Fighting Winstord factory closures

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"Regretable" was how Winsford's Labour controlled council described the closure of Metal Box and the loss of 500 jobs, in a letter to the company's head office.

They were going to use the word deplorable' but this was considered too undiplomatic by Labour Councillor Percy Tipple; OBE, a recent attendee at a Buckingham Palace 'booze-up'.

But fellow bun-fighter, and deputy mayor Tony Walsh, was clear about the tasks ahead:

"There's nothing we can do, but we must do something"

They did. They moved rapidly : to "Any. other business"!

: So whilst workers in the town face the biggest single closure yet, these poltroons play the political equivalent of 'blind man's buff. • •' Among : the five unions involved however: (TGWU, AUEW, EETPU, NGA, ASTMS) there is no lack of will to fight.

One practical step taken was to form a joint shop stewards committee to coordinate the defence and Ron Yarnwood, District Secretary of the Engineers was quoted as saying "We will do everything in our power to resist these redundancies"

The Communist Party, in a public statement, while finding the closure a cause for regret', have called for Mid-Cheshire Trades Council to organise a one day conference on the closures in the area.

But in terms of what is to be done concretely : only the Workers Socialist League has spelled out a course of action.

In a leaflet put into the factory they said:

"The WSL, as a Trotskyist organisation, puts forward the following programme of action which starts from the need to protect workers' interests first:

*Occupation of all firms threatened with redundancies to show the bosses that the factory is not going to be thrown on the scrap heap in the interests of profit. Implicit in this is the need to stop the bosses from stripping the machinery: and plant.

*Demand the opening of the firm's books to elected workers committees to reveal the need to nationalise the whole combine along with other firms in the same branch of industry; the suppliers and bankers who deal with the firm must also be made to hand over their books too in order to reveal their profiteering role in the claimed bankruptcy of the employers.

The information of the workings of the firm's accounts should then be used to formulate a workers plan based on the needs of the working class, not the need to make profits through exploitation.

*Worksharing on full pay and a sliding scale of hours, would be a central part of such a workers plan. The available work must be distributed between the whole of the population needing work.

*Build councils of action. Workers have no chance of defeating a united employers' attack if they try ti beat them one by one.

The Thatcher government can only be defeated through the workers similarly uniting to prepare for a general strike•to bring the Thatcher government down, as was the Heath government by the miners.

Councils of action are necessary to mount a joint campaign between all the firms in the Winsford area that are fighting the employers.

Militants in the factories must move a motion to that effect at mass meetings and union branches.

Delegates

is up to the militants in the, factories threatened by closure to see to it that the delegates are sent to such a body.

In doing so they will come up against the trade union officials and in many cases this will include the convenors and the right wing in the factories themselves. They will manoeuvre and divert the struggle away from the steps, outlined above, that are necessary to defeat the employers.

They must. be confronted with an organised campaign to make them carry. out these essential and practical steps and demands.

This will place them on the spot. If they carry them out under pressure. from the militants and the rank and file, then the struggle will be taken forward. If they fail to do this, then the conditions will have been created in which they can be exposed in front of the membership, discredited and the way prepared for their removal". 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 rynis. mentin rinh+These can only be defended through policies which start from the independent interests of the working class, which, as an international class, has nothing to gain and everything -eLi to lose from attempts to restore the profitability of their "own" employing class.

In a period where the contradictions of the anarchic capitalist cvstem" force the whniecala closure and destruction of the productive torces of society, only a socialist planned MERSEYSIDE FACTORY CLOSURES Fisher Bendix Leyland Dunlop: Meccano -Why campaigns tHE TOP were lost & FAKE AUD whow they can be WOn A WSL Pamphlet JUST OUT A new pamphlet union leadership in the fight against factory closures and the policies needed to defend jobs.

Price 27p including™ postage from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WC1V 6XX

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produced by the North West Area of the League exposing the betrayals of the trade