Swindon Goes on the Dole

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Swindon, once the centre of thriving boom time light engineering and electronics industries, is now faced with a rising tide of redundancies, short time and factory closures.

The Swindon Branch of the Workers Socialist League has been actively involved in fighting for a programme of opposition to these attacks. A WSL leaflet issued on Friday, 14th February set out the situation:

«The announcement by Garrards that 2,000 workers go on to a two and a halt day week with 200 sackings and the closure of Cheney Manor Factory is a disaster. After 2,000 to 3,000 lay-offs at Plesseys last year and the Plessey Interconnect occupation in defence of jobs, it is a savage blow to the hopes of Plessey workers and over 2,000 Swindonians already signing on at the dole.

"The international recession is driving deep into the heart of every industry. Engineering, transport, manufacturing, building, plastics, everything is being affected while workers have real wages slashed and the cost of living escalates beyond control.

CLOSURES

"The closures at H.B. Panelcraft and Southern Anodising, huge cutbacks at Garrards, Plessey and Ray.

chem, Torins, Cloverleaf, Square D Shorko Films, Metal Box and Howards Tenens are swelling the ranks of those on the dole in Swindon. This shows the way in which the working class is made to take the brunt of the employing class crisis.

"Swindon's largest employer, Pritish Leyland, needs £50,000,00C of taxpayers money for survival.

Rationalisation and speed-up are being demanded as the price of the Government loan.

«The workers at Plessey Interconnect were expected to solve its crisis by accepting redundancies and going on to the dole, but decided to put up a courageous fight."

The leaflet went on to show how the call for a workers co-op at Interconnect could offer no escape from the capitalist crisis which had Plessey Interconnect Workers monopolise completely).

In other words EMI wants to keep the profitable sectors, whilst the workforce takes all the losses - a new concept in "workers control"!

Sapper meanwhile has pushed through, with the aid of the Stalinists in ACTT, a new feature agreement based on the one under which 'Orient Express' was made which increases the rate of exploitation. Workers at Elstree must respond to the threats to their jobs and pleas of bankruptcy by EMI by putting into practice the growing demand for occupation of the studios. A committee of trades unionists from all the craft sections in the studio must then examine the books to expose the corrupt economic manipulations of EMI - how they sell the products of the studio produced the original rationalisation threat:

"The plan was that an independent workers controlled co-operative could somehow compete in the cut-throat capitalist markets of electronics where the recession had itself necessitated the rationaItsation of Plessey Interconnect to Northampton because the Swindor factory was not economically viable. ...

"This minimum programme was separated from the cuestion of the nationalisation of the Plessey company. The separation of the fight to retain jobs and the demand for nationalisation enabled the right wing to isolate the Interconnect occupation and ensure its defeat."

FACTORY

COMMITTEES The leaflet continued to stress the need for a programme for action: occupations must be organised of threatened factories, and joint factory committees elected to control the actions of management and make contact with other workers in linked factories and on a district basis. The Committee must force the management to open the books and expose the real dealings of the company. The leaflet stresses the importance on the basis of these figures of a strug gle to force the firm's nationalisation without compensation, and the provision of government contracts - in the case of Plesseys, electronic equipment for hospitals and education could be produced.

Since this would create inflation, it must be linked to the demand fo a sliding scale of wages linked to the rising cost of living.

In showing the betrayals of both "left" and right wing in the Labour Party, the leaflet demands the left be forced to fight for the workers who elect them. It also calls for maximum support to the town meeting which has been called by the 9a District Committee of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions to discuss the jobs crisis in Swindon.

The WSL remains at the forefront of the fight to defend jobs and build new leadership in Swindon. cheap (to themselves!) thus creating a 'loss' , and then in the sphere of film distribution and exhibition transform this 'loss' into massize profits - little of. which finds its way back to the studio where the film was created.

In this way a case will be made for the nationalisation without compensation of all EMI's massive holdings in film, TV and entertain. ments, beginning with Elstree itsel a case for which ACTT, NATTKE and the ETU must press with all their industrial strength. ACTT is committed to this policy for the industry as a whole. Its leaders must be forced to put it into practice, and film production must be established, financed hy government grants and under workers management.