Chrysler Convenors Crush Jobs Fight

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SOCIALIST

ance of redundancies by the bureaucracy. response.

to mobilise the trade union movement.

itical issues to workers.

initiative towards its reconstruction.

below:

Name. • • Address.. 6 Issues. 12 Issues. 24 lasues.

would like to take out a .... issuea, I enclose L..

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Address..... I would like more information about the WSL ..21 -f2 -EA subscription to Socialist I would The trade union leadership at Chrysler have now succeeded in obtaining votes of support for the Labour government's so-called 'rescue' plan under which 8000 workers will lose their jobs.

At the time of writing the Coventry ASTMS and Maidstone factory were the only sections yet to accept the plan.

After weeks of selling the plan to the shop floor, pleading for the right to 'push ahead with negotiations' arguing for a 'Tealistic attitude, Ryton Convenor Pat Fox, who had done possibly more than anyone else to head off a fight, had the cheek to blame the workforce for the defeat!

"You can't run an occupation without an army. If you're going to оссиру you need more people attending these meetings" , he said.

No one can blame those who did not turn up. From the start it was clear that Fox and the leadership were determined to accept the plan and in the absence of a clear An important development toward a fight against local Government spending cuts was when Camden NALGO branch passed a resolution calling others to support a special conference which would discuss action to be taken unless the Labour government reverses its decision on the cuts.

But by a majority of 11 to 3 the IS dominated NAG steering alternative policy what was the point of going to mass meetings to find out what you could read in the Coventry Evening Telegraph?

And for any who did attend, there was the same abysmal display of impotence and hopelessness from Fox, to ensure they didn't return.

Losing a battle, however, is not the same as losing a war. Those who voted against the plan should push forward with a campaign to resist its effects.

At Ryton only the Chairman's casting vote decided support for the plan from the stewards; at Stoke there was a large vote against and at Linwood, stewards' acceptance was only due to the white-collar representatives brought in to swell the vote.

At Linwood, International Socialists member Willie Lee spoke against acceptance at the mass meeting despite Convenor Carty's ruling that he must resign his steward's position in order to do so.

Lee's principled action and the stand taken by other workers, including those at the Maidstone factory where 600 face the sack, show NAG members should reject the steering committee decision and fight for the re-establishment of living standards, services and jobs.

Geoffrey Drain, the General Secretary of NALGO, and other prominent members have made threatening noises toward the government on the cuts issue, now is the time to bring them and other so called Labour lefts into an arena where positive action is the order of the day.

In this period, Terpit is on their actions that groups and individuals must be judged, and not RAIL This motion Oxford NUR 6th: that fighting spirit does exist. Al that is missing is a concrete polic! and a principled leadership.

DEMANDS

All those who voted against thi plan and argued for nationalisation should now consider strongly thi importance of demands such a work-sharing on full pay an particularly 'open the books' demands which strengthen and dev elop the resistance and militancy o workers, and around which a rea struggle to defend jobs and condit ions and force nationalisation car begin.

The present leadership has beel shown to be completely bankrupt Those like the Communist Part! which built-up the so-called 'left convenors, such as Carty at Lin wood, and attacked the demand fo occupation as ultra-left have player their part in knifing the struggle.

They, along with all the othe so-called leaders who have betrayer the campaign to defend jobs anc led their members onto the dol queues must be forced out anc replaced by those who will fight.

was passed by the Branch on January "This branch demands that the NUR executive refuse to negotiate with the BRB or the government any cuts or economies in the railway service. Furthermore if any such cuts are proposed we insist that Brother Weighell make good his threat of December 16th and instruct the 10 NUR sponsored MPs to withdraw all support from the Labour government antil that Labour government takes steps to guarantee the jobs and condition

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Wednesday, 14th 1976.

that both denied the need .to organise the working class as the vanguard fighter for revolution.

As an attack on the Marxist method, Economism arose sharply in the Russian movement during the strike wave of the 1890s. It spread its roots further in the

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THE WORKERS LEAGUE

• FIGHTING CUTS