Bonus for Edwardes

Scan page 10

SUBSCRIBE!

Get your Socialist Press delivered each week by pos In the wake of the 14 week steel strike and the management crackdown on British Leyland workers the Tories have taken further steps to bolster the confidence and prestige of capitalism's most conscious and vicious managers.

Sir Charles Villiers' replacement as chairman of the British Steel Corporation is to be Mr. lan MacGregor, a Scottish tax exile, industrialist, financier and gangmate of Sir Michael Edwardes.

In a deal likely to set a new pace for the appointSix issues..........

Three months (12 issues).

Six months (25 issues).

One year (50 issues) ..

EUROPE Six months (25 issues).

One year (50 issues) ..

REST OF THE WORLD Six months (25 issues)

One year (50 issues) ... ment of nationalised industry chiets, MacGregor is to be "transferred" from his present US job at Lazard Freres for nearly £2 million.

He will return to British industry, ending a period in which he has commuted from New York to assist Edwardes in BL Board meetings.

His task will be to press home BSC's programme of closures and redundancies. As he put it:

"It is a question of how. many can survive the holocaust, how many jobs can be saved."

There is no doubt that after taking these unprecedented steps to enlist a ruthless axeman, the SUBSCRIPTION RATES Tories will stand four-square behind him in the inevitable confronations with the steel unions.

Meanwhile discussion has grown among top Tories as how best to reward the doyen of all hatchet-menSir Michael Edwardes.

Appointed by the last Labour government, Edwardes has proved model of Tory management ideals. Utterly inflexible and skilfully utilising the media and the trade union bureaucracy to confuse and divide and demoralise the BL workforce, he has railroaded through a succession of policies that could never have been achieved by more traditional methods.

£2.00 £4.00 £8.00 £14.00 £9.00 £16.00 £10.00 £18.00 How much ; such a vicious piece of v ork worth to the British capitalist class?

At present Edwardes only receives a miserable £57,200. Yet a figure of £100,000 is now being floated as a reasonable rate for the job.

Such an increase in pay would no doubt anger Edwardes' fellow nationalised industry bosses-who are paid from £40,000£50,000.

But it would be in keeping with the Tory notion of "incentives"_ perhaps encouraging others to grasp the nettle and wage all-out war on the unions in the hopes of similar rewards!

CAPITAL GET SOCIALIST clear For a PRESS struggle against lead in the wage control, cuts and redundancies Send your cheque/P.O. to

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

DON'T GOUNTO HE FIGHT BUNDFOLD,

Socialist Press, BM Box 5277 London WC1V 6XX.