SOCAUST Convenors vote to reject, but CONFED LEADERS CAMPAIGN FOR BI CLOSURES

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Smiling bureaucrats hand in plea to Edwardes: they were reluctant to read out nis reply surrender of 25,000 jobs.

This means full, official, union backing for a massive frontal attack on workers at the very heart of the engineering The 25,000 cutback in BL would in itself bring an estimated 160,000 redundancies in component and other related firms linked to it.

Yet sooner than challenge the naked attacks of capitalism, the Confed leaders are prepared to sacrifice these jobs without lifting so much as a finger!

But as convenors pointed out after the meeting, this was not the unanimous view of the Confed bureaucracy.

ACTSS National Officer Todd Sullivan, the Secretary of the Emergency Committee set up by the Confed immediately after the announcement of the Edwardes plan, argued strongly that the plan should be rejected.

Further contraction of BL on the scale enviseaged by Edwardes would, he said, bring eventually the total demise of BL:

"We have to say quite clearly that if the plan is accepted the company will wind up over the Joseph next four years.

But then Alex Ferry, speaking on behalf of the Confed Executive rose to oppose the Emergency Committee's recommendation.

The Executive had coped with closures and contractions in shipbuilding and elsewhere in engineering, he began:

"but this is the most difficult we have had to face because it is the most important and so central to the engineering industry in Britain.

"If we had the choice, we would be for expansion, but that choice is not on-not from the BL Board, the NEB or the Edwardes had told Confed leaders on October 1 that there was no possibility of obtaining sufficient cash to save BL as it stands.

And he revealed that even if the money were there, he would not take it, since his terms of reference are to make BL profitable.

On October 8 the Confed leaders heard a similar tale from Tory axe-man Keith Joseph, Far from providing more cash, said Ferry, the Tories would not even pay the amounts allocated by the Labour government!

Then at a further meeting with Edwardes, he threatened the Confed bureaucrats that unless they gave him a commitment by October 10 that they would back his plan, he would not even ask for more money. thus causing banks to foreclose on outstanding loans, and the collapse of BL's dealer network, "We were ready to reject the Edwardes plan" , claimed Ferry:

But then they though again about the October 10 deadline at which Edwardes would address a Board meeting and decide whether to seek new loans.

Pressure

And, like all those committed to seeking simply reforms within capitalism, the Confed leaders cracked, unable to contemplate opposing the notion that BL must be made profitable.

"You can't imagine the pressure on 14 men deciding on the jobs of at least 165,000 in BL and a further 500,000 in related industries", declared Ferry.

"We were not prepared to call theil bluff-because some of us don't believe it is a bluff."

Challenging the convenors present to measure up to such a confrontation, Ferry warned that should they reject the plan the result would be on their own heads:

"The 600 troops of the Light Brigade had goo d leadership, but they rode into the valley of death.

"We are not prepared to confront the Edwardes plan over the dead bodies of our members."

Instead Ferry and the Confed leaders will propose simply to hand over their members, bound and gagged, to the Jack Adams, Longbridge TGWU convenor, correctly pointed out that there was no option of sacrificing 25,000 jobs to save the other 130,000-the plan was in reality "an orderly retreat into the closure of the whole of BL"

Len Brindle, another Stalinist, and convenor of the Truck and Bus division, pointed out that every retreat by union leaders in Leyland had landed workers in a worse position.

Death warrant

And Derek Robinson, Stalinist chairman of the Combine Committee pointed out that if they accepted the Edwardes plan BL workers would be "signing their own death warrant"

Robinson also admitted that because BL was a "public corporation" he and other convenors had "acquiesced to some things in the past" . But he did not refer to the fact that he actually led the standing ovation for Edwardes and pledged him full support when he took over!

The strong points made against the Edwardes plan were enough to secure an overwhelming vote against it at the conCont'd Back Page.