[and wages in the car industry. The world-wide…]

Scan page 1

and wages in the car industry.

The world-wide recession has brought a slump in demand for cars which has sealed the coffin on the boom' years in which simple trade union militancy could drive up wages and maintain or improve gonditions. The detence, oI.Jobs_1S now the most political of quistion.

The cut-throat fight better the morenolies for an increased share - of a declining car market forces them on to the offensive - demanding unpaid speed-up, redundancies and rationalisation' of production in the form of plant closures. This This rationalisation, because the crisis is a world crisis, takes place on an international level. This demands new measures to fight it effectively and defend jobs.

CLOSURE occupation, 'negotiated' for thi plant to shut for the whole oi December, and allowed the work force to leave the plant with only slender prospects that many i any) of them will work there again Chrysler and Innocenti thus highlight the central need for a programme to fight the attacks of the employers and defend all the jobs in the motor industry. No problems can be solved in the existing system of ownership.

At Innocenti, there is talk of Fiat buying the factory: in Britain the Labour government seems certain to try to stagger the closures by providing a limited subsidy for what the Financial Times calls "a massively scaled-down Chrysler operation."

But in the dwindling market for union committees is not almea, therefore, at pressuring' Chrysler or Leyland to maintain overseas investments, but to show clearly to the international workers' movement the urgent need to take car production out of the hands of the private profiteers, into the hands of the working class, without compensation.

Our demand of nationalisation in defereen of jobs is these quite diferent from the various confused reformist calls for 'nationalisation' made in relation to Chrysler, which simply envisage the firm being made profitable (by speed-up, redundancies and closures) under state ownership - as at Alfred Herbert's in Coventry, where 1,200 workers have been sacked after the state takeover.

The demand must be linked to the fight for workers management, and the defence of all jobs through work-sharing on full pay.

On Sunday December 7th demonstrations gathered in several cities in Spain to demand a complete amnesty for political prisoners. Close to Madrid's Cavabanchel prison, as elsewhere, the demonstrating workers were dispersed by the police with their customary brutality.

Large numbers were injured in baton charges and by charges of mounted police. Over 200 people were arrested, 100 of whom were detained.

REARRESTED

Earlier in the day Marcelino Camacho, the Labour Commission leader released with great publicity a week earlier in Juan Carlos "amnesty' was rearrested, along with other former prisoners.

These new acts of savage pression follow similar treatment given to a demonstration outside the Cavabanchel jail on Norante 27th and the police murder of a militant of Buskadi (Basque)

nationalist movement ETA in the same week.

These are the first fruits of the "more just society" which King Juan Carlos has promised! They prove that Franco's fascist successors, for all their soothing talk, are prepared to maintain a level of repression in no way less vicious than that of their old master.

THE REVOLUTION AFM leadership, and the refusal of the CP to defend the gains of the soldiers and workers together with the complete confusion and unpreparedness of the centrist groups.

COMPLAINING:

The PRP (the group with strong links with the British International Socialists), who claimed to be running the so-called "revolutionary accord" established in August, now complain loudly that the failure of the mobilisation was brought about by the pro-Stalinist sections of the military. But how could the left-wing officers and soldiers have found political leadership from a Stalinist party which had tied itself hand and foot to the capitalist state, and which had a minister in the government?

It is precisely the inability of any tendency in Portugal to build a movement based on a clear understanding of the treachery of Stalinism and reformism which has left the workers, soldiers and peasants leaderless in the face of organised attempts by the right wing to reassert control over the army and the state itself, REPRESSION Indeed, since these provocations have been defeated there has been a continual round of repression. There was a curfew in Lisbon on 26th November which lasted to 2nd December. All wage negotiations have bee suspended for a vear -