British Leyland: the background to Edwardes' run-down

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Mass meeting at Leyland truck plant in Preston Edwardes British Leyland represents a very large slice of the engineering industry in Britain. It accounts for 50% of vehicle production in the UK and currently employs 165,000 workers, with a further 750,000 geared to it in the component industry.

The policies of successive Labour and Tory governments towards BL have differed only by degree. Both have approached BL not from the standpoint of protecting the interests of workers or preserving jobs, but from the requirements of an increasingly crisis-idden British capitalism.

Reformist servant

The outcome of such an approach has varied to the extent that the Tories are the party of the capitalist master. while the Labour leaders are simply his reformist servant.

It is more difficult for a Labour government to close PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report down major sections of industry than it is for the Tories.

Reformists not only cling to the illusion that by shrewd management capitalism can be expanded to provide concessions and reforms for the working class, but also base themselves very much on a close political relationship with the trade union bureaucracy -a relationship which is made more difficult in the face of a wholesale destruction of jobs and hard-won living standards.

Contraction

But of course what predominates in the actions of the Labour leaders is their commitment to seeking reforms within the capitalist system.

As a result, in the last instance, they, like the Tories, have found themselves set on a course of contraction in British Leyland-a course that must lead to its eventual liquidation.

The reason for this is the particular impact on the British economy of the world wide crisis of capitalism. The growing recession has produced intensified competition for markets, which in turn has brought an overcapacity in the motor industry on a world scale.

The waves of mergers and bankruptcies that have taken place in recent years-the most recent being the sale of Chrysler UK to Peugeot and the acute financial crisis of Chrysler in the USA-are clear symptoms of the process whereby the anarchy of the capitalist market forces "rationalisation" and restricts the growth of the productive British capitalism, creaming off profits and reluctant to reinvest, has lagged behind other capitalist economies in technical innovation-ensuring that its products, particularly cars, are increasingly overpriced and outdated on the world market.

The employers are attempting to tackle this by changing the economic and industrial structure in Britain.

Though British wages have plummeted in value compared to those in other industrialised countries, the rate of exploitaPHOTO: Angela Phillips, IFL tion of workers in Europe and Japan is much higher.

In a move to rectify this, and to find ways of cashing in on more profitable production overseas, the capitalist class has decided that basic manufacturing industry in Britain-cars, shipbuilding and steel production-should be run down, and capital invested in production elsewhere.

Profit

The recent Tory decision to lift all exchange controls to allow the unimpeded export of capital is designed to further facilitate this process.

For the employer the prime criterion is not national borders but the extraction of. profit. Il this can be more effectively done by owning a share of Italian, Japanese or other "foreign" industries than by owning factories in Britain, then this will be done.

Meanwhile of course the capitalists and their allies in the Labour and trade union movement continue to demand that workers sacrifice jobs, social services and living standards "in the national interest"

Continuous attack

The rundown of BL began in earnest in 1972, four years after the British Leyland Motor Corporation was formed Management decided to close two of BLMC's heavy transmission plants-Thorneycrofts Speke assembly line in Basingstoke and Maudsley Motors in Birmingham.

But wages and conditions in the corporation have been under continuous attack since BLMO was formed in 1968.

Having made the piece-work system of payment work to their advantage, BLMC workers had achieved wages at least double those earned by Ford and Vauxhall workers, who were tied to a flat rate payment.

BLMC wages were also far in excess of those in the public services or the bulk of the engineering industry.

But the Labour government of Harold Wilson saw the high wages and militancy of BLMC workers as a driving force for the wages movement elsewhere, and gave enthusiastic support to the BLMC board in its attacks on the piece work system.

Thus the ten years or so of BL have been ten years of determination by successive managements to achieve a rigid flat rate uniforn wages structure controlled and nego tiated Colitian a Joint Negotiating Committee.

The eventuai aim has been to move along American lines to pay talks at industry level.

The problem which BL vorkers had from the outset ir resisting these attacks was their leadership. The leadership of the Combine Committee, which had played an important role in the previous period, was firmly in the hands of the Communist Party.

They accepted the general of BL policy.

Dick Etheridge, the n CP convenor of the vast L ongbridge complex, told workers there was nothing to fear from the company's proposed flat-rate Measured Day Work payment system.

No resistance He likened it to payment systems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe-perhaps forgeting that BLMC is a capitalist firm in an anarchic capitalist This meant that when BL forced in MDW in 1970 there was no resistance from the piants with Communist Party Only Jaguars (with a right wing leadership) and the Cowley Assembly plant with a Trotskyist leadership struck in opposition to the scheme.

Both the strikes were beaten by isolation and the determined intervention of the officials.

The introduction of Measured Day Work coincided with the wage freeze policies of Heath's Tory government, and had a dramatic impact on BL wages over the subsequent four years.

But this erosion of real wages was nowhere near enough for management. Indeed in order to minimise shop floor resistance to MDW the company had agreed to a work effort which fell far short of their requirements-particularly in plants which had resisted the scheme.

BL really needed piece-work effort on MDW wages.

Agreement

The re-election of a Labour goverrment, headed by Wilson, in February 1974 therefore brought behind-the-scenes discussions as how best to wage the necessary attacks on the BL workforce.

It is clear that an agreement was reached with TGWU and AUEW leaders Jones and Scanton in which they would ensure the acquiescence of the trade union leadership in the restructuring and rationalisation of BL and undertake the crushing of the power of sections of the shop stewards movement which resisted management policy.

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SOCIALISI PRESS, hednesda: - Norember, 1979