Leyland: Occupy to Sav Jobs

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pp 5, 6, 7 SOLIDARITY C Evans (right) with a bevy of bureaucrats on the September 16 demonstration BL workers mast hea the lessoms of Spreke:

Last week's decision by British Leyland (BL) chairmon Michael Edwardes to sut down factories at Conley, Park Royal, Abingdon and "major parts of Castle Bromwich" raises with new sharpness the crisis of leadership facing all BL workers.

The closures are a part of a concerted drive by BL management to cut manning levels and force through speed-up throughout the corporation, at a total cost of at least 25,000 jobs over the next two years.

tements ok, shek and out statements of oUtrage by top union officials, BL's TGWU convenors met in Birmingham and voted to resist Edwardes' latest attack, pledging support for any plant that opposes closure or the transfer of work.

Record

But the real record of BL convenors and union officials in defending jobs and hard-won working conditions over the last few years should give workers no grounds for confidence that any such fight will take place.

Leading figures from BL's Combine Committee hand in hand with national union officials have:

*Entered willingly into Leyland's reactionary "workers' participation" set-up, through Leyland boss Edwardes: his plans set out to implement Tories' rationalisation which leading stewards have at every level been sucked into deeper collaboration with management in imposing speedup and arguing the need for sacrifices on the shop floor to make the corporation "viable"

Fingered

It was a "participation"

committee that fingered the Triumph plant at Speke in Merseyside for closure last year -and leading Stalinist convenor Derek Robinson from Longbridge who ensured that Speke workers were steered away from the vital policy of plant occupation;

*Assisted management to railroad through its corporate bargaining set up, which has eroded the power of shop stewards by eliminating plant-level claims and negotiations and placing this power in the hands of national officials;

*Scabbed on strikes by toolroom workers in 1977 and 1978 which attempted to break through the straightjacket on wages imposed by the Labour government and BL management;

*Stood alongside managers and applauded Edwardes' initial declaration of February 1978 in which he spelled out his strategy of restoring profitability to the corporation at the expense of its workforce.

Not equipped With a record like this, such leaders are scarcely equipped to lead a struggle now to defend jobs.

Already a key sign. of miserable betrayal is visible in the behaviour of Canley's right wing convenor Eddie McGarry, who apparently left the TGWU convenors' meeting before the proposed closure of his plant was even discussed.

McGarry of course distinguished himself during the struggle over the closute of the Speke plant in 1978 by carrying a decision that Canley would accept work transferred from the threatened Merseyside plant.

This treachery was exploited to the full in the winding up speech by Derek Robinson at mation workers who occupy threatened BL plants must fight for solidarity strikes and occupations throughout the motor and component industries, pointing out that there is no protection for any carworkers' job without the nationalisation of the whole automotive industry, without compensation under workers' management-a perspective that demands the removal of the job-slashing Tory Collaborators • No such fight will be forthcoming from the proven scabs and collaborators who head the BL Combine Committee.

BL workers who wish to defend their jobs and working conditions will need to develop a new, principled leadership, committed to the struggle for their independent interests.

The Workers Socialist League is fighting to construct just such a leadership. FIGH TGWU must

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UNION OF WORKERS ICT