Varley permits Sackings

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The £7.4m loss registered by the Norton Villiers Triumph motor cycle company, and the plea from NVT directors for £30-£40 million in government aid show the futility of cooperatives as an answer to unemployment.

As Socialist Press reported (26.6.75) the Meriden motor cycle cooperative, set up with full support and 'left' rhetoric from the then Industry Secretary, Wedgewood Benn, has embarked upon an intensive speed up and demanning exercise, now employing only 350 out of an original 1,750 workforce - a cut of 80%.:

LEFT But at the same time the government aid given to Meriden lett out completely the defence of jobs of the öther two NVT plants at Small Heath and Coventry. These are the factories now threatened by the impending collapse of NVT if no government action is taken.

Benn's replacement as Industry DE Secretary, Eric Varley, seems determined that the ruthless laws of the capitalist market must now operate at NVT, endangering 3,000 jobs. He has told the firm's chairman, Mr Dennis Poore, that he should not delay "any commercial decisions" that need to be taken.

INSTRUCTION

This is virtually an instruction to Poore to proceed to impose short time and redundancies, which he had offered to delay until govern ment plans were announced. As the Sunday Telegraph coldly reports it: "After discussions with NVT directors Mr Varley has come round to the view that a three-factory motor cycles system is not a practical proposition, and that no more gov. ernment money should be made available"

Under conditions where NVT is already 50.1% government owned, such a position from Varley can only be seen as a part of the government's conscious moves to increase unemployment and hold down public spending in defence of capitaliśm.

This position highlights the bankruptcy of the Hull leadership of the T&GWU who have set out from the start to isolate the occup ation from the rest of the labour movement in the town. They refused to use the strength of the occupation to demand the only possible answer - the nationalisation of IT without compensation and the production of typewriters for government contracts.

Instead of this the pipedream of another capitalist owner taking over the factory which could not make money under the original capitalist owner, was cultivated by local and national T&GWU officials.

Never at any point NVT has only sufficient funds for three more weeks of full production. The problem is now urgent. But the solution does not lie in government loans and handouts.

Rather the remaining 49.9% (now owned by Manganese Bronze) must be nationalised without compensation, and a programme of state contracts opened up to guarantee jobs threatened by the shrinking world market for motor cycles.

If less work is available then a programme of work-sharing on full pay, across all factories, administered by trade union committees, must be introduced.

UNITY

At the same time workers must demand full access to the books and to technical resources of NVT for trade union committees which can begin to draw up a planned development of the factories into the future.

Only in this way can the unity and job security of the workers at Meriden, Small Heath and Coventry be established. leadersnip airectea cowarus expusin the real financial state of IT through opening up the account books of both IT itself and Litton Industries to trade union committees.

The Hull workers now confront the machinery of the state - the law courts and eventually the police - having been kept away trom the political development and the national campaign necessary to face up to these forces and win.

Now, before it is too late, the local labour movement must be mobilised in defence of the occupation, and a national struggle focussed on the demand for the nationalisation of Imperial Type writers.