"get in There!" Get I

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IS CAR WORKERS To read 'Socialist Worker' lanialint lATnalrna paper of the International Socialists, you would think that organisation was opposed to "workers' participation"

But as we showed in our last issue of Socialist Press, in Leyland Worker, a 'rank and file' paper which they control, they have declared they are in favour of standing for positions in the BLMC participation set up.

On the 15th November their front: organisation, the National Rank and File Movement, held a conference on "The Crisis in the Motor Industry". This would have been more accurately entitled ите - 01::-:- 11 - 1599 the attendance was only 40 people - not delegates - from the whole of the motor and components The meeting was dominated by the question of "worker participation" . The main speaker on this subject, Willy Fay, a steward at Albion Motors in Scotland, pent the time rationalising why although he himself was against the scheme he had voted for it, 'with reservations'. He went on to make the usual statements that:

"You can't stick your head in the sand ...It's there and we can't run away from it ... It's the duty of every militant to get in there"

Tr. - _. 1 floor with only one, from Rovermium be a bie to say to to an it.

might be Fay wound up, and then the vote was taken and worker participation accepted with only one against.

The report of the meeting in Socialist Worker didn't even mention "worker participation" -referring only to the resolution calling for the nationalisation of the motor industry - thus leaving IS free to continue their official verbal "opposition" to "participation" up to the point where the employers and the trade union bureaucracy force it through. At that point they are equally ready and able to provide opportunistically an argument why militants should "participate"

The record of the IS in the fight agaisnt Measured Day Work was the same. Initial verbal opp artisa of the call to control manning. "rank and file" policies of the IS contino tri nonarido tha Italinioto when the working class are showCowley their hostility to the amalavare aranneale,

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ATTABLY CLANE, AMEROXAR BATTEN ATON SOMETIMENCY BORon resembly and A RAGNAN 444 HANC TON MORN VACAN CONNE Lord Ryder's first act in taking up his new post as chairman of the National Enterprise Board last Thursday - which gives him effective control over cash injections into British Leyland - was to launch a bitter ultimatum to B.L. workers.

The ultimatum, aimed at workers in a series of plants who are taking action to defend their jobs against speed-up, threatened to withold finance and force the closure of factories.

Responding to this in Cowley. management issued the following blunt statement which was handed to workers in the North Works of the Assembly Plant on Friday afternoon (19.11.75):

"Effective immediately, failure to achieve the required average programme objective of 28.5 cars per hour to sales will result in the closure of the North Works"

It is under these conditions that Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party has joined the revisionists of the 'state capitalist' International Socialists and the Stalinists of the Communist Party, and decided to "work within" the reactionary, class collaborationist Joint Management Councils set up under the Ryder Report.

TAKEN SEAT

Indeed, the WRP has already taken its seat in this management body. Last week, Tom White - a leading member of the WRP for a number of years, the WRP's only member in the Cowley factories and a deputy convenor of the T&GWU - stood for election to the plant's Ryder "participation" committee.

Although the right-wing took the seat, he was elected as a stand-in delegate, and now, in that capacity, takes his place alongside the representatives of foremen, superintendants, workstudy men and works policemen who decorate the "trade union side" of the committee.

The full depth of the treachery of the WRP's opportunist decision to enter the so-called "participation" scheme was hammered home by last Thursday's Oxford Mail. In a report headed "Leyland Talks on • Keeping up with the Japanese" , the Mail states that:

"A report which says that employees of Leyland Cars must work harder to reach the productivity levels of the Company's Japanese rivals is to be one of the first topics for the newly-formed Employee Participation Committees"

The Mail explains that the first meeting of the Committees in December will consider how to make BL workers equal the effort of their Japanese counter-parts. Questioned on the report, Leyland were reluctant to commit themselves:

"We do not want to preempt the discussions with the participation committees," said their spokesman.

JOB That in a nutshell, is the job of the committees. And the WRP is giving credibility to the whole set-up. This is the clearest demonstration yet of the deep degeneration of the WRP, and its departure from principle.

The involvement of Healy and what was then the Socialist Labour League, in Cowley began in the mid 1960's. From then until the expulsion of virtually the whole WRP factory cadre last December, the SLL-WRP had been the only political tendency upholding the principles of Trotskyism and the independence of the working class in the plants. Those who stepped out of line in this fight were excluded. Yet now we see the tragic negation y 26th A ', 197: of that proud opportunism.

We would like to hear the WRP's case for entering Ryder. Healy must know that these committees have nothing at all to do with trade unionism, and that entering them is quite different in principle from working within even the most right-wing and corrupt trade union body.

SPEARHEAD

We have characterised Ryder right from the beginning as the spearhead of management and government offensive against Leyland workers and the whole working class. We said that this would be done by sucking in key layers of shop stewards and making them part of the management This is no longer an academic argument. Speed-up is being forced in to Leyland plants at this moment under the authority of Ryder.

In plants such as Castle Bromwich, where workers are resisting speed-up with strike action, they are being bludgeoned back to work by threats from Ryder acting with the authority and credibility given him by the acceptance of the Report by the trade union leaders.

The WSL has said from the start that these committees are scab committees, and those who sit on them will be on the wrong side of the fence in the coming battles.

Because of the importance of the principles at stake, Healy must come clean and tell the movement the truth. Last Saturday's Workers Press (21.11.75), two weeks after the WRP entered the committees, vicioușly attacks "participation" saying the following:

Leyland has spent much time and expense negotiating the formation of the corporatist 'workerparticipation' scheme finally signed last month with the collaboration of some leading stewards.

Its purpose is now absolutely clear: to enforce conditions in which workers are denied the right to strike and management can step up exploitation on the shop floor to whatever level they require to make profits."

We disagree with the use of the term "corporatist" - but since when have WRP members stood for election to bodies defined as such by their own press? Since when has the WRP involved itself in denying workers the right to strike?

Indeed the final decision of the WRP (or Gerry Healy) to enter the committees, though taken shortly before Tom White's election, has never appeared in Workers Press.

Significantly, Workers Press has carried no reports on the battle on the stewards committee in BURSTIMULA MAN BARMOTEEN Well hath wont sele Body Palat Matectrical and CHOSE But L8Log astom, Croansing Cowley, or the elections, or the battles since then: Why the silence?

The complete opportunism of the WRP's somersault in entering Ryder can be seen again from these quotations from Workers Press at the time of the negotiations at the plush Annesiey Hotel in Coventry where deals were done over seven-course Un septem Der 10th, Workers Press reported that: "Final agreement on a corporatist scheme had been expected during the afternoon"

Next day, Workers Press headlined "REJECT B. LEYLAND STEWARDS' COLLABORATION" with a sub-headline - "Basic rights abandoned in six weeks of corporatist talks"

CLEAR

The same article spelled out clearly the job of those who sit on the committees: "One of the first tasks the union representatives will have is to 'participate' in the mass redundancies required by the company"

We suggest a copy of this is sent to the WRP's representative in the Cowley speed-up, Tom White!

On September 18th Workers Press dealt in a similar way with "participation' on the docks:

180 Workers Press statement by channe donu DOWLEY ASSEMBLY PLANT CLOCK ПОТІСЕ CREAS Aroara ENC. white Mack Doiy MALAYLOR 194 P SLAMA 417 a artacie 'Felixstowe dockers have struck a powerful blow against corporatist worker "participation' by removing their convenor who became a director.

The convenor, Larry O'Donnell, lasted just tive days as both union convenor and director of the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company ...

The stewards see correctly that "participation' is a trap designed to weaken trade unionism and open the door to attacks on jobs and hard-won conditions". (our emphasis)

To enter these committees after such statements, and not tell your readers is not only thoruoghly unprincipled (similar to IS), but shows that Healy is canscious of this betrayal.

When the Ryder Report was published in April Workers Press carried a lead article which was later distributed as a mass leaflet which said the Ryder Report means: "massive investment of capital by government under a capitalist appointed board who will take a few tame senior stewards as hostages and declare that the era of industrial democracy has begun' The same article correctly goes on to conclude: "Not a single job or basic right in this giant combine can be saved without a bitter struggle against Ryder"

This was a statement from the Workers Press Editorial Board. They have issued no new statements. Their paper continues to oppose Ryder. Do they know that Healy has switched horses and opted for "participation"? How many WRP members know their party is involved in a 'corporatist' committee?

We challenge Healy - drop the pretence and tell your members the truth. Explain to them your opportunist reasons for entering Ryder. Justify openly - using (as you will have to) the same arguments as the Stalinists and the state capitalists - your reasons for sitting on committees designed to break the strength of the shop stewards movement.

"Working from within" these committees, apart from being Loor represent tips sire in top minority, and the management have an absolute right :: final decision. The committees do not even have the right to vote Meanwhile, in movir: 1o a right wing opportunist rositior the WRP confronts the : ¿iority of Leyalnd workers who are cleari! against 'participation'.

In the Cowley Assembly Plant Ryder was never put to the membership. It was forced through after a two-day shop stewards meeting, hostile to Ryder, which was swung to acceptance at the end by the manipulation by the chairman, Cy Blake, and the intervention of the Stalinists, who argued that Ryder was the "first steps towards workers' control" The vote was 128 to 72.

In the shop floor that followed workers registered their hostility to Ryder by a mass abstention from the r ote. This became national news • but was still not reported in Workers Press.

A number of principled shop stewards - including WSL members - refused nomination. These included also the previous convenor Bob Fryer, removed by the T& GWU bureaucracy 18 months ago.

Fryer will be standing for convenor in the election next week, but the WRP will not be supporting him. Instead they will be supporting Cy Blake - who followed his manoeuvres to force Ryder through the stewards by standing (along with White) for the "participation" committee, and also winning a stand-in position.

Resistance to Ryder goes further than Cowley. In the nearby Radiators factory, workers have voted Ryder out at a mass meeting.

In the Rover-Triumph factory in Coventry, (the base of right-winger Eddy McGarry, who with the Stalinists on the Combine Committee steered the scheme through), workers have voted Ryder out in a secret ballot -dealing a heavy blow to the continuation of the scheme throughout the Combine.

This is the reality of the mass movement. But Healy, starting from surface impressions - the votes of 31 trade union bureatcrats at the Ad Hoc Committee, and 128 stewards at one manipulated stewards meeting - finds himself in opposition to that mass movement.

His disastrous empirical manoeuvres are the outcome of the sectarian positions of the Healy leadership fought against by those who were expelled from the WRP nearly a year ago, and forced to form the Workers Socialist League.

We challenged the threadbare maximum demand of "nationalisation without compensation under workers' control of all basic industry" which the WRP claimed was a 'programme' , and showed how Healy's departure from Trotsky's Transitional Programme separated the WRP from the working class.

WORDS

During that struggle Healy demonstrated his opportunism by adapting in words to the prog ramme of those he was to expel a few weeks later.

At last year's 5th Anniversary of Workers Press, Alan Thornett, as one of the main speakers, made the first speech for years in the SLL-WRP based on the demands of the Transitional Programme. The previous day Workers Press had carried a front page full of transitional demands after years of hardly referring to Trotsky's programme.

When the expulsions came - over 200 in the Western Area alone - Healy told the WRP that we had "moved to the right" and "would join the trade union buteaucracy" - a charge carried continuously in Workers Press.

We ask WRP members now to examine our record, that of the WRP. Have we moved to the right? Have we joined the bureau cracy? Have we capitulated to social democracy?

We urge WRP members to check this against the actions of your leadership, culminating in the acceptance of Ryder. Now is the time to fight the opportunist degeneration in your leadership before it is too late.

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REJECTE RYDER