[After 'rejecting' the Ryder port a month ago…]

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After 'rejecting' the Ryder port a month ago and emanding improvements in yder's workers' participaion proposals, a full meet* of convenors on fednesday August 6th accpted it in full, following danagement's contemptuou +jection of their proposals. It is becoming increasingly car that Ryder, commissioned y Wedgwood Benn, has two main elements - with so-called yorkers' participation committee * the main thrust to force this Under these conditions the decion of the convenor's meeting jeans that the crucial struggle ow opens in Leyland against bese committees, with the right ring fighting to foist them on to porkers as instruments of manaement.

Lord Ryder, as head of the dational Enterprise Board, will ve ultimate control over Britch Leyland policy. He intends D act through the participation ommittees at all levels and has ontinued from front page and that the books be opened elected trade union committees • the fight for nationalisation. valy in this way can jobs be defWed The peddlers of import trols are desperate to avoid th a fight.

The fight back against their poles must begin now. It is the onsibility of every militant to ee the reactionary drive tords import controls and nationun at every level in the trade son and Labour movement. Tacy must demand their delegate! Itbe TUC conference throw out I collaboration with Wilson's ate pay laws and begin the fight i defend jobs and living standards mainst the onslaught of British pitalism.

They must demand in addition fat the left take up the fight to move Wilson and the right wing Dm the Labour leadership at the oming Labour Party conference.

WSL PUBLIC MEETINGS LIVERPOOL ay 24th August, 7.30 The Mitre, Dale St.

"The Fight Against

Unemployment"

NUNEATON

Tuesday, 9th September, 7.30.

Public Library, Church St. "A Programme to fight Inflation and Unemployment." made it clear that the job of the committees is to implement the recommendations of his report and establish the viability of the company - an argument universally accepted by the trade union leaderships.

One of the sections of the Ryd er report kept secret concerned reductions in manning levels. It is understood that this section contains a series of targets for manning reductions - detailed factory by factory.

REDUNDANCIES

The scale of this can be seen by the reply to the Commons Select Committee and the moto: industry, which has criticised Ryder for not publishing exact redundancy figures and dates. A British Leyland spokesman said "We have been slimming at the rate of 1,000 employees per month and we will continue to do so"

Already the worldwide labour force of British Leyland has been reduced from 211,000 to 185,00 since 1973. Management say the implemented through Ryder mean: that the battles which will emerge this winter in Leyland over jobs, manning agreements and speed-up, will not be fought against management but against the 'workers' participation' committees of the Ryder report.

It is essential therefore that the battle is fought now factory by factory for shop stewards and workers to refuse to participate in these bodies and adopt policies for the defence of their wages, conditions and jobs against these committees.

The question which must be asker of those who are proposing to cooperate with the Ryder committee is whose side will you be on? Will you be on the side of the workers fighting to defend their jobs or the side of the employers and the state fighting to take them away in order to "solve' the crisis of the capitalist system?

In the Cowley Assembly Plant the right wing failed to get the report accepted when an overwhelming majority of T&GWU shop stewards voted to further examine and discuss the report and to meet egain to make a der ision.

Continued from front page social democratic friends in Portugal'. There is nothing like getting somebody else to do your own dirty work!

In Portugal itself, the 'moderates' are now lined up in defenc of 'democracy' and revolution' against the interests of the Port uguese working class.

The reactionary campaign of vilence and intimidation initiated by the Socialist Party leader Soares has extended in many small towns in Portugal to the beating of Communist Party members, burning down the offices of left-wing parties, and attacks on every workers' organisation.

In the Northern cathedral towr of Braga, the archbishop, a former close friend of fascist Salato expressin, and aleed the forces of love' to triumph. This they did by attempting unsuccessfully to burn down the offices of the local CP with mos of its officials in it.

After contenting themselves with giving severe beatings to the Stalinists and razing their offices to the ground, the mob went on to burn down the local trade union offices.

