The Communist Party keeps Thatcher in office

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Margaret Thatcher's crisis ridden and reactionary regime has been kept in power by the conscious and deliberate intervention of the Communist Party.

This startling statement is the only serious conclusion which can be drawn from a close examination of the recent sell-out of the wages struggle inside BL.

With Tory policy in disarray and Thatcher facing divisions within the Tory Party itself, BL workers were poised to spearhead an emerging struggle which could have brought the Tories down.

Yet under these conditions Jack Adams, a leading member of the Communist Party, mounted the rostrum at the decisive mass meeting at the Longbridge plant and put the recommendation for acceptance of the 6.8% offer.

There is no doubt that Adams was putting official Communist Party policy. Despite massive cover by the media of the Longbridge meeting the Morning Star the following day failed to even mention that it had taken place.

Once again the Tories have been protected by the trade union bureaucrats, just as they were during the steel strike.

Now because of the actions of the Communist Party, BL workers, far from spearheading a fight against the Tories, have been used as the lever to bring in Thatcher's 6% incomes policy.

Interesting

The importance of this betrayal, linked. as it is to the staggering determination of the trade union leadership as whole not to confront Thatcher, makes a detailed examination of the course of events both interesting and necessary.

BL workers were sold-out last year as well. Then they voted for strike action by a 2-1 majority in a postal ballot jointly conducted by the trade unions.

Then Duffy put the boot in. This lover of postai ballots suddenly decided not to accept the result. He conducted his own "straw poll" within the AUEW, and then instructed his members to keep working. This year it was different. The national officers and General Secretaries played their inevitable role; but it was the convenors who played the decisive part and hence the crucial importance of the Communist Party.

The question of democracy is very central indeed within BL and can never for a moment.be separated from the struggle for wages or the struggle to defend jobs or conditions.

problems in BL is the three- Iranian landachin Manging over years of "worker participation" under the Ryder plan at the time of the Labour government.

This was class collaboration to perfection and the Communist Party from the outset was its most consistent supporter, describing it as "a step towards workers' control"

When BL moved towards the corporate bargaining system (strongly opposed by Socialist Press and the Workers Socialist League) the same collaborators became the negotiators; and even after participation formally ended, early in 1978, it continued to flourish in the heads of the convenors and in particular in the ranks of the Communist Party.

This meant that they all supported the Confed when it set up a completely unrepresentative corporate negotiating structure over which BL workers could have no control Whatsoever.

The JNC lias 27 members. Seven of them are national officials, and the majority of the 20 convenors represent small numbers • of workers, mostly with craft interests.

The vast majority of BL workers are represented by a small minority on the committee.

The JNC reports to (but is not accountable to) a conference of nearly 200 convenors which is even less democratic.

They each have one votedespite the fact that a tiny handful of mostly TGWU convenors represent the vast majority of workers and the rest speak only for tiny minority interests.

This system was accepted by the Communist Party and others because they were on it, and because they knew it would be an effective block to strike action.

The 1980 claim of £17.21/ 20% across the board) was in fact originated not by the JNC but by the Combine Committee at one of the sparsely attended meetings it has held on rare occasions since it was destroyed by participation.

"Single item"

There, Jack Adams proposed that a "single item" claim of 20% be adopted which would be "clear to the members"

In moving it, Adams stressed that the important thing was to Leyland were still strong, it became clear that workers would be out once the strike started.

• Management acted quickly. They knew where to go and what to play on-bonus.

Top managers in each plant called in convenors to tell them that the 6.8% would not be improved, but money could be earned through bonus payments.

Intimidation was thrown in for good measure. Bob Fryer was told that management knew what he had said inside the JNC meeting and they took a serious view of it. They told him his "card would be marked" if he continued to support strike action.

The pressures were effective. On Wednesday an emergency JNC meeting was called and they promptly agreed to talk about bonus. They had no mandate to talk about bonus from the members or the stewards and they were in complete violation of the original combine committee decision.

But it was even worse. They then decided to put forward their own proposals for a bonus scheme sell-out!

Bonus

They, proposed that five bonus points (£1.25) be guaranteed on top of the 6.8% offer. (A proposal which if conceded would amount to (surprise, surprise!) 8.2%-equal to the Confed settlement).

Unfortunately for them, management was prepared to agree, but only for an eight week period.

14 hours of negotiations succeeded in "improving" this miserable deal to 12 weeks-

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OMMUN- SOCAL CONTRAL SOCIAL CONFLIGT