Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

More Cuts Coming

Socialist Press no. 38, 14 July 1976 · scan p. 12 · about 881 words

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£600 FUND 3756-s lite ale 160 short of rarer Development With the holiday season now upon us it is important that the finance is not allowed to slip as comrades go off on their holidays.

We have so far received the following amounts towards the July fund. e2C0; South Lo: Do, Ayies3i Ayes Getraldo nor London say:

All commentators now predict that £1000 million of additional • public spending cuts will be announced next week by Chancellor Healey.

And among the reactionary supporters of this plan to please the world's bankers and the Confederation of British Industry is Tribunite MP Leslie Huckfield, noW Under-Secretary for In a speech to the Manchester branch of ASLEF, Huck field 'said that if Britain wanted to remain an industrial nation she should put "factories before hospitals" , adding:

"For the time being we cannot do justice to both. We have got to put factories first"

Huckfield simply admits the logic of 'left' reformism - as soon as a crisis emerges the "lefts' rush to support capitalism, shelving socialist policies as a matter for the indefinite future.

Sounding just like Callaghan, Huckfield went on to say:

"We have to expand our industrial manufacturing base so that we can afford all the social improvements to which the TASS STRIKE TASS members at Christopher! Relf's of Redditch have. been on strike a week and a half in support of their shop steward who has been sacked by management.

90% of the work carried out by Relf's is for the Leyland factories in Cowley where it is effectively blacked.. Labour Party is pledged"

This position is also that argued at the TUC special conference by speakers including AUEW President Scanion, and UPW leader Tom Jackson.

The "expansion of industry" worked for by TUC and the Labour leaders is simply the expansion of capitalist industry. And of course it ignores completely the objective crisis of capitalism which is the root of the present recession internationally.

It is the fall in the rate of profit caused by the workings of capitalism itself which has created the slump in investment and the low level of production.

It is capitalism itself which stands squarely in the way of fully utilising and developing the pro ductive fores, and whitleys, with the measures; thrown 1½ million onto the dole queues, and slashed workers' living standards.

Rather than muttering on and daydreaming about "expanding production" , while creating more unemployed, and further cutting living standards through huge spending cuts, the TUC, along with Hucktield and his Iribunite colleagues should be spearheading the fight for an alternative, socialist, strategy.

This would begin by a rejection PARTICIPATION, cont'd fr Robinson, Longbridge convenor, who is joint chairman.

These men must return to trade union principle; resign from the Ryder collaboration scheme;

and add their support to the struggle to stop these sackings.

There is no longer the slightest room for confusion. Implementing Ryder means standing foursquare as part of management.

At the same time the EPS workers must demand that the books of both British Leyland and EPS itself be opened to inspection by elected trade union committees.

A thousand jobs are at stake.

The secret deals and financial connections must be exposed, along , with further plans to reorganise and speed-up workers in the Cowley factones (where jewer workers are being taken on to do Oxford NHS, £30.

Total so far: £153.90. of wage control and all forms of tinkering with capitalism - one of the worst of which is Labour's National Enterprise : Board supported by the Labourite "lefts' Instead workers in crisis-ridden industry must be mobilised in the fight to open the books of the employers, to show to the working class the necessity for nationalisation without compensation.

At the same time preparations must be made for threatened plants to be occupied, to back the nationalisation demand, while pressuring the trade union leadership to generalise action in support of these struggles.

The expansion of industrial production can take place, around a programme of planned useful public works allocated to nationalised firms under the management of elected trade union committees.

Only such a programme can provide new jobs for the unemployed, reopen closed plants, and bring production up to full capacity.

The refusal of the 'lefts' and public service union leaders to base their verbal opposition to the cuts on a fight for such a perspective leaves them impotent in front of the determination of Healey and Callaghan to make the working class pay for the crisis.

'ont page. the work than are being sacked by EPS). All information surrounding these moves must be made available.

This will show that the only way that jobs can be protected in the long term is to make EPS a part of a planned nationalised motor industry organised and run under the management of the workers themselves.

This programme is not new to Banbury workers. The Trades Council and the EPS 5/104 T&GWU branch have for nearly a year had a policy of fighting for work sharing on full pay, the opening of the books and nationalisation in case of threatened redundancies.

Now is the time to implement this policy in practice. The fight will be supported by all principled trade unionists.

fight for £3; Central London, £45; Banbury

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 38, 14 July 1976