Blow to Massey occupation

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The solidarity shown by the Massey Ferguson plants at Manchester and Coventry towards the Knowsley, Liverpool occupation was seriously reversed last week by the decision of the Barton Dock Road plant in Manchester to accept any work transferred from the closed Knowsley plant.

This astounding reversal after the one day strike last week was the dirty work of the TGWU full time official and convenor who successfully lied their way through a stewards committee meeting and subsequent mass meeting.

They claimed that the Knowsley dispute had not been made official-though it had been made official only a few days after the meeting to occupy the plant had taken place.

Exploited

Threats from the company to lay off the workforce if they refused to accept work from Knowsley were also exploited by the union bureaucracy to panic Manchester members into a rushed decision which completely reversed the magnificent demonstration of solidarity the previous week-when the workforce came out on strike for a day in response to a strong picket from the occupied Knowsley piant.

But all is not as well as it could be at the knowsley plant, where there are rumours and stories of possible deals with the company-as at Massey's Kilmarnock plant earlier this year.

A compromise arrangement, including certain sacrifices on working conditions and manning levels plus of loss NION jobs through "natural wastage" or voluntary redundancies was not ruled out by AUEW convenor Jimmy Yates when he spoke to representatives of Socialist Press.

This is a slippery slope which must be rejected and the demand for work-sharing on full pay must be fought for with no compromise, Yates did, however, show some indications that all is not lost when he accepted the need to demand full scale official backing from the AUEW executive when it meets on Tuesday 25 March.

Yates also agreed that the company's claims that the plant was unviable were nonsense.

After some discussion Yates further acknowledged the need to call on the management to hand over the whole of the books of the company-including also details of dealings with banks and component suppliers -to allow an independent assessment by an elected trade union committee.

This, with the aid of expert financial and technical aid, would then confirm either the fraudulence of'the company's claimed "losses" or the need to nationalise the bankrupt Massey Ferguson company as part of a socialist planned economy.

On the basis of the information obtained from the company accounts the elected trade union committee would then be in a position to formulate its own workers plan for production and use this plan to run the nationalised plant under workers management. A campaign against the pledging to move into occupaauuut succeeded in preventing the occupation from going ahead.

At a mass meeting on Wednesday March 5, hospital staff voted to delay moving into occupation until the findings of the inquiry were known.

Secondly the inquiry is completely bogus, and by no means "independent" . It consists of naspeer ways of making health cuts in the area.

The AHA are expecting him to report back early in April, and there is not a single guarantee that the Royal Northern casualty will be reprieved.

At a public meeting on February 28, called by the defence campaign, WSL members and other local trade unionists urged that the hospital should go ahead and occupy the casualty no matter what the outcome of the meeting with Vaughan.

This is still the correct policy. An occupation is the best safeguard against the manoeuvrings of Vaughan and the DHSS and would transform the campaign into a focus for the fight against health cuts throughout London.

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one high-ranking DHSS official, mandated to look into new