer addresses pickets after the release of the five (photo: Serena Wadham) order to keep the essence of the Act and at a later date be able to press it home. It will try to convince the trade union bureaucracy that the Act does not in any way crush their own authority and will actually be of advantage to them in having a good excuse for dealing with recalcitrant elements.
It should, of course be realised that any such ammendment of the Act would require a quid pro quo from the T.U.C. It would have to take a constructive approach to amending the Act and abandon its policy of non-cooperation.
At the same time other amendments more useful to the government could be brought in.
For instance, an alteration to the Act such that the government could pick and choose the cases it wished to prosecute and therefore A review of the Stoke Newington decide its own terrain. It is in this respect that the latest TUC-CBI agreement could become useful.
A voluntary conciliation and arbitration service could fit in very well with this scheme of things. Of course, the government is keeping its options open;a whole host of elements would-have to be just right for such a scheme to work. But a plan along these lines has already been produced by the Industrial Society (The Times, 3 August). Feather and Co. again therefore reassert their traditional role as an instrument of pressure, not class struggle. Again they partake in an alternative capitalist strategy for solving the problems of the economy. This means that the spotlight must now be focussed very sharply on the manoeuvres of the TUC leadership and every effort must be made to explain and expose their moves. An immediate urgent question is the current dock strike: the government has already got an alliance with Jack Jones in the docks and it is quite possible that the next Dock Delegate Conference could end the strike on the basis of nothing more than some 'specification' of the Jones-Aldington report, In such a situation London might well stay out on unofficial strike and then the government would move against London very heavily.
It is therefore vital in the immediate future to turn the forces brought together in solidarity with the five to work in solidarity with the dock SITIKE Eight Defence Committee pamphlet