BL convenors pull London Division votes

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Grudgingly reluc- and tantly, under massive pressure from the membership and after Leyland management left them high and dry, BL Cars Senior Stewards last week voted to give the company six months notice of union withdrawal from the "workers" participation" scheme.

Management had repeatedly ignored pleas by the senior stewards to consult them more prior to imposing policies on the workforce: while most senior stewards are willing servants of management, they like to know and discuss exactly the kind of policies they have to help ram down their members' throats.

Opposed decision

Clearly many of the Senior Stewards hope that the company will use the six months notice period to come up with some straw at which they can, clutch. So too will leaders of the Conted-headed Scanlon-who opposed the decision to withdraw.

But this is easier said than done. The principled stand against participation taken by WSL members and supporters and other left wingers in the Cowley Assembly Plant has paid off, in that Cowley now stands as the main force fighting for withdrawal.

And mounting hostility to BL management after the miserable 5% pay settlement and the general offensive against jobs and conditions helps to create the material basis to show the need for workers to fight independently for their interestsand to expose the 'participation' scheme with its talk of 'joint' interests between worker and management.

No way forward Of course the senior stewards decision does not resolve this question: while forced to pull out of 'participation' they offer no way forward.

But the unveiling of the company's 1978 Statement of Results points to the necessary next steps.

The statement shows a profit of £71.3 million was slashed by £56 million which went on interest payments-£25 million of which was to the government.

The remaining £31 million in interest presumably found its way into the pockets of private bnkers and investors, who cream off therefore the lion's share of profit from this supposedly "nationalised'' firm.

Buckle down

The other £15 million profit transformed into a loss by Leyland's job-slashing programme, involving £13.6 million in redundancy payments and £24.7 million in plant closure costs.

The Statement however blamed the "losses' on unsatisfactory manning levels and strikes-ignoring the fields full of unsold Leyland Cars which testify to the fact next to no sales have been lost through strikes.

Chairman Michael Edwardes has called for the axing of another 3,000 jobs.

So having borne the brunt of speed-up and rationalisation, the Leyland workforce is now expected to buckle down still further in order to make good this "loss"' -and effectively pay the redundancy money handed out last year to their fellow workers by the company!

The call must be raised at once for the opening of BL's books, along with those of the profitable component firms, and the banks-to show exactly how many sections of British capitalism are profiting from the exploitation of BL workers.

These firms and banks must be nationalised, without compensation, under workers management as part of a planned, nationalised engineering industry:

Meanwhile all moves towards further sackings in Leyland must be fought, with the demand for work-sharing on full pay backed up where necessary by strikes and occupations.. conference on Thursday night, called by the London Divisional Council of NUPE, over 200 stewards called for all-out, indefinite strike action in pursuit of the £60/ 35 hour pay claim, beginning from this Wednesday.

The conference included a large delegation of ambulance drivers from SE: London. Speaker after speaker spoke in support of indefinite strike action.

The conference also decided to form a London strike committee in the health service and ambulance service, and agreed to give support to local authority manual workers who are still in dispute at a local level with their own boroughs.

Important step

The resolution for indefinite strike action, which was moved from the platform by Divisional Council members, is obviously an important first step in resuming, the fight for the full claim amongst health workers.

The Divisional Council, however, have taken no steps at all to spread the action on pay to other sections of NUPE, and to public sector 'workers in COHSE, TGWU and GWUdespite the fact that many local authority sections from all four unions are at this moment on strike for the full ciaim.

This serious weakness, which virtually amounts to a betrayal of those local authority sections still on strike, was reflected during the conference itself.

It one stage durina th neeting, the delegations fron Tower Hamlets and Hackney, who have been on strike for of their disgust at the lack of a lead given by the Divisional Council-who actually proposed that the pay offensive was finished in the local authorities.

The only concrete proposal for spreading the strike to the local authorities was put in the form of an amendment to the main resolution by John Seymour, from Camden General branch.

Bro. Seymour proposed that the Divisional Council • should call a conference of all 'sections in the four unions to discuss ways of resuming action for the pay claim.

The amendment was given no support from Divisional Council members, was attacked by Divisional full time officer Harry Barker as being impractical, and was finally defeated by a majority of about 2-1 with a large number of abstentions and after the Tower Hamlets and Hackney delegations had left the hall towards the end of the meeting.

As well as this the Divisional Council made no challenge whatsoever to the Executive's ruling that nurses should not take strike action over paya position identical to that of the RCN, which separates nurses from other trade unionists in the Health Service.

This was challenged from the floor by Gillian Brear, a nursing shop steward from the Westminster Hospital, who asked how the NUPE EC could back nurses who have struck in support of the ancillary workers' pay claim, and then instruct them not to strike on their own claim? attacking Jamie Morris, also from the Westminster Hospital, who has successfully persuaded his own branch to accept the 9% offer amidst a blaze of publicity in the bourgeois Dress.

The task is now to take up the London DC's belated strike call and press home the offensive for the £60/35 hour week claim.

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