[The decision of workers at the threatened Meccano…]

Scan page 11

The decision of workers at the threatened Meccano factory on Merseyside to occupy the plant to prevent its closure offers a lead to every section of workers facing redundancy.

The occupation began immediately after management handed out instant dismissal notices to the 940 staff.

It began on the same day as the giant British Steel Corporation announced another thumping £150 million loss, and that it intends to inflict the whole burden of this crisis upon its 140,000 workforce, through closures, mass sackings and speed-up.

Though the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation has talked of a national overtime ban and token strikes to fight the closure of the Corby steelworks nothing has yet been done, and Corby workers still have not taken the vital decision to occupy the threatened plant as the focal point for such industrial action.

Now steelworkers throughout the country are facing the consequences of their dithering Yet while action has been taken at Meccano there remain many weaknesses.

In particular it is not enough simply to embark on a "workin" , producing toys without pay.

It is vital that workers use the occupation as the starting point for the fight for supporting action, and for opening the books of the giant Airfix corporation that owns the plant, exposing the necessity for its nationalisation without compensation and formulating on that basis a workers plan for further This is vital because, in capitalist terms, and in the capitalist world, the Meccano plant, like British steel and whole sectors of industry, just is not viable.

A socialist planned economy: is the only basis on which such productive forces can be utilised and developed and jobs protected.

EIDELITE

For tokey JittL TAUS SEBAN • adC STEEL Corby steelworkers In stark contrast to their absence on the 40,000 strong demonstration and lobby of Parliament against the cuts last week, the NUT Executive is spending £25,000 on a special delegate conference to discuss the union's response to the Tories' education cuts.

"The NUT is a non-political organisation" the Executive argued *and therefore we cannot be seen to support a call by the Labour Party to demonstrate against the cuts".

17',4 delegates , in Blackpool December 8.

The resolution rejects any notion that the Tories received a mandate at the General Election for spending cuts in education.

It calls upon teachers to publicise the effects of cuts wherever they are announced and support all campaigns against them.

The Executive wish, they say to fight against all proposed compulsory redundancies in the teaching force-but the resolution puts forward no strategy to carry this out.

Throughout the country tance of Edwardes' niliating 5% pay offer, tied, it is, to "strings" set out ir booklet.

These strings would effectively destroy every substantial trade union agreement established in BL.

And they are bitterly resented by the workers.

It should also be noted that the most solid strikes in Robinson's support were at rightdecision to ignore the November Protest strike resolutions to lobby local council meetings have been watered down into 'delegate' strikes (one from each school)-as in Hampshire and Leicester-or even simply lunchtime action or deals with the Council to allow time off-as in Nottingham.

Talk about increasing strike funds is not sufficient.

• The NUT must immediately declare its intention to use its full strength in national strike action to stop the Tory government in its tracks and block it from implementing its clear wing led Canley and Castle Bromwich-the . two biggest plants threatened with closure under the Edwardes plan.

The reason is that these workers plainly saw a hope, in defending Robinson, of defeating Edwardes and thus defending their own jobs.

It is crucial that this willingness to struggle is given a clear lead.

In other words the fight for the reinstatement of Derek Robinson can be brought back into the field of mass action through the fight to force BL convenors to defy Edwardes' blackmail and take strike action on jobs and against the pay offer.

At the same time every tradé union body in BL and the engineering industry must take up the campaign to force the removal of Duffy and the treacherous AUEW Executive, which has proved itself incapable of defending even the most elementary trade union rights.

A new, revolutionary leadership must be built amongst engineering workers which will start not from the profits crisis of the employers and the requirements of capitalism but from the needs and interests of the working class.

Such needs can be fulfilled only through the defeat of the Tory government and the fight for a workers' government that wil! carry through the nationalisation of the basic industries

----- pull-quotes -----

STELL SALINN Vigeren

ERS SAY: INDOWN MIETE