Right wing and press foment Cowley revolt'

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national engineering strike called for last Monday and Tuesday by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions.

These decisions have been used to try to attack an action which generally remained solid. It is therefore worth examining some of the factors which contributed to this development, particularly in plants such as the Cowley Assembly Plant which usually takes a militant stand.

The Assembly Plant leadership faced problems from the first Monday one-day strike when the right-wing leadership of the Body Plant across the road, a part of the same complex and slightly larger than the Assembiy Plant, allowed the plant to work normally whilst the Assembly Plant was 98% out.

Supporting management The Body Plant leadership argued that they wanted nothing to do with the Confed because the Confed executive was fully supporting BL management in railroading through its highly unpopular new five-grade wage structure which downgraded the production workers-the vast majority -from grade one to grade three.

The Assembly Plant stewards whilst sharing these sentiments on the grading issue, argued that this issue could not be allowed to in any way undermine the full support which must be given to a dispute which had become a major official confrontation with the Tory government and the leading and most reactionary group of employers in Britain.

By the second Monday things had changed. During the week the solidarity of the Assembly Plant had had its impact and the Body Plant leadership was forced to call a mass meeting and propose strike action for the following Monday -but specifically not in support of the Confed claim.

No ban They proposed a one-day strike with no overtime ban in solidarity with other BL plants.

They were voted down on this proposal and an alternative motion proposing support for the overtime ban as well as the token strike was carried overwhelmingly.

Although the mass meeting had only taken a decision on the second Monday the solidarity of that day made it difficult for the Body Plant leadership to sabotage the third Monday's action.

The leadership NION DUES No. 15.380 THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 1979 Price 8p leadership movement by the right wing Bob Fryer decided to act.

Situation

He called an emergency stewards meeting and explained the whole situation to them.

He then made a statement saying the following:

"Having fully supported the call from our union to support the Confed one day strikes and overtime ban for the past three weeks we want to record our appreciation to members and stewards who have responded to these actions, which were designed to achieve shorter hours, longer holidays and higher waye rates.

"The events of the last few days, however, within this plant, have demonstrated to us that the majority of the membership are not prepared to support the intensified action now called for in support of the claim.

"It is tragic that the action has been rejected in this plant in the way that it has. Unfortunately it has to be recognised that the resistance to the strike call will not do our members on this plant any good but will jeopardise our wages and conditions in the future. This is an important point and should not be forgotten.

•. But we also had to recognise that abandoning any further action in the plant would severely weaken the trade unions claim at national level and would harden the employers' determination to the majority of members, we feel we have done all we can in that regard. For this reason, and in order to maintain the unity of our organisation in order to face other problems which we have within BL, the TGWU on this plant will not engage in any further action on this matter."

The strike has been led into difficult conditions by the leadership of the Confed. They have followed the same doctrine of limited action which was so disastrous in the public sector last winter.

They refuse an all-out strike because they are not prepared to politically confront the government, yet they know an all-out strike would be more acceptable to members and that it would win.

Inundated

Duffy admits to being inundated with demands for an all-out strike-including demands from the Cowley car plantsbut he refuses to budge.

In the Cowley Assembly Plant the leadership faced these problems of leadership in common with workers in the rest of the industry.

They also faced particular problems within BL, not least the decision of management to move in, in the middle of this dispute, to force in their new wage structure.

The decision to pull back once the action was lost and not hand over to the right wing was a difficult decision to take but it was a correct one.