IMGpapers 1968–75

Newspapers of the International Marxist Group and its forerunners, 1968–75

1 Two fronts

Red Weekly No. 12, 20 July 1973 · p. 4 of the scan · 302 words

The scan: rw-no12-jul-20-1973.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 1-1 of 4; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 4 of the scan

and has heen laying the groundwork for big attacks ever since the defeat of the working class movement over Phase I in the spring. These attacks are directed at two fronts. IN THE FACTORIES The first front is in the factories and on the shop floor, where the ruling class bas two main objectives First, to break up the organisation and self-confidence of key sections of the working class before the major national struggles. Break out In Chrysler's, for example, where a Key new pay agreement is pending, the management decided to provoke a show-down on a flimsy pretext now, rather than allow the wages struggle to crupt at a point where the Engincers and other major groups would be going into national struggles.

The second aim is to squceze more production out of the existing workforce through speed-up. increased supervision etc. The Confederation of British Industries has made this perfectly clear with its call for an all out attack on 'restrictive practices"

SHOP FLOOR UNDER ATTACK In order to succeed in this objective the bosses have got to attack and weaken the traditional shop-floor organisation of the working class. An a result we have soen a whole series of such uttacks since the spring. The most noteworthy include the Tillotson's factory in Liverpool Timer in county Durham, Hason-Pascoe in Stockton, Triang in Merthyr, and Coles Cranes in Sunderland. These all insolved attempts to weaken the position of shop-floor representatives. The real purpose of these attacks can be seen in the case of the Manchester firm, Gardneт'3. There, management opened up with an Red Weekly 20 July 1973 Page 4 most alone for a national campaign on this question. Only the steel workers at Shotton and the Liverpool dockers have taken any real industrial action apainst this ruling class attack.

← What is ahead for the working class?2 Ruling class prepares →

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