Linwood must learn lessons of UCS!

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Women live under the constant barrage of obscenities hurled at them by the British Army.

• At home, women face the threat of early morning raids when the Army break into homes, force all the family at gunpoint into one room while the house is ransacked.

This often results in the woman or members of her family being arrested, taken to a police or army barracks and interrogated for hours and days at a time.

Many nationalist. women have been murdered by the British Army, while many more have had to bear the burden of grief when members of their families have been killed, tortured or imprisoned.

Daily terror

In addition to facing the daily terror of the occupying British • Army nationalist working class areas face the constant threat of Loyalist terror gang attacks.

There are daily attacks on schoolchildren, going to and returning from school. There is the constant threat of Loyalist assassinations and petrol bombing of homes.

The recent spate of assassinations and bomb attacks are part of an upsurge in right wing terior fuelled by the growing militancy and combativity of the Catholic working class.

It is against this background of oppression and terror that the courage and determination of those women who take up the anti-imperialist struggle must be seen.

To speak out openly against the forces of oppression, to join the Republican movement or any anti-imperialist organisation demands untold sacrifice.

For women to take up the struggle demands rot only a campaign against closure into the ground.

Both Ron Rigby and Jimmy. Livingstone, the leading figures in the shop stewards committee, have worktorce perspective that can only lead to disillusion and defeat.

Claiming that they are a "responsible" leadership (responsible to whom?) they have given the go-ahead for five day per week working from now until closure.

Sections of the workforce have even gone on to overtime working, despite having already received their redundancy notices.

In the meantime, they argue, the Tory government and the Peugeot management must be pressured into securing a year's "stay of execution" , whilst they seek another prospective buyer for the plant.

The continual references to a "UCS-style" campaign are indicative of the dangers in fiont.

The campaign in 1971-2 to prevent the closure of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, led by the Communist Party members, Reid and Airlie, was, under the guise of a "work in" , directed at finding an alternative buyer and finished up with the implementation of the Ridley Plan for carving up the yeards, the sale of the John Brown yard to Marathon and the concentration of production at Govan.

There must be no illusions about UCS in 1972 having been some kind of victory for the working. class in the West of Scotland. It was an outright betrayal which has had extremely bad effects ever since in terms of confusing workers involved in redundancy and • closure struggles about the correct course of action to be pursued.

(For the best analysis of the UCS campaign readers should consult the pamphlet by Stephen Johns, Reformism on the Clyde, New Park Publications, 1973).

Principled

Throughout the struggle Reid and Airlie rejected the policy of turning the work-in an all-out occupation and making the UCs campaign the focal point for a struggle to bring down the Tory government.

There were then principled socialists, like Joe Moriarty at Clydebank, who argued for that course of action in mass meetings, in face of the virulent slander and windy rhetoric of James Reid.

In that situation, with a mass movement mobilised behind Reid, it was extremely difficult to turn the tide of the campaign in a principled socialist direction, but it should never be forgotten that there were those who had the conviction and courage to stand up and argue for these policies.

Those stewards at Linwood today who are now (but this time in a much more favourable context) taking up a similar struggle, must be given every encouragement and support.

The miasma of confusion and lies spread by the leaderships of the STUC and the Labour Party must be swept aside.

The first lie that must be nailed is that the Peugeot company had ever any intention of making Linwood a going concern.

Anyone who is acquainted with the Eurofinance Report commissioned by the unions will know that Peugeot took over Chrysler UK primarily to lay hands on the extensive chain of retail outlets that company had built up in Britain. Now they have secured that at a knock-down price, Linwood must go and so also must the Coventry operation.

Let us have no illusions on this score. Begging Peugeot to stay at Linwood is less productive than spitting in the wind. • What of the other so-called: 'alternatives"? Much .. has been made of the possibilities of attracting Nissan-Datsun to take over the Linwood site.

That is as much a non-starter as pressuring Peugeot to stay. Nissan has made it clear that they require a greenfield site to build up their operations from scratch. • Another kite being flown is that the Tory government should be pressured into improving regional development grants so as to attract industrialists to take over the Linwood plant and break it up into smaller units.

Ludicrous

Strathclyde University Business School has reckoned that, on past experience, for that to be a viable propostion, 200 new enterprises would have to be attracted to take up premises on the site. To even conceive of such a possibility in the midst of the present recession with companies folding daily is too ludicrous for words.

However much the leadership of the STUC and the Labour Party may try to twist and turn, the policy of occupation remains the only way forward.

How can the unions involved call upon other trade unionists, such as dockers, to black Talbot brodes When are bes producing them? Scotland and throughout Britain would immediately be mobilised for an all-out confrontation with the Tory government.

The bringing down of this government must be seen as the first step towards the creation of a government which, truly represents the interests of the working class, a government which will expropriate Peugeot assets, nationalise Linwood under the control of the workforce, invest in an integrated car plant and expand production as part of a planned socialist economy.

MERSEYSIDE

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Page 4 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday March 4, 1981 As Labour councils up and down the country decide on rate levels for the coming financial year the question of how to respond to Tory attacks on local government finance is sharply posed. Socialist Press has consistently argued for a policy of mobilising the working class behind Labour councils in a confrontation with the Tories. But some of Labour councils have argued for raising rates in order to 'buy time' to prepare a movement against the Tories. Lambeth council leader TED KNIGHT is recognised as expressing this view most consistently. Socialist Press supporters KEITH WHITE and IAN SWINDALE recently, interviewed him and the first part of this interview is printed below. The second part will appear next week. KW: You talk about building a