Nationalse the Oil Companies

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Strike needed McNee's police state .. age Corvalan on his mistakes p.8 The Plutonium Cycle.. p.9 Ireland.. p.4 Leyland Slush • • P.4 It is to attempt to the Tories and the oil manage capitalism and make monopolies will continue to it profitable at the expense laugh at Labour's pretence of imposing wage cuts, of socialism —all the way to speed-up and closures on the bank.

Benn and Callaghan together at Durham miners gala Tory energy spokesman Mr Tom King raised no protest last week as Labour ministers proposed to take a larger slice of North Sea oil profits from the multinational corporations.

"We accept that there is clear scope for adjustment to that tax regime" ', he declared.

This does not mean that the Tory front bench has been won over to socialist policies.

It means that the proposal to increase the government "share" of the collossal profits from the North Sea still leaves at least 25% of the profits in the hands of the oil monopolies.

31% return Even after the new taxes are levied, the oil firms would obtain a 17% rate of return on investment in the larger oil fields and a staggering 31% rate of return in the smaller fields.

And it emerges that the Government has not yet received a penny piece in revenue from the Petroleum Revenue Tax, since the companies have been allowed to charge 175% of Thatcher their canital exnenditure MAN against the tax!

This concession has now been cut to a more modest 135%!

But such are the complexities of the tax set-up in North Sea Oil that the whole package of measures is only designed to raise oil revenue Dy 10%. L.. 1AM The Tories are well satisfied with this approach, which avoids any challenge to the "right" of these multi billion pound concerns to extract profits from the oil, profits from refining it, profit from retailing oilbased products, and further profits from retailing petrol At each stage the working class is exploited both as the labour force employed by the oil firms and as the hapless consumer confronted by the pricerings and the anarchy of monopoly capitalism.

In exchange, the only real "risk" taken by the oil firms involves the hazards faced each day by the workforce on the North Sea oil rigs themselves-who are often denied basic union rights, and viciously exploited in the most trying conditions.

Rather than seeking a few more crumbs from the oil monopolies loaded table, the workers movement should be demanding that the companies books be opened to elected trade union committees, to reveal the scale of the plunder they have carried out.

Planned economy The information revealed would prove beyond doubt the case for the nationalisation of these concerns without compensation, and for them to be run under workers' management as a central part of a planned, socialist economy.

But the Labour leaders -whether it be the Energy Secretary, former "left' Tony Benn, or the open right wing-have no intention whatever of challenging the oil firms or any other section of capitalism.

indeed one or their most significant moves during the public spending cuts was to sell off a substantial section of the state holding of BP shares, effectively denationalising it.

Labour strategy on oil is the same as Labour strategy in the motor industry, in the cteel inductry the chin_ yards and the docks. the working class, and, where possible, grant piecemeal and petty "reforms" winin ine general Irame- rithin work of exploitation.

The fight to nationalise oll, the banks and other major industry can only be carried through as part of the fight to throw out the Callaghan-Healey leadership and construct a principled revolutionary leadership in 11. 1. 1 ine labour movement.

Until that fight begins to defend Back Work-to-rule action, blacking and token stoppages are continuing as 180,000 industrial civil servants attempt to press ahead with their demand for a Phase 3 pay settlement in excess of 10%.

Lorry drivers, miners and power workers and others are now drawing up pay claims far in excess of the 5% Phase 4 limit decreed by Chancellor Healey.

Yet nothing but an empty silence on the wages struggle is to be heard from the eight "left" Labour MPs who abstained in the vote on Healey's latest pay policy.

Arthur Latham, Dennis Skinner, Arthur Lewis, David Ginsburg, Eddie Loyden, Joan Maynard, Ron Thomas and Stan Thorne could not pluck up the courage to vote against Healey's plan for permanent wage So in order to remind their increasingly restless working class supporters that they claim to stand for "socialist" policies, these eight did not vote at all.

But now, having made their gesture of protest, as workers engage in practical struggles against pay restraint, the 'lefts' have reverted to their usual passive role.

Trade unionists, especially those in pay disputes must demand that these 'lefts' take up a serious fight within the Labour Party against wage control and for the removal of the right wing leaders.

In this way workers will quickly see the difference between the verbal "socialism" represented by the Labour 'lefts' and the necessary principled struggle for the independent interests of the working class.

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OM PHOTO: Mark Rusher

am. IFL ce Sparham PHOTO: Laurence Sparha