Rby: Call a Nationa Strike
Socialist Press1979 1979-09-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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The massive day of action and demonstration which brought an estimated 14,000 workers, housewives and youth onto the streets of Corby last week was a vivid indication of workers' readiness to defend jobs.
But at the same time, as a one-off protest action in a single town in Northamptonshire it revealed the central problem faced in fighting the plant closures by the British Steel Corporation.
Resounding silence
The call from a Corby steelworks mass meeting for national strike action by the steel unions has been met by a resounding silence from officials.
ISTC leader Bill Sirs, who has plenty of time to rush round rallying right wing support for Callaghan against Labour Party democracy, apparently has neither the time nor the interest to lead action to defend the thousands of jobs threatened in Corby and elsewhere by BSC's drastic programme of speed-up and rationalisation.
Corby workers must draw conclusions from this. They UNION DUES must themselves at once adopt a policy of occupation to prevent the closure, and step up the fight within the steel unions, lobbying plant leaderships and officials throughout the industry for support to a policy of all-out strike action to defend ail jobs.
The present fall-off in steel orders must be met not by sackings but by work-sharing without loss of pay.
Already 56 workers from the threatened Shotton steelworks have written a letter to the Wrexham Evening Leader correctly calling for a national steel stoppage "effective immediately" , and linked to a black on steel imports and transportation to prevent the closure.
Begin action
Corby workers must demand and themselves begin action to open up BSC's books to elected trade union committees so that the network of private suppliers, hauliers, contractors, steel users and bankers that profit from the steel industry's "losses" can be exposed and the fight developed for full scale workers' management of this nationalised industry in the context of a planned, socialist economy
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