Special Case of Hypocrisy

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«The strike has achieved an important step forward towards its objective by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions' agreement to set up working parties including toolroom representatives to work out with the management how their problems could be If there was one quarter from which the toolmakers gained support as a special case it was among the hard boiled editors of Fleet Street.

True they were treated to dire warnings of the collapse Leyland, and large parts of British industry. True the capitalist press praised the courage of Scanlon when he travelled to Birmingham for his public humiliation. True the toolmakers were told to go back to work.

But what they did not get at the hands of the demon butchers of Fleet Street was the kind of treatment that is usually handed out to workers who bring major industrial plants to a halt.

No witch-hunts. No red baiting. Instead a kind of grudging respect.

The only exception was the Daily Telegraph which felt obliged to lay the blame for the strike at the door of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions which had met in London the previous weekend.

Even the Telegraph was forced to retract this the following day. If the toolmakers had not denied that the Stalinists were involved then no doubt the Communist Party would have been quick to scotch the rumour that they were behind a struggle on wages.

But the Daily Mail! The Express? What happened to their highly trained smear writers? Why were they running cosy pieces on Roy Fraser gardening? Roy Fraser having a quiet pint? Roy Fraser behaving as if he were human?

They key to this was the role which the Press allocated to Fraser, the toolroom committee and the other 3,000 strikers.

They were to become the next to bottom support on a ladder to one conclusion. The wages of the workers must be kept down, but the wages of the managers and the middle managers must be allowed to rise.

Press-gang close in on Fraser The watchword was to be reward for "skill and responsibility".

The express, under a streamer which described the toolmakers as non-political, team whose pride in their work has dealt a crippling blow to the Social Contract", turned on the charm.

"Pictured together they look more like a bunch of men off to see the Birmingham-Villa match than militant extremists plotting the downfall of the British economy.

"A reasonable enough impression for they see themselves reasonable, ordinary British craftsmen.

"Highly skilled men whose beef is that the trade which for 30 years made them the kings of the industrial Midlands today earns them little more than an 18-year old on the Leyland assembly lines."

The Daily Mail pictured Fraser on theu tront page under the headline "The Outlaw" and started their stor The great industrial juggernaut of Government, management and unions turned on Roy Fraser and his striking toolmakers yesterday.

'The men were told that if they lo not go back to work on Monda' hey will be fired-and the union. will not help them."

Inside the same issue in an editorial headed "Why we still support the toolmakers" the Daily Mail said:

"We believe passionately that the skills and talents Britain needs must be adequately rewarded «The toolmakers are not asking lor the earth. They are asking thai their sk ill be recogniser and rewarded, something which is accepted as routine in successful car factories of our foreign competitors.

In fact the differentials between toolmakers and production workers are a myth. For years toolmakers earned less than production workers and in some plants they earned about 50% of the produc tion line rate.

In the end the demand was about wages. No talk about difțerentials could hide this.

The toolmakers saw their main chance to get more money was to claim parity with the highest rates in Leyland Cars for other toolmakers. The difference this could have made to some wages is more than f9 a week, within the main car producing plants and up to twice that if the wages of the top toolmakers in Leyland are compared The principle of parity with the highest-which led to a claim including dangers of corporate bargaining-was not an abstract principle but arose, from the demand for more money.

In contrast to this the Tory Press wanted only to push the line that skilled workers are 'entitled' to more than unskilled workers, a logic that militates against struggles on the basis of the best that can be won, and appeals to some phony idea of natural justice under which editors and managers would benefit and the working class-toolmakers and all-would be left scrabbling for the crumbs.

The reporting of the strike can be seen as an attempt to take some of the heat out of it. If the toolmakers had been played up as 'wreckers' it would have been that much harder for their leaders to argue that they were not out to break the Social Contract. The class lines of the struggle would be laid down in black and white.

Added to this was the desire to foster an illusion among skilled workers that the Tory Party was the party of differentials and therefore the party they should vote for.

In an article in the limes on Wednesday March 16, the Conservative spokesman on employment James Prior MP, wrote: "Dur Conservative trade unionists stressed at their conference the paramount importance of productivity, of differentiais of skill, and incentives for hard work and responsibility."

The astounding way that Prior writes about "our Conservative trade unionists" as if that reflected a real base within the working class on which to build reveals the true nature of the special case treatment.

In this way the toolmakers' struggle, which reflected the feelings of the working class was turned on its head to become a reflection of the feelings of the class of managers which constantly supports wage controls, but which itself becomes accidently caught up in the machine.

It's a very special case hypocrisy

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"Their demand, their just demand, Britain's economicillane root of