700 Lobby Against Ryder

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Huge hostility both to the effects of Leyland's Ryder rationalisation and speed up plan and to those convenors and full time T&GWU officials who are collaborating with management to implement it was voiced in a massive demonstration through Oxford on July 15th.

700 workers - nearly all the available workforce from the Export Packing Services factory neat Banbury - travelled over in fleets of coaches and cars to march from the Cowley car factories to lobby the T&GWU District Office, demanding to see District Secretary David Buckle.

STOP CUTS........ Cont'd PHOTO: Chrle Davies, Report Healey. artion?

Or will they continue to abrogate their responsibilities by saying that such things are the perogative of the unions not the politicians?

Will they continue to refuse. to fight to remove the Çallaghan/ Healey leadership which is a necessary part of stopping this government's anti-working class policies!

It is the answer to these questions, and not merely their votes in parliament, which will be the ultimate test of their committment against the cuts.

ACUTE The test is faced even more acutely by the trade union bureaucracy, especially by the leaders of the public service unions whose members are the first (though far from the only)

workers to be "sacrificed" by the Labour government to the needs of international capital.

When these leaders scandalously "negotiated" a cut in the real wages of trade unionists for two years running, they claimed they were getting something in Buckle had earlier endorsed Leyland's proposal to withdraw contract union work from the EPS plant to Leyland's Number 2 Factory in Cowley - a plan which means almost certain closure for EPS and immediately threatens 400 jobs.

Placards drew attention to the role of the officials - one reading "Job Protection: T&GWU have scores of well-paid officials three where are they?" The march shouted slogans against "worker participation" which ties in convenors and right wing stewards with these management plans, and called for the complete nationalisation of both EPS and British Leyland.

The demonstration brought ront Page. public spending and the government's committment to reduce unemployment The events of the last week force us to ask if there is any limit to the attacks on the working class with which the union bureaucrats are prepared to collaborate?

The answer to that will clearly appear from their actions over the new spending cuts. The main TUC leaders have spoken against the cuts but have presented no perspective for any fight against them and are still quite happy to stand by their "deal" to cut wages.

The enormous pressure from their immediately threatened membership has forced the leaders of the public service unions to make less compromising noises.

Geoffrey Drain of NALGO has accused the government of following a "suicidal course" and talks of "the futility of pursuing the current policy" , saying that the government must choose between employment at home and "the whims of speculators"

Alan Fisher of NUPE has realised that "all the assurances on growth targets and reducing unemployment are now in ruins" And David Basnett • of the G&MWU described the policy as "ari economic waste and a source of social bitterness"

But do these leaders have any intention to turn their words into actions against the cuts? Or will they continue to hold back and divert any fight which their members are ready to put up?

PARTIAL ACTIONS

Fisher has called loudly for "guerilla strikes" and of course all partial actions must be supported as a step to full-scale struggle.

But such actions as Fisher envisages are totally insufficient for the task involved.

To defeat the cuts will need all-out strike action maintained until its objectives are realised. enthusiastic support from Cowley car workers, some of whom marched some of the way to Transport House.

One EPS steward told Socialist Press:

"This question of the officials has started as a local issue, but it must become a national question. It's high time the unions were controlled by the members on the shop floor."

Another steward stressed the huge response to the struggle -pointing out that an estimated 90% of EPS women workers had turned out on the march.

Buckle was "not available" to the lobbyers when they reached District Office, but as a magistrate his response to the march, divulged later to the Tory press, .action using the fatuous argument that strikes would automatically involve spending cuts since no wages would be paid and so would assist the government in achieving its objectives.

While demanding that all those in the labour movement who have expressed opposition to the cuts take up a real fight against them, we also say that to base the fight on the programme of the 'lefts' in the Labour Party, the trade unions and the Communist Party would be fatal.

Their programme of protection through. import controls and baling out capitalism through the National Enterprise Board is a reactionary one, based on the idea that the interests of the working class can only be protected. capital is profitable.

The same error is committed when the Tribune group joins the CBI in condemning Healey's increase in employers' national insurance contributions because, they say, it will cut profits and so produce unemployment.

A programme giving a basis for a successful fight against the spending cuts must make clear that the defence of working class interests must be completely independent of the needs of the capitalist class.

And it must, strive not for nationalist measures but for the maximum international unity of the working class not only against spending cuts but also all the other actions through which capital internationally is attempting to solve its crisis.

Such a programme includes:

- a sliding scale of state spending.

- open the books of all public authorities.

- nationalise the suppliers and contractors.

- maintain and improve all social services.

- a programme of public works to create jobs.

- workers' control in the nationalised industries.

leaflet issued by the EPS workers to the union's legal department!

Clearly no support can be expected from such appointed officials, nor trom those extreme right wing and Stalinist stewards and convenors who sit on the Ryder participation committees.

OCCUPATION

EPS workers must therefore continue to fight for the support of the workforce in the Cowley factories, and at the same time prepare for full-scale occupation of their Chipping Warden factory to prevent the first redundancies taking place, back the demand for the opening of the company's books and begin the fight to force nationalistion.

The T&GWU Daventry District Committee, covering EPS, has now set up a meeting between EPS stewards, stewards in the BLMC Export Packing plant at Cowley, (to which the work is being transferred) and the fuil time officials.

This decision is to be welcomed, but EPS workers should be warned of the danger of this being used as a delay ing tactic to divert their struggle fo r jobs.