[The strike at the plant has ended after…]

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The strike at the plant has ended after eight weeks, although the strike by 250 setters continues in pursuit of a grading claim.

Separate mass meetings of AUEW and TGWU members both voted to reject the stewards recommendation to continue the strike.

Following the pattern of the Talbot strike the officials of both unions have played the decisive part in knifing the strike, which never fully recovered after the convenors abandoned the picketing of the €15 million worth of cars were bottled up.

That was the lynch-pin of the whole strike and the leadership buckled under the pressure of the courts at the crucial moment.

Subsequent picketing of the dealers' showrooms did not compensate for this climbdown in the eyes of the members and was not sufficient to maintain the vote at the mass meetings.

From the start the strike had to contend with the conscious sabotage of the national not fighting the closure but negotiating redundancy payments, terms of which he had found "unacceptable"

Crucial question

The conference ducked the crucial question of the November 1st annual wage Management have offered 5% for workers on grades 2-5 and 10% to skilled workers in Grade 1.

In return for this insulting offer, Edwardes requires that almost every protective agreement in BL be scrapped. The 'strings' fill an 85-page document. Among the most brazen are demands for:

* The 80% layoff pay (7 days per quarter for those laid officials..

At the height of the battle with the police at the Harwich depot, when the support of the national union was needed most urgently to mobilise the labour movement, Grenville Hawley, the secretary of the vehiclebuilding and automotive trade group of the IGWU sent a strict instruction to the convenor ordering him to withdraw the picket altogether.

An occupation of the TGWU headquarters at Transport House, together with a vigorous campaign to moblise the local labour movement through the Trades Councils to man the picket lines in the manner of the massively speed up those workers left after initial closures and redundancies have been carried out.

Despite all these implications, no action was taken from the committee.

Convenors were informed that the LCJNC had avoided outright rejection of the Company proposals to prevent "The Edwardes propaganda machine going into action."

Instead, they were told, workers would be receiving the full proposals in newspaper form in the next few days, alongside a leaflet from the trade union side.

Determined

After that the LCJNC would reconvene for further negotiations.

The problem is that Edwardes is determined. With the ballot result under his belt he Will not back down easily.

While he has achieved a corporate bargaining structure, the trade unions are still not similarly organised.

The Combine Committee remains weak after the ravages of 3 years of workers "Participation", Despite the " weakness of their leadership, BL workers are bitterly hostile to the offer.

But faced with a determined employer and no central leadership, each plant is looking to the other for a lead.

There must be a lead from the Combine Committee.

Only all-out strike action. is going to beat Edwardes-and he must be beaten if BL workers are not going to be driven back 30 years and subjected to superexploitation by the bosses.