extend significantly beyond the construction of rigs and pipelines which will tail off ILTERNATIVE list planned economy, preseut a tremendous as a whole The banned enlit ton ol aw material needs not just of the British I oil resources. It could stimulate the industrial developments which could provide sh workers. Careful planning of the envir unsform the living conditions of workers and British economy which would halt the ed to satisfy not profit but social need. on the community of the investment being investment - for example mining and other th adequate social services where workers tral conditions of life - controlling pollut: to have not the present regional policy of chemes for exchange controls, import 7 workers control of all oil and oil related al energy plan and a plan for the exploitat bed development of resources and industry 1. for the provision of housing and for the region.
to ensure the necessary capital investPe of trade agreements with Comecon Parity to combat the multi-nationals, to lay Eto fight against the capitalist Common thin four to six years. The Transport and eral Workers Union newspaper Highway imates that 58,000 new jobs will be ated from oil-not much over half the ent unemployment rate.
The TUC statement on why the EEC land received on average more than 30 per cent of all expenditure under the Local Employment legislation, around 35 to 40 per cent of regional employment premium, and nearly 40 percent of the limited expenditure under the 1972 Industry Act.
"The report states: "yet unemployment continues unabated ... as though regional policy had never existed." • The reasons for this lie in the very same processes that gave rise to the Common Market itself. The multi-nationals invest where they can get the greatest return on their capital. Scotland has been unable to attract balanced investment because capital investment has concentrated in the growth regions of the Common Market, in the new post-war growth industries-petrochemicals, electronics and so on.
WORKERS' STRENGTH The multi-nationals are big enough to sell and produce in several countries. They are big enough to organise a division of labour on an international scale. They are big enough to place a branch factory in a declining region such as Scotland, pick up the tax concessions and take advantage of the cheap labour force, and transport the product to where it is sold or assembled. But as soon as the labour force gets too expensive, or the market goes down, or the tax concessions are threatened -the screws are tightened.
In Scotland, where the scale of multinational investment is higher, and the rest of the economy much weaker, the multinationals have been able to walk all over regional policy, will walk all over a Scottish Assembly, and will continue to walk all over the working class unless it organises internationally to use its own strength against themand the pathetic measures of which any rig construction. unstable economy. platform can be built. The development of offshore oil has been accompanied by a mushrooming of Scottish financing avuvny, and by a sucam or brusn and european construction firms rushing to get in on pipeline and Only four substantial projects are using existing labour forces and facilities-this in a situation where Scotland has lost 19,000 jobs in shipbuilding alone since the war. A huge technical fabric of falsehoods have been woven to try to prove that rig construc tion can only take place away from existing urban centres (and trade union organisation); and the activities of the constructors have totally outstripped and ignored attempts by local authorities to create urban centres in parallel with major construction projects such as the Nigg Bay project.
The constructors investment is cynically tailored to one objective: how to produce what will sell best, quickest. To get this they have constantly lied, fought unionisation, ridden roughshod over planning machinery twin une assistance or tne Labour Govern ment, whose only nationalisation so far has been of development land to make sure that the constructors can get at it), and created a distorted and totally For example, Taylor-Woodrow/Mowlem tried to justify the building of huge all-concrete production platforms on Loch Carron, which is owned by the National Trust of Scotland. on the basis of the popular myth that its deep water was technologically essential. But as the Architects Journal (June 1974) pointed out: "The truth, however, is that while Loch Carron may be the only site where this particular type or norwegan an-concrete Dauorm for whic Mowlem hold the licence) can be built, it is not, as implied, the only site where any type of concrete *Embarrassing proof of this came half-way The material for these articles has been taken largely trom a new edition ot a pamphlet by Scotland IMG, The Market and the Multi-nationals - The Fight Labour Can't Lead. The through the Drumbuie enquiry when McAlpine announced is intendon to ound all-concrete plat forms on the lower Clyde for use on deep-water (200 metres) sites. The developers' embarrassment was mutance when a evanent or sade ano Industry spokesman supporting them admitted under cross-examination that all the figures backing his case were supplied by Mowlem, the developers, themselves. In detence of his dubious testimons he claimed that the Government lacked sufficient resources to carry out the necessary research.' When Taylor-Woodrow were bluntly asked at the enquiry why they could not produce platforms on the lower Clyde, using slightly different techniques they replied that it would be possible but union trouble would be too great. How much easier to deal with a malleable, displaced, fragmented labour force cooped up in labour camps! MASSIVE ATTACK The last use of such a policy was made by Adolf Hitler. Now it is hailed as an economic miracle. By making huge pools of migrant labour in areas where no stable emplovment is being created. bv continu. ing the rundown of the Clyde area, a systematic pattern of anti-union activity is set up. Workers are being forced out of the traditional strongholds of the working class in Scotland into situations where union organisation is a huge struggle-against the lump. agamst cowboy sub-contractors, and against pnysica intimidation and victimisation by employers.
This investment pattern is the opposite of planned development in line with social need. It combines the most cynical money-grabbing with a massive, concerted, Scottish-wide attack on working class organisation. The oil and oil-related developers are organising the social and economic rape of Scotland.
red weekly 5 june 1975