An Election That Went Wrong

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•British Leyland workers at Cowley must face up to the cold reality: another major strike could finish the Company.

That-under the headline "Cowley in danger'-was the opening paragraph of an editorial in the weekly Oxford