Above: Militants of the Ligue Communiste and other groups demonstrate in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle at the Hilton Hotel, Paris, On Friday 27 October, a mass meeting of Thornycroft workers voted 2 to 1 to accept a recommendation from Bill John, AUEW executive council member, for a return to work on the basis of BLM's York proposals (see The Red Mole 54) plus a "once and for all payment of £100 or four weeks pay (whichever is the greater)" within six weeks.
As shop floor militants pointed out, this vote represents a defeat for the Thornycroft occupation and therefore an important set-back in the struggle of all BLM workers against the rationalisation policies of the Combine. Not only does the acceptance of the 8-point deal mean the loss of hundreds of more jobs, but it guarantees nothing for the workers who are kept on the pay roil. For BLMC's "commitments" under the terms of the deal are all "subject to market conditions". And even on purely monetary terms, workers have lost out heavily.
Writing in The Spark (bulletin of the Basingstoke LCDU) one Thornycroft worker summed up the situation in the following way: "The guarantees of future employment by Eaton in the proposals are so hedged around with reservations as to be meaningless. So what does the Thornycroft worker gain? Taking the Thornycroft production worker averaging about £30 per week, on five weeks work-to-rule he loses about £75, and on eleven weeks sit-in he loses about £330 - a total loss of about £400...... By selling himself to Eaton for an extra £100 and that is what he has done - he loses the support of his fellow workers in BLMC. He is isolated. Eaton's record in this country show them to be a ruthless anti-union employer. The Thornycroft workers could be in for a rough time on their own. It must be faced that they have not gained a victory -they have suffered a defeat."
A POSITION OF STRENGTH There is no question but that the Thomycroft workers were in a position of strength. It is true that the amount of support (both financial and industrial) was still only a fraction of what it should have been, but the five week work-to-rule followed by 3 months (2 weeks holiday and 11 weeks sit-in) with no production whatsoever was posing enormous problems for BLMC.
For the last few weeks in particular - in order to avoid massive lay-offs which would have provoked widespread strikes and sit-ins throughout the combine - BLMC had been paying full pay to the Bus and Truck Division workers although there was virtually no work for them to do (due to the supply of gear-boxes drying up).
And in the course of the struggle the workers were learning new lessons on how to struggle with the development of flying "pickets" to raise money and support from other factories in the combine in the face of what they called the "apathy" of union officials, and their insistence on subjecting any agreement reached by the national officials to a vote inside Thornycroft's.
In addition they had successfully withstood every direct approach from the management -including attempts to "bribe" individual strikers with offers of high severance payments and offers of other jobs. And they weren't moved by the witch-hunt started in the local press against the "communist-inspired" occupation and the so-called "un-democratic procedures" in the mass meetings of the Thornycroft workers occupying the factory. during a US embassy election party on Tuesday night Earlier jubilation after a previous attempt to sell out the occupation had failed.
So why the sudden collapse, with the accentance of proposals which had already been rejected by two mass meetings?
THE ROLE OF THE NATIONAL UNION OFFICIALS The local leadership began the struggle with many weaknesses. They were a new and untried leadership in their first struggle, and it was a major struggle of great significance on issues of vital importance to the working class. They were challenging the right of the owners of capital to dispose of that capital and the jobs that went with it as they pleased. In the last analysis, they were challenging the property rights of the bourgeoisie. This is why David Mitchell, the local Tory MP, said that their struggle to "unscramble" the Eaton-BLMC deal would require "major changes in the whole economic and political organisation in Britain".
But although the majority of the occupation committee did nut understand the tull significance of the fight at Thornycroft's in this class way, the major blame for the sell-out settlement must be laid firmly at the door of the national union leadership. It wasthey who accepted advances from BLMC's Pat Lowry at the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool to open negotiations on a "compromise" settlement, and it was they who agreed to the BLMC proposals made at York which amounted to a demand for surrender on all the major questions at stake. And then they proceeded to try to ram this settlement down the throats of workers in Thornycroft's, with Scanion, for instance, making press statements to the effect that the deal was as good as could be got and should be accepted.
When a mass meeting at Thornycroft's on October 8th rejected the "offer" by 312 votes to 8, the national officials insisted on another meeting open to workers not taking part in the occupation - a move which the local press were quick to seize on as "proof" of their allegations of "ballot-rigging" etc. When this second mass meeting also rejected the York proposals by an overwhelming majority, the national officials merely went back to bargain with BLMC for a bigger "bribe" with which to make the 338 redundancies more palatable. They did not take up a fight for the 1000 jobs demanded by the Thorny croft workers.
These manoeuvres led to some confusion. Leyland workers, for instance, had been sending regular financial support to Thornycroft's, but because someone put it about that the fight was only about the amount of severance pay, they ceased this support in the crucial week before the sell-out.
But in spite of this, just before the sell-out took place, an important decision was taken by the Bus & Truck Division of the Combine Committee: they would bring all their 16,000 members out on strike in support if the occupation rejected the "new" deal made by the union officials.
THE £100 BRIBE TO SURRENDER As soon as BLMC made their offer of the "once and for all payment of £100" on top of the York proposals, Bill John rushed down to Basingstoke to try to push it through. The first thing he did was to persuade the occupation committee to allow him to "report back" on his negotiations with BLM at a meeting on 27th October. There was to be no recommendation and no vote.
But on the morning of the 27th, he pressed the shop stewards committee to allow a vote on his recommendation (to accept the deal) after all. This proposal split the committee 12 - 11 with 7 abstentions. If it had not been for the 8 staff representatives (some of whom represented only themselves), who voted for Bill John's proposal and tipped the balance, he would now be smarting from another slap in the face from Thornycroft workers. But having only just won the vote on the unrepresentative occupation committee, Bill John then insisted that every one of them must "go out there and sell the proposals" to the mass meeting.
As a result, Len Smart, the chairman of the occupation committee, put the recommendation, and to most workers there it must have seemed as though the shop stewards committee were united in accepting the deal. The Bus & Truck Division's decision to strike in solidarity was not brought to the attention of the meeting. Faced with this confusing situation, and deliberately kept ignorant of the crucial new factor in the situation which would have immeasurably strengthened their position, the mass meeting voted for the recommendation for a return to work, and the sit-in ended. LESSONS The article in The Spark drew out two lessons to be learned from the defeat. "The first is that the national officials acted as strikebreakers. They were not afraid that the Thornycroft workers would lose. They were afraid that they would win by rejecting the proposals and therefore bringing out the rest of the Bus & Truck Division. The second is that in a dispute the shop floor workers must maintain control."
We would add one more. That in order to be able to successfully fight the strike-breaking efforts of the union bureaucracy and in order to maintain or rather develop some real workers" democracy in a dispute, it is necessary to draw out the class issues involved. For wotkers" democracy (or even shop floor control in a dispute) can only begin to exist on the basis of a struggle against the social dictatorship of the capitalist class - represented in this case by BLMC's decision to throw 338 workers on the scrap heap.