The import quagmire

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Furniture workers march in London against foreign imports Whichever, is the case the empts to evade the uncomMable necessity to fight for a ss line in Iran has led the FI and its Iranian section o a social chauvinist position | straightforward support to i regime in the war with Iraq.

"Dialectician"

Indeed the SWP does not in scrupie to declare that in ring this stance it is defending e capitalist government unst another. David Frankel Untercontinental Press argues "To insist n this situation on similarities between the vitalist government in Iraq il the capitalist government in in is like using a clock without nefit of any reference to the i world. Nine o'clock is nine Lock, but the difference can between night and day" The problem for this SWP ialectician" is that his readiis to capitulate to, rather than ht to change the existing lance of forces in the "real rld" leads him to effectively ore the essential similarity ween the two regimes and Is leave the workers and peasis of iran in the dark.

The fact is that in neither a nor Iran do the masses have interest in the military ence of the ruling cliques. Though neither is a direct Int state of imperialism, their i-imperialist rhetoric cannot le the fact that both are reacnary governments adminised by petty bourgeois demajues within the framework of mestic and world capitalism.

Existing balance They are locked into the rld capitalist market, and k to defend the existing ance of class forces.

Both therefore pursue the secution of national minors, the vicious oppression of men and of gays, and seek to press all forms of socialist itical opposition.

That both are now prepared engage in a futile war over a erway which both need to in order to export their oil, ler than throw their military ›urces behind the struggles of Palestinians and present a amon front against imperialand its stooges in the Middle I, is further testimony to ir contempt and hostility to oppressed masses of the Idle East.

Socialist Press stands opposed to support for either side in this war. We defend neither Khomeini nor Hussein against the other: we would however defend either or both against an imperialist attack.

In the present war, the task before both Iraqi and Iranian workers is to turn the struggle from a territorial dispute with an external "enemy" to a struggle against the Hussein and Khomeini regimes at home.

This means the fight within the armed forces on each side for rank and file committees and soviets to halt the hostilities and the formation in Iran and Iraq of factory committees and committees of poor peasants to turn the war into a civil war in which the masses confront the state forces that daily repress them, and take up the fight for a workers' and peasants' government.

Minimum step

It would be necessary to demand that such a government should, as a minimum step, move to end the national oppression of the Kurds and other minorities; extend democratic rights to the workers' movement; open the books of industry to the workers movement; expropriate capitalist holdings and establish workers' management over state-owned enterprises; and adopt a genuinely internationalist anti-imperialist foreign policy, pledging active support to revolutionary struggles in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Bani-Sadr In the various discussions within the labour movement on the fight against unemployment, Socialist Press has consistently opposed the almost universal panacea of demanding import We have argued against this not only for the obvious reasons that such measures would, if enforced, merely export unemployment to other manufacturing countries, trigger off retaliation by rival capitalists and intensify the already catastrophic world economic recession.

Nationalist

The main argument we have raised is that the import controls policy is a nationalist policy, which, by dwelling exclusively on the supposed common, "national" interests shared by empioyers and workers, diverts from the necessary independent action by the working class to defend jobs, halt the closures, and defeat the bosses' offensive.

Instead of fighting the capitalists who are closing down plants to maximise profits, workers are lined up behind their employers in grovelling appeals to the Tory government for "selective" protection.

Instead of taking a firm stand in defence of jobs and hard-won working conditions, workers are dragooned by union leaders into accepting speed-up and rationalisation designed to make 'British" firms competitive in a cut-throat world market.

Instead of looking towards a socialist planned economy in which jobs can be created and defended through the expansion of production for social need •rather than for private profit, : the import controls policy • focusses workers' attention on futile efforts to restore the 'viability' of a crisis-wracked capitalist system, and on seeking more capitalist investment.

Everyone of these arguments against the import controls demand is underlined by the new TGWU booklet Control Imports Now! launched just prior to the Labour Party conference.

The Introduction spells out a package of policies many of which are already being argued for strongly by sections of the RPITISH CBI: a cut in the value of sterling; selective import controls; "Buy British" campaigns; use of North Sea oil cash to bolster industrial investment; and a cut in interest rates.

The IGWU departs from CBI orthodoxy only insofar as it adds in a call for "planning agreements" with major firms, and for the public sector to "take the lead in engineering the economic revival" • with all expanded role for the NEB.

But since neither policy is any more than a sick jokeparticularly under the Tory government-the differences are insigniticant. The IGWU is putting forward an employers strategy under the guise of defending jobs.

Moss Evans makes this quite clear in his introduction to the union's Ten Point Charter on import, controls, which was adopted at a special conterence in April.

"We take the view that the CBI ought to end its silence and represent the interests of its members properly, as individual industries press the government for action.

If they do not respond, and if it becomes necessary for an initiative to come from the unions, for us to forge direct links with employers' associations against the government, then we will do it." (p.4)

The booklet echoes this in its Conclusion:

"In private enterprises ... IGWU members have a crucial role to play in increasing the awareness of managent" • (p.51).

Frenzy

A parade of speakers at the conference worked themselves into a lather of nationalistic frenzy at the way unaware managers were allowing foreign' employers to destroy what they referred to as "our" industry.

Particular venom was reserved by chemical oil and rubber official John Miller for the American man-made fibre "Chevron tankers with our oil were now going straight to the United States and now the US was actually exporting fibres to this country using our oil to undermine our textiles industry!" ". (p.5).

Others boasted of the level of exploitation they had been able to impose on their members in the fight to make 3h: 73836 "British" firms competitive Tina Webo, convenor from Schreibers iron and toaster factory at Swinton, South Yorkshire, declared that:

"none of the stories about low productivity could wash with the workforce at Swinton, because it had an impressively high output. Management from a German company who paid visits had marvelled at their turnout, saying it was higher than in Germany"

Exploitation Indeed while the word "profits" was scarcely mentioned at the conference, and is tactfully omitted from almost every section of the new booklet, it is clear that the import control policy could only succeed if by increasing exploitation it bolstered the protits of major employers. This is what is meant when the TGWU declares that:

"The controls would be for a short period and would be removed when our |!! industries have regained their strength and can meet overseas competition on an equal footing" • (p.3).

The fact that escapes all of these management-minded bureaucrats is that the industries are not "ours": they are the property of a capitalist class which lives off the surplus value created by exploiting workers on the shop floor.

That capitalist class now finds its anarchic economic international Chris of a maing profitability-a crisis which is insoluble without the wholesale destruction of existing productive capacity on a world scale.. involving closures of whole industries.

In Britain the capitalist class is headed by a Tory government ruthlessly intent upon restoring the profits of the strongest sections at the expense of the rest.

Yet the TGWU, seeking a wretched allance with sections of ruined and disgruntled British exploiters in textiles, electronics and other industries, offers workers no strategy to oppose the Tories or counter the closures: instead the booklet cringingly declares that:

"The Union is asking the [Tory!] government to do its duty to the people. Dogma has to stand aside whilst the unbridled power of companies is at a TGWU booklet entitled 'Control Imports Now!', available from TGWU, Transport House, Smith Square, London WC1.

checked. Both companies anc than balance sheets" • (p.10).

The reader is then offered a dazzling array of statistics on the extent and growth of import penetration of the British market in various sectors of production.

We are told, for instance, that:

"the two million people who travel to work each day in an imported car are riding a Trojan Horse to oblivion!" (p.25).

We are told of the foreign invasion of the shaver market;

the plunge in GKN nut and bolt proauction; and a host of other "horror stories" We are told in great detail of the jobs that have been "lost"

by the tens of thousand.

But we are not told of even one single example of an attempt by the 2 million-strong union to defend such threatened jobs. We are given no hint that any action is possible against closures other than to beseech the Tories for a grant of North Sea oil cash and a control on imports.

There is not a hint or a glimmer of a call for the nationalisation of the affected industries, and no perspective whatever of a socialist planned Bogged down in their utopian plans to reallocate capitalist investment, protect "British" capitalist industry and regenerate profitability for "British" employers at the expense of the increased exploito be fully committed to the crisis-ridden system that has already produced new record levels of unemployment.

Such is the inevitable fate of the defenders of import controls. Socialists must reject such policies out of hand.

In their place must come a fighting programme of action to defend existing jobs-linked to the fight to oust the Tories.

*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 protits through exploitation.

*Work-sharing on full pay and a sliding scale of hours, would be a centrai 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 to 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.

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1 5U0 SOP 1? MPORING = TERRY SMITH takes a look

Government have to recognise that people are more important