Stalinist attacks Fight against sackings at Ayrshire Marine

Scan page 10

THE FICHT BLINDFOLDE they will close down the site The struggle for basic and tow the partially completed safety conditions at the platform away. Ayrshire Marine ConstrucWhether this is possible or tion Site at Hunterston has not is subordinate to the main escalated into a full scale issue which is the blackmailing battle between the workers tactics being used. involved and the vicious practices of multi-national Arrests capitalism.

Ranged against the workers In all of this the big business are the joint interests of Chicago interests involved have the backBridge International, the Weir ing of the capitalist state. On Group and Phillips Petroleum, Wednesday last the Ayrshire an unholy alliance of American, police arrested 70 pickets and British and Dutch big business. charged 48 with breach of the Having dismissed all 900, peace. they have now declared that Yard convenor Ronnie For a clear Munro told Socialist Press:

"About 200 police marched down to the picket lines and a police chief announced through a loudhailer that we were on private ground and must remove ourselves. We stood our ground and then they moved in and made arrests.

They took us to Largs police station where we were kept for five hours without even a cup of tea allowed. There we were questioned twice over, photographed and our names run through a computer to check if we had any previous records.

The whole operation was carried out in a military fashion and as if they were practicising for something bigger.

We issued a press statement condemning the way in which the police acted, but little attention was paid to it in the newspapers"

One vital lesson that the workers involved are learning is the treacherous attitude of the official trade union and labour On Tuesday last a delegation from the yard addressed the General Counci of the STUC in Glasgow where Jimmy Milne, Hugh Wyper and John Pollock, among others, were present.

Having been given assurances of support from the General Council, they read in the news-. papers next day a statement by With workers by the thousand taking to the streets to oppose Tory policies there is plainly no lack of militancy in the organised working class.

Yet the existing trade union bureaucrats and Labour leaders whether right or 'left'-have no perspective to offer those workers prepared to fight in defence of jobs, living standards, social services and democratic rights.

These can only be defended through policies which start from the independent interests of the working class, which, as an international class, nothing to gain and everything to lose from attempts to restore the profitability of their "own"

employing class.

In a period where the contradictions of the anarchic capitaliet curtom freno the uhnicealo productive forces of. society, only a socialist planned Milne demanding that the men return to work immediately without any prior concessions by the management.

The same attitude was adopted by the local Labour MP David Lambie, in a statement to the press. These people are like frightened rabbits, hypnotised by the wealth and arrogance of international big business.

The real friends and allies of the workers at Hunterston are the masses of workers now moving into conflict with the Tory government.

Ronnie Munro paid tribute to the generous aid they have received from Irvine • Trades Council who have helped the strike committee set up headquarters and sought support for them in the trade union and labour movement.

There must now be the most determined effort by all militants to rally support for the men at Hunterston. The on-shore liaison committee must immediately convene a conference of all stewards involved in oil rig construction to campaign for a total shutdown of all sites until the Hunterston men get their jobs back and the management statement which provoked the dispute is withdrawn.

Messages of moral and financial support should be sent to the Shop Stewards Committee, (Hunterston Dispute), c/o Trade Union Centre, Ardrossan Road, Irvine, Ayrshire.

A well attended anti-cuts conference organised by Glasgow Campaign Against the Cuts last Saturday heard Ronnie Munroe, convenor at Ayrshire Marine denounce the General Council of the STUC for reneging on their agreement to support the 900 workers in struggle there.

A lame attempt to whitewash the STUC was made by Bob Gillespie, who attacked this effort to bring the struggle of industrial workers into the anti-cuts campaign.

A major weakness of the conference was that the obvious willingness to fight by the 270 delegates was not reflected in the toothless resolution presented to the conference at the end of the day.

iL Duffy Leaders of the Confederation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Unions last week rejected a miserable 6.2% pay offer from the Engineering Employers Federation-but made it clear that they had no intention of fighting.

Right wing AUEW President Terry Duffy-himself better off by some 26% following this year's pay rise for union officials-declared that "we are not in an aggressive mood"

The union leaders had suffered the humiliation of seeing every other aspect of their 18.5% claim thrown out as well.

Employers' spokesman Anthony Frodsham claimed that pay had gone up ten times as fast as productivity in the last three years.

In Japan, he claimed, productivity was rising faster than pay.

These arguments seem to have been taken seriously by Duffy and his fellow right wing Confed leaders, who were last year forced by the pressure of their membership into ten weeks of partial strike action, which eventually brought EEF concessions on pay, hours and holidays.

It has been plain since then that they want nothing less than another such confrontation with the employers.

Indeed they accept that capitalist firms should remain profitable-at the expense of workers' living standards.

Duffy has said that while iecognising the "poor state" of the engineering industry, they are seeking "a good wage for a good day's work"-implicitly offering the employers the prospect of still further job-slashing productivity deals in exchange for a few extra percentage points on the pay settlement.

Engineering workers must reject such a position, and demand that Confed leaders lead a fight for a settlement no less than the 18.5% claimwhich itself is insufficient to match the rate of Tory-stoked inflation.

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

lead in the struggle against

Glasgow cuts fight

onfed rejects