From this campaign of extrem reaction the Socialist Party lead ership has now been forced to hold back somewhat. Soares has attacked the 'excesses' of the counter-revolution and spoken of his opposition to 'Stalinism' and 'dictatorship'. He has even borrowed one of the tiredest of phrases from the Stalinists' own phrase book by calling the CP 'social fascist.

NO WORKERS push participation in managemer for all they are worth, they are fighting equally strongly against workers' participation in any of the decisions being made by the trade unions.

BULLDOZED

Workers are being bulldozed into participation without a single vote by the threat that their jobs depend on it - that if Ryder is not accepted Leyland will collapse. This is the argument of capitalisn through state participation designe to increase the exploitation of workers. Job security can only be provided through the socialist nationalisation of Leyland under workęis' management. Participation precisely threatens jobs.

The case against these committee is clear. Their terms of reference are the more efficient production of motor cars. Management have ' an absolute right to make the final decisions. The Chrysler corporation recently paid £1 00 lump sum bonus to every worker employed - a total of £2,700,000 - on the acceptance of 'worker participation' - they didn't do that for nal affairs. A workers' revolution would be the worst thing that could happen for the Kremlin Meanwhile, other sections of the Soviet Communist Party have bee: issuing statements (see this page) calling on Stalinist forces through out the world to avoid alliance with the most reactionary forces.

Leaders of the Communist Parties of Western Europe, looking nervously over their shoulders at the advance of the workers in Portugal, do not agree.

In Italy, Stalinist leader, Enrico Berlinger, issued a joint atatemen with social democrat, Martino; or 15th August, expressing 'deep concern' with the developing situation, and calling for an alliance of CP, SP and Armed Forces Movement.

In Portugal itself, the Stalinists, who are the butt of every form of reactionary violence, propose only solutions that can play into the hands of reaction. Their desperate efforts to make themselves part of the capitalist state machin have been in part responsible for the hostility against them in the north of the country.

To save themselves now, they Cunhal call for support from the Armed Forces Movement, the so-called 'democratic forces' , indeed from anywhere that does not involve the independent mobilisation of the working class.

Within the Armed Forces Move ment, the deepening crisis reflect the benefit of the labour force. Despite what Ryder and the TU leaders say now, they intend that the set-up will have a role in the future on wages. This is likely to start with the joint committees making recommendations for acceptance of wage deals and end up with the Ryder committees forming the basis of corporate wage bargaining, once they have completed their immediate task of forc ing in the full effects of Measured Day Work - speed-ups and redundancy.

The nature of these committees and the role they will play makes it a matter of principle that they are rejected by class-conscious workers and the fight started for a programme to defend wages, jobs and conditions.

The demand must be put for a sliding scale of wages to protect against inflation and for work-sharing on full pay to defend jot TU COMMITTEES Committees must be set up to demand that the books oi Leyland and component firms are opened and the case established for nationalisation under workers' manage ment with state contracts to ensure that the factories remain in production.

It is only in this way, and not by unprincipled participation in management, that jobs can be defended ing class the darkest to the darkest face of reaction.

The petty bourgeois leadership of the AFM attempts to balance between these competing elements. The 'moderate' faction led by Melo Antunes who planned the original coup with Spinola, long for a return to the situation where the masses are not an active force.

Meanwhile COPCON commander Carvalho, constantly portrayed as the most left of the ruling military troika, talks of 'popular assemblies' and the 'Cuban model' which aim to tie the working class to the bourgeois regimé.

Vasco Goncalves, against whom particular reactionary fury has been directed, looks desperately to his allies in the Communist As the class forces in Portugal line up each day, the need of the hour is for the development of a revolutionary leadership in the Portuguese working class. In Lisbon on August 15th, when the Stalinists and social democrat:

were running rival demonstrations eisewhere in the city, a sizeable demonstration of LCI Pabloites together with Maoists and other groups came together, apparently simply called in opposition to 'US intervention'. This is hardly the crucial issue in this situation, but for a Pabloite "mass vanguard separate from the working class and its organisations, it provided the only basis for unity.

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