Tory Jobs Massacre State

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August 12: march i Troops Out of Ireland profit by next March has unleashed a jobs massacre at Shotton and Corby steelworks.

The premature closure of the plants will throw 12,000 steel workers and thousands of others in local supply industries onto the everlengthening dole queues.

BSC claims that each plant loses £40 million per year.

But no union leader has attempted to challenge these figures, or to initiate any kind of workers' inquiry into the steel industry-which is wracked by losses and crisis throughout the capitalist world.

Warning Tories Indeed far from starting out from the needs and interests of steel workers, Iron and Steel Trades Confederation leader Bill Sirs has hurried to warn the Tories that their wholesale destruction of jobs in the industry could trigger off militant resistance. "It will be impossible to hold them. because of the pressures upon us" he bleated, in the hopes of persuading the Tories to pull back.

The ISTC has pointed out that government cash limits on BSC threaten as many as 30,000 jobs in the next year. But it has offered no strategy to defend rOOD Since the formation of the Workers Socialist League our members have taken part in many demonstrations called against British imperialism in Ireland and fought inside the mass organisations of the working class to support them.

Our policies by no means coincide with the demands of the nationalist movement in We call for the immediate withdrawal of British troops, for those jobs. No strikes or occupations have been called for.

Yet management talk of savings through "good housekeeping" are certain to mean intensified shop floor speed-up even for those workers remaining in the industry.

Nor will the Tory axe stop with the steel industry: Joseph: is currently meeting with the the restoration of political status to republican prisoners and for their release.

We call for the self determination of the Irish people as a whole.

But we also call for an Irish workers republic and for a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeois government of Lynch in the South, and the reactionary force of the Roman Catholic Church.

The demonstration called for August 12-the 10th anniversary of the sending in of British troops to Derry-differs markedly from any of the demonstraNational Enterprise Board to spell out government plans to shut down whole shipyards and cut off aid to many other sections of industry.

An estimated 100,000 further jobs could be at risk in firms ranging from International Computers to the Meriden Motorcycle cooperative.

And while local MPs naren tions we previously supported.

The list of sponsors starts with four Lords and progresses through Cyril Smith, Liberal MP to a variety of Labour 'lefts' and not so lefts'.

As the list lengthens it grows more radical. Brendan Gallagher has signed it, the Young Communist League, Big Flame and the SWP have all signed it. The International Marxist Group have signed it.

The sponsors' statement makes a number of pointsevery single one of them reactionary.

It states that the troops went into Northern Ireland ''to arrest a situation where civil order had PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report Bill Sirs Corby and Shotton whine about the need for government grants to tackle unemployment, Joseph is planning to slash regional aid by nearly £200 million.

Such is the crisis of bankrupt British capitalism that the Tories argue they now face a choice between concentrating remaining grants on the most for says "We share this view and call on the British Government to commit itself to a policy of withdrawal from Northern This statement is entirely the policy of Cyril Smith and elements of the Liberal Party. It is a betrayal of a principled fight for the defeat of British imperialism.

The WSL refuses to associate itself with this platform. But we will be fighting to bring onto the march the largest possible contingent on our policies and against the policies of the platform.

The demonstration is likely to be large. Many of those who come out for the first time onto a demonstration which they will consider to be opposed to British presence in Ireland will not share the reactionary positions of the organisers or may be won to break from them.

The demonstration will also be seen by the state as a threat to its policy. It will therefore objectively-despite its programme-weaken the grip of imperialism by raising in the minds of many workers the possibility of opposing those policies.

We call on all our supporters to join the march not behind the banners of reaction, but behind the policies for the defeat of imperialism. needy areas or making the whole of the country an assisted area!

These attacks on jobs in state industries run alongside massive jobs losses flowing from local authority and health service spending cuts.

They point to the fact that the Tories are consciously creating a huge pool of unemployed in a bid to rationalise British industry, and to drive down wage levels in general.

The Sunday Express has revealed that the government is to launch a concerted crackdown on unemployed workers and youth-clearly designed to force them to take low paid jobs or face the loss of benefits.

In this way they hope the soaring unemployment figures can be turned to the profit of Tory employers-and that desperate unemployed workers ean be mobilised to break strikes.

The Tories are responding consciously to the • massive world economic crisis of capitalism. They cannot be persuaded to change course.

Class action

Rather, in the fight to open the books of the state industries and the private monopolies, and defend all jobs through work-sharing on full pay, workers must be mobilised in united class action to bring down this reactionary government.

Factory and plant occupations to prevent redundancies and closures must be strengthened and extended through the fight for. councils of action, bringing together public sector workers, trade unionists from private industry, and workers' political parties.

*Open the books of industry! Reveal the utter bankruptcy of"capitalism, and the need for a socialist planned • *No redundancies! • Work sharing on full pay! No closures.

Occupy threatened plants!

• *Unionise the unemployedTrades Councils must campaign to recruit from the dole queues.

For a workers' plan of useful public works in each area!

*Prepare to kick 'out the Tories! Drive out the Callaghan-Healey leadership; fight for a socialist alternative!

Joseph