Scots iobs fiasco

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In the early days of the Wilson government, Tony Benn as left-talking Industry Secretary piloted through a Bill which set up the much-vaunted National Enterprise Board.

Drawing attention to this onslaught on the elderly-and the particular added burden that it brings to women forced to care for older relatives for whom no facilities are available -the St. Benedicts campaign has taken up a struggle to defend all jobs and services.

A campaign booklet declares firmly that:

"The only way to stop the cuts is a united front against the Tories both nationally and locally."

And it gives tangible expres sion to this, by demanding that a victory at St. Benedicts be the basis of a fight to turn * the dismal tide of defeat in the fight against the cuts."

"This can only be achieved ... if the movement uses its strength and pledges industrial The objective of the NEB was to channel state finance into ailing and emerging sections of private industry to boost profits and thus "save" or "create" jobs.

• The plan fell flat on its nose with the advance of the world economic crisis-but the illusion Inside the St Benedicts work-in to do in any previous cuts Indeed the occupation at London's Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital brought several examples of unofficial one day stoppages by local nonNHS workers-but remained restricted in scope to local protest action by the union officials determined to avoid an all out struggle:

If the Tory cuts are to be defeated, then so too must the reactionary union bureaucracy who fear the strength of their members more than they fear the cuts.

In the meantime, the St.

Benedicts occupation is seeking support on the picket line to resist the closure on October 1. More details of this picket and copies of the booklet (10p plus postage) are available from the committee at 72 Glasford Rd., London SW17.

New 6-page issue now available price 12p plus 12p postage from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WC.1V 6XX. lives on in the make-believe world and "alternative strategies" of the reformist left.

In Scotland, the role of the NEB was to be augmented by a new Scottish • Development Agency with plush offices in New York and San Francisco.

The task of the SDA's gang of well-paid bureaucrats was to hand sums of cash to potential US investors as a lure for them to set up shop in Scotland.

Nearly five years later the SDA has failed to attract a single American job to the crumbling Scottish industrial landscape.

Collapsed

And an all-party committee of MPs has divided on whether or not the US offices should be closed down-thus axing the few administrative jobs (albeit in the USA) that the SDA did create.

The SDA has invested 1. £22 million in 41 companies-nine large ones of which have subsequently collapsed.

The SDA was called upon by the Wilson government to secure a staggering 15% rate of return on capital employed by this financial year-but instead has wound up with losses that mean a disastrous rate of return of minus 14.3%.

But then, like the NEB, the SDA's terms of reference condemned it to a future of baling out a sinking economy with a seive.

Were there any scope for profitable investment in Scotland or in Britain as a whole, then capitalists would be investing, without the urgings of such reformist bodies.

Instead the crisis of profitability brings simply a rising tide of closures and redundancies that can be resolved only by the defeat of the Tories and the fight for a planned, socialist woman worker WOMEN BEAR THE BRUNT OF UNEMPLOYMENT!

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