End business secrets. Nationalise without compensation

Scan page 1

But what of Chrysler? What has happened to the £81 million of British government loans and grants lavishly handed out by Labour leaders in a deal designed to avoid nationalisation in mid-1975?

At the time this appalling deal was struck-at, the cost of thousands of Chrysler jobs-Chrysler's market value was so low that chief executive John Riccardo actually offered the Wilson government £35 million to take the British operation off his hands.

Instead Wilson chose to spend five times as much in a million deal to £162 million deal to bribe the employer to stay on.

The only way this question could be answered is through the fight by Chrysler workers for elected trade union committees to be given access to Chrysler's account books.

This would reveal the ways in which the £51½ million in grants and £30 million in loans were siphoned out of the country into the coffers of the crisis-ridden Chrysler corporation.

And it would reveal how it is that three years later for a mere £118 million in cash and a shares issue, Peugeot has now been able to purchase the whole Chrysler operation in Europe, lock, stock and barrel.

It . would demonstrate beyond doubt the necessity for the nationalisation. of Chrysler, without compensation, under workers management.

But the problem does not rest there. The anarchy of the car industry-with rival capitalist firms attempting to force each other out of business by producing virtually identical vehicles-continues only at points to the need to tight for the nationalisation of the whole motor industry, including the highly profitable components firms currently benefitting from Leyland's "losses" , and the establishment of a workers' plan of production to protect all jobs.

This policy leads naturally to the fight for the nationalisation • under workers management of the banks and other major industries as the basis of a planned socialist economy.

In adopting a policy in each Chrysler plant for occupation to withstand the attacks on jobs that must offers a clear basis for an appeal for support and common action from every other section of car workers.

The major obstacle to such a fight is the complete absence of leadership from convenors and union officials in Chrysler.

John Carty, convenor at the Linwood plant which is most likely for the Peugeot axe, explicitly rejected any call for nationalisation.

"I think our best hopes lie in negotiations with Peugeot-Citroen"

Buckling down

Other convenors and officials are also following Carty's line of buckling down to collaboration with the prospective new employers rather than fighting to defend the interests of their 23,000 members.

The fight for jobs in the motor industry is inseparable from the fight to construct a revolutionary leadership in the unions capable of challenging both right and 'left' wings of the bureaucracy and fighting for principled socialist programme.

Scan page 2

Wednesday