Chrysler Cooks the Books

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of Parliament against unemployment, November 26t Chrysler workers on lobby When an employer conducts a campaign throughout the press stressing how bankrupt he is, it is time to watch out. The ground is being cleared for an all-out attack on jobs, conditions and wages.

This is clearly the case with the Chrysler crisis. But Chrysler is not simply a British question, but part of the world motor industry. The crisis shows the crucial importance of the fight to end business secrets and expose capitalist manipulation.

An indication of the international impact of the Chrysier closure threat was the joint meeting last month of shop stewards representFa Ford work in in ery Germany.

Though there was no intention to prepare immediate joint demands against Ford, a statement was issued expressing solidarity with the workers of Chrysler UK threatened with the sack. The statement recognises that at stake are the jobs of 25,000 Chrysler and 30,000 working for dealers, as well as those working for suppliers.

WORST HIT

Apparently the worst hit of the multi-national car giants in the international capitalist crisis, Chrysier's losses are still mounting up, even while both General Motors and Ford have recently reported increased earnings.

The Ford stewards meeting highlights the need for the working class to fight Chrysler's threat to close down its UK subsidiary on an international basis.

The US-owned Chrysler Corporation has subsidiaries all around the world: South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Columbia, France, Peru, Spain, Turkey, Mexico. It also has a 13% stake in the Japanese Mitsubishi Motor Corporation.

Yet, since every capitalist coun try is affected by the international crisis of capitalism, it was astonishing to hear the claim of a Chrysler spokesman at the beginning of last month, that "Chrysler UK is the Chrysler Corporation's only major foreign subsidiary not making a profit"

UNTI Corporation's other companies outside the US. Except for Chrysler in Argentina where inflation runs at three figure levels, the other foreign subsidiaries besides Chrysler UK were, he claimed, "basically in good shape"

Chrysler's claim is that they have lost about £65 million since 1964 on its UK operations, having recorded losses in seven of the last eleven years. Losses are said to have been £17m in 1974, and £16m in the first six months of 1975 alone.

It seems plain, if we accept Chrysier's figures, that practically all the international division's losses of the past 9 months are to be attributed to the British subsidiary.

INJECTIONS

These enormous losses have been accompanied, since 1964, by cash injections into Chrysler UK by the US parent company - estimated at well over £50m.

In spite of these continuing 'losses" , the present threat to close down in the UK runs counter to assurances given to the British government over the last few years, and repeated earlier this year in a letter to Wedgewood-Benn - who was Industry Secretary at the time.

This letter talked of "making every possible management effort" to remain a "strong competitor in the British market"

For a company whose share of the British market had declined from 12.3% in 1967 to 4.2% in September of this year, this sounds a hollow promise. But in fact the plan to wind down UK operations seems to have begun two years ago, as key personnel, including senior executives, were moved to France.

Hand-in-hand with this rundown Chrysler seems to have had a two-pronged plan to squeeze more profits from the working class in Britain.

First, "participation" committees were to be set up, to use the influence of convenors and stewards in the effort to introduce rationalisation, spped-up and redundancies. £100 'bonuses' were offered to workers in their frantic drive to win acceptance of this echeme This exorbit - inder of the UK subsidiary would not be allowed to improve until a "meaningful way" had been found to tie trade union leaders in with management so as to ensure speed-up along with undisrupted production.

Today the real implications of "participation" with capitalist management have been brutally exposed at Chrysler UK.

The second part of Chrysler's plan was to get financial support from the government - paid for through workers' tax payments -via Wedgewood-Benn's Industry Department.

UNSTUCK

This has now come unstuck bec ause of the increasing seriousness of British capitalism's crisis. Weaker sections of industry can no longer bepropped up by the state, and are being closed down.

Wilson's replacement of Wedgewood-Benn by Eric Varley at the Dol marked the government's change of policy - dictated by the miserable laws of capitalist crisis.

Finance for Industry, a consortium of private banks, turned down a request by Chrysler UK for a £35m loan - apparently because of the subsidiary's poor creditworthiness.

But there is every reason to think that Chrysler's own figures have been specially framed to force the closure in the UK and the streamlining and concentration of production elsewhere.

Detailed figures of losses from Chrysler' UK are the only ones available for Chrysler's whole international operations. A Chrysler sidiaries were unavailable:

"We never break out these num numbers. The only numbers we break out are for the companies which report their numbers to the country they operate in, and turns out that Chrysler UK is the only one doing that regularly."

This strange coincidence - losses occurring only where figures of earnings must be publicly revealed - suggest that Chrysler may be deliberately arranging for its international division's accounting losses to be concentrated in Chrysler UK.

The possibility of manipulating what are called "transfer prices is one which has arisen more and more widely with the increased importance of multinational firms.

As well as this intra-corporate trade in goods, there is the provision of services such as, example, the provision of research and development results, rentals of equipment, administration, and loans.

The price at which these goods and services are transferred between subsidiaries of the same multinational will not be the same as the price which would be fixed if they were independent firms. The transfer prices will be fixed in the interests of the profitability of the group as a whole.

Markets are thus rigged on a vast scale to produce paper profits and losses, and to open the way to sackings, as well as such things as tax avoidance and speculation on the foreign exchanges.

How this sort of thing works in practice can be seen from an investigation carried out by the Labour Research Department at the end of June, headed: Chrysler UK: artificial losses through manipulated pricing.

Pointing out that Chrysler UK's apparently poor profitability had often been used as an argument against wage claims, the LRD showed that Chrysler's claimed trading profit per vehicle was around half that of its nearest rivals.

LOW WAGES nothing to do with it wage claims at Chi ysler . their wage payment s per only Ixhalls. BL Vauxhal BL Vauxhall per per 'ehicle 1973 1974 -21 Ana annual Nor is Chrysler's productivity in terms of vehicles produced per employee lower than its competitors.

But there is a very sharp discrepancy when the average price per vehicle exported is examined.

Thus Chrysler's price per vehicle exported in 1973 was around £400 less than the price British Leyland was charging, and by 1974 this had increased to £600.

Vehicle Exported 1973 1050 1248 1064 1184 1493 1801 2035 Source: Annual reports and SMMT figures for production and new registrations)

Of course there are difficulties in comparing the figures which include export of engines and vehicles in kit form. (Both BL and Chrysler export large numbers of vehicles in this way). But it is highly questionable whether these factors could account for the whole of the difference.

This is particularly mysterious within the UK, when the average price of vehicles from all manufacturers is so similar. For exampie, in 1974 the average prices in the UK were Chrysler £1,620, BL £1,750 and Ford £1,550.

The US • Chrysler Corporation would gain nothing from these low export prices if overseas sales went outside the company. But in almost all export markets Chrysler UK's sales go in the first instance to other subsidiaries of the Chrysler Corporation itself.

SUBSIDIARY

Since 1968, Chrysler International SA, a subsidiary registered in Switzerland has handled the marketing of UK products in 140 countries. This company has not, despite an apparent legal requirement to do so, filed any accounts for inspection since 1969.

But in that year it showed a trading profit of around £12m, (twice that of Chrysler UK!). And in Switzerland taxes on profits are only 10%!

In the last three years alone Chrysler UK has exported some 390,000 vehicles. If each of these had been sold at even 80% of the average figure for BL exports, rather than the actual figure, Chrysler UK would have been £93m better off.

Chrysler attempted to reply to the Labour Research Department in July 1975. In its reply, Chrysler denied that the Swiss Chrysler International S.A. handles its exports, claiming that nearly 80% of the company's exports are handled by Chrysler U.K. Exports Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Chrysler U.K.

Yet Chrysler U.K. Exports was only set up as recently as 28th. June 1974, and in the first six months of operation had total expenses of 'only £85,000! It seems virtually impossible that 80% of the company's exports of £98 million could be handled for such So what exactly is the role of Chrysler U.K. Exports, and who handled the sale of Chrysler's cars overseas before 28th. June 1974?

'BRITISH'

The other 20% of exports, according to Chrysler's statement:

"do not go through Chrysler International S.A., but are handled pany Ltd., (COTC), another British company.

But it turns out that COTC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Swiss Chrysler International S.A.!

In 1974 COTC handled £52 million of exports without any fixed assets apart from a €100,000 leasehold.

Once again the role of this company is shadowy. Why is it a subsidiary of a Swiss company rather than of Chrysler U.K.? And what are its dealings with the Swiss company which has filed no accounts since 1969?

MI LEADING Chrysler also claimed that the figures on export prices given above are "misleading" '. But Chrysler has the figures which could prove their case, if they are right. Why are they kept secret? And why won't the trade union leaders, who have continuously refused to give any lead to Chrysler workers, demand the full account books of Chrysler International be made available to trade union committees?

Occupation of Chrysler plants is already being discussed as a reply to the close down threat. But while the Labour government has secret talks with Ricardo, it suppresses the "Think Tank" report on the motor industry - prepared by McKinsey & Company, the AmerAmerican business consultants, at a fee of £160,000.

This report is said to point out that the world's "over-capacity" will worsen in the next few years with South Korea, Persia, Spain, the Soviet Union and East European countries bringing new factfactories into operation.

FACTS

No meaningful negotiations can be entered into by the unions involved in Chrysler until the facts are known. The first demand must be that Chrysler must open its books for inspection by elected trade union committees. Only in this way will it be possible to see what the situation really is.

But effectively to force Chrysler to open its books is an international question, since the "books" (in so far as they are kept!) are extremely partial.

The call must go out therefore to all trade unionists throughout the international combine: Force Chrysler to open the books! In revealing the details of the manipulation and the real state of the British subsidiary, and assisting the fight against sackings here, Chrysler workers in other countries can also see what could be lined up for them, and prepare to fight every management attack.

The exposure of the accounts is only the first step however towards the fight for the complete nationalisation of Chrysler U.K., not along the lines of previous reformist nationalisation with a view to mass redundancies and speed-up, but under elected trade union committees of workers management.

STEWARDS

To this end, Chrysler stewards must call a joint meeting with British Leyland and other motor industry stewards, together with stewards from the components industry, to begin a coordinated fight for a planned socialist pro duction of cars within a national ised automative industry.

And to such a conference must be invited delegates from the inter national subsidiaries of the motor industry multinationals. A joint co ordinated international fight on the demands of the Transitional Pro gramme is now the only surt defence of jobs and conditions it any car factory.

by Dann Intosh

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nOn-POLITICAL 'VOICE A Report from the Womens Voice Rally In Manchester, November IS Right to Work campaign - stunts divert from fight in unions from the Womens Women's Voice, (an International Socialist publication), held a rally in Manchester atsended by 600 women, on November 29th. 'Socialist Worker' claims that the Rally was one of the "most articdate expressions of revolintionary feminism in Britain since the 1920's" and that it "came to grips with the desperate crisis affecting working "omen all over the country."

In fact the Rally failed to give those women who came any printipled programmatic perspective to The rally was run as a forum to Exchange 'experiences' from local lomens Voice groups to learn from their involvement in the abortion campaign, from their opposition to the cuts in nursery and education spending, in the health Service and to launch a campaign for the right to work.

There were no signs of a perspective being hammered out to Jake working women forward. The message from the platform, and taken up by speaker after speaker, was simply that working class vomen should place no reliance on lae Labour government, women #UPs, or the trade union leaders to defend them from the attacks of tapitalism.

Speeches described how the TUC sold out struggles of working women at Ladbrooks and Yarnolds and how it consistently ignores the specific discrimination women face. in short, the rally described from a bt of "first hand experience the humiliation and degradation women sutter in class society, and how iney are the first to be singled out to bear the brunt of the capitalst crisis. But having got this far, Whigs and Hunters. The Origins of the Black Ac rEP Thompson, published by Allen Lane Reviewed by JOHN DOHERTY It is always a pleasure to zad a new work by EP Thomșon, characterised as it is by astonishing scholarship, a gripping and poetic prose style, and a passionate commitment to the cairse of the poor and lowntrodden.

This new book, while at Est it seems to deal with an →bscure topic in legal history, severtheless casts many shatts of light on the nature of class •pression in early capitalist tociety.

However much Thompson tells is that is usetul and interesting, However well he says it, it must be aaid that this new work represents • further step away from Marxism ay one who was in his day a founder of the anti-Stalinist New Left, and more and more makes statements that tie his implicit idealism to a quite explicit defence of reformism. Despite appearances, alas, this is sot Marxism.

It is not easy to outline briefly main topics covered in this book. The 'Black Act' of the title was passed in 1723, and contained more capital offences that any other legislation in British legal Under its stipulations people pollid be, and were, sent to the allows for disguising themselves to undertake poaching of virtually my kind, not just of royal deer, which the Act was first of all mined at, but also of rabbits, fish innd even wood.

This legislation was passed after • series of attacks on royal deer and those who tried to protect them in the royal forest areas of Hampshire and Berkshire. The poalobers "blacked' their faces, either to hunt came in the first olace. OI Voice Rally In Manchester, Novemt the rally got no further.

For all IS left rhetoric about the need to "build amongst women workers" , they ignore, just as the bourgeois feminists do in the women's liberation movement, the question of developing a principled leadership in the working class based on a working class programme.

DIVERSION

The only practical proposals put forward, apart from continuing the present campaigns on women's issues, was a diversionary call to recruit women into the IS 'Right to Work' Committees.

The IS "programme" for these committees is a hodge podge of minimum demands for a 35 hour week, overtime ban, and £6 now! In other words accept a wage cut! These demands could be advanced by any reformist who refuse to jailers.

The poachers were often comparatively wealthy men, with some amount of landholdings, and with virtually unanimous support ir : thier local community, as agains the royal forest authorities, the mag istrates, and the bishops and other landlords.

Thompson describes something of the "forest people', small who lived on the edge of land held by the crown, and whose livelihood was regulated by a complex network of semi-feudal 'customary rights' Though they were not a large proportion of the population, their story is of general significance, typical of the conflicts between many sections of the rural poor, and the pre-industrial squirearchy, who were determined to claim their "rights" to what had previously been considered their property in order to accumulate wealth.

This was very much part of the general process whereby the capital accumulation necessary for industrialisation actually took place. The destruction of common rights through the more well-known process of enforced enclosure was the form this took through most of the countryside.

A century later, it was Marx's consideration of the debates on the theft of wood irthe Rhine Provincial Assembly that led him to see laws as an expression of something other than 'the spirit of the age', and to come to the defence of the 'customary right' of the poor.

BREAKDOWN

Thompson consciously this, in showing how the forest laws in Britain. and the s truggle 29th by Julia Kellett fight for work-sharing on full pay and defend the independent interests of the working class by fighting the pay laws. Even the TUC leaders could support them!

This orientation completely sidesteps any struggle within the organisations of the working class. Instead of placing demands on the union leaders to expose them to the mass of workers in a fight for leadership, the IS organisationally seeks to "bypass" the bureaucracy and leaves unchallenged their positions of authority in the working class.

Instead of demanding that the 'lefts' in the Labour Party take up a struggle to remove Wilson and the right-wing, IS ignores the 'lefts' and allows them the possibility of heading off the workers' movement.

The IS minimum programme and calls to oppose everything under the sun (except workers' participation!) is not a revolutiondown of the customary rights of the poor to pasturage, wood supplies, some meat, and other essential means to livelihood. Thus he says:

"The rights and claims of the poor, if inquired into at all, received . . perfunctory compensation smeared over with condescension and poisoned with charity. Very often they were simply redefined as crimes: poaching, wood theft, trespass".

The 'Blacks' of 1722-3 were in some cases executed, though a number of them escaped and were never heard of again. Their activities were not a major item in the press of the time, but the campaign against them left a penal code which was vicious, ferocious and murderous during more than a centur "this astonishing example of legislative overkill" › was passed not because of great publicity against ithe "blacks' . The ferocity of the Act of 1723 was partly accidental but must also be explained as a reflection of the political and social tensions of the early period of the Hanoverian monarchs.

In 1723, the ruling groups felt in no way secure in their position If this was a time usually portrayed in the history books as one of peace and comparative prosperity it was under the surface a brutal and violent one.

The "blacks' represented a challenge to authority, which if not important in itself might neverthe less be seen as part of a combination of Jacobites, criminals, and the rural poor.

The 1715 effort to. restore the Stuart dynasty had been defeated but there was still continual talk of real and imagined plots to the same end.

Thompson describes the politica system of the period as akin to a 'banana republic', and it must be said that there is something in this description. The power of the Whig oligarchy, and those like Walpole who established it, was bason the open use of the characteristic political methods of an unchallenged bourgeoisie.

Francis Atterbury, the Jacobite Bishop of Rochester, did not exaggerate when he said that Walpole's "whole administration is built or corruption and bribery. which he ary perspective to liberate women.

We reprint here sections of a recent leaflet put out by the WSL which takes up politically the inadequacies of the National Abortion Campaign (NAC) and shows how democratic demands like the right to free abortion and equal pay (demands of the women's liberation movement) can only be fought for as part of the struggles of the working class around a programme of transitional demands.

The crisis of leadership hits hard at. working class women - isolated in the family, working in small sweated factories, and ignored by the union and Labour leaders.

Women will not be defended from these attacks without a struggle for an alternative leadership and programme within the working class.

"In Britain, in the face of the TUC's refusal to fight for abortion on demand, the NAC leadership now leads a : struggle against the reappointment of the Select Committee which followed the fall of the James White Bill.

To separate the abortion issue, as does the NAC, from other attacks on the working class is to turn the movement on abortion into a pressure group, lobbying MPs in Parliament.

By restricting the struggle for women's equality solely to a campaign to oppose reactionary legislation it spreads the illusion that there can be an end to the oppression of working class women within capitalism.

We fight for free abortion on demand because women should have the sole right to decide whether or not they have children.

But a legal right to abortion will not give a woman any social choice about her future. A legal right can never be a social freedom in class society.

The struggle for women's rights is inseparable from the struggles of the working class. The NAC leadership cannot lead a consistent struggle for women's equality by confining itself to the single issue of abortion. than any of his worst predecessors ever did"

The running of the royal forests was a typical example of how such corruption could be exercised. Those who challenged the power of the landlords on the edge of the forests were not simply against the social system, but they were alsc against its political organisation.

Thompson concludes by attacking conservative historians of the period of the type of J H Plumb and Namier, who emphasised its stability and peacefulness. 'The Hanoverian Whigs were" , he says, "a hard lot of men. And they remind us that stability, no less than revolution, may have its own kind of terror"

At this point, after saying he might have been "wise to end here" , Thompson goes on to write a concluding section of over ten pages which tells us something of the latest stageing post in his political and ideological itenary - the one time Marxist rebel of the 1950's.

There is, he says, a "highly schematic Marxism" , which would say that since law is "part of the superstructure". , it has no interest in itself.

Supporters of this somewhat arid doctrine says Thompson might argue that since "law is no more than a mystifying and pompous way in which class power is regist: ered and executed, then we need not waste our labour in studying its history and forms"

But what Red Herring Marxist is there who would support such a view of this? Perhaps Thompson is remembering the mechanical doctrines of the Stalinist CP of his youth. But what serious Marxist is there in 1975 who would deny that the law developed in the seventeenth century to oppose the arbitrary power of the monarchy on behalf of the bourgeoisie might in future generations be turned in part against the bourgeoisie itself?

And who would deny that in so turning (as with protection for trade union rights, for instance), that law serves still to soften the collision batween opposed classes within the state, and thus preserve the stability of the ruling class? "Rights" , once conceded, are delinastad and enciralad hi a frampunri Free abortion on demand can only be gained as part of the fight to defend the National Health Service.

Equal pay for equal work can only be achieved as part of the struggle to defend working class standards of living through a sliding scale of wages - point for point increases based on a working class cost of living index, drawn up by committees involving trade unionists and housewives.

The increase in unemployment amongst women is severer than that of any other section of the working class - registered female unemployment rose by 121% over last year. The demand for the right of women to work has to be advanced as part of 'a programme to defend all jobs.

The WSL demands that the books of all firms which threaten short time working or redundancies be opened to inspection by trade union committees; and on the basis of the information revealed, the case for nationalisation under workers' management advanced. The government has to be forced to provide state contracts to keep the firms running.

The call for all available work to be shared out amongst the existing work force must be taken up under the control of trade union committees.

Women have to be prepared to fight in the unions against the bureaucracy for equal job opportunities, maternity leave, nursery facilities. The WL calls for all the unemployed to be organised in trade unions.

Fight for the unity of the employed and unemployed! Force the trade union leadership to mobilise the strength of the working class to fight for the special needs of women!

It is only in the context of an overall programme that it means anything to struggle for women's equality. Today only a revolutionary leadership can advance and fight for such a programme.

way to prevent a threat to the social order. But they do represent a new starting point in the struggle to overthrow that order and such rights: (other examples are free speech, habeas corpus, the right to free assembly) are the first to come under attack from the ruling class when it feels threatened in its domination.

Butüwhy has Thompson felt it necessary to assert his view with so much passion? Because of the conclusion he wants to draw that: "the regulation and reconciliation of conflicts through the rule of law . . • seems to me a cultur al acheivement of universal significance"

So there we have it. All this is despite the fact that he has shown in some detail "a political oligarchy inventing callous and repressive laws to serve its own interests". Yet he has fouad the "reconciliation", the lack of conflict, even by the bourgeoisie, to be a desirabld universal human goal.

Surely in 1975 this lines up Thompson with Plumb, Namier and the rest in his concern for some ideal "reconciliation of interests rather than their own resolution through conflict? Is this not the view of our own reformists, our own Tories and capitalists?

This political degeneration goe alongside a lurch towards subjectivism. We are presented in this concluding section of the book with a picture of Thompson himself:

"I sit here in my study, at the age of fifty, the desk and the floor piled high with five years of notes, xeroxes, rejected drafts, the clocks once again moving into the small hours". In a harsh and cruel world "I stand on a very narrow ledge, watching the tides come up"

Here, teh ultimate subjectivist seeks a road from his own tortured soul to the stormy shores of viable historiography.

But is he going to find the conflict, the contradiction that lies at the heart of things, the struggle that tears apart human society?

It seems he is going to concede to the bourgeoisie their power to regulate society. But they can do so no longer, Mr Thompson! What then can we conclude? How then

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spokesman announced that detailed earnings figures for the other sub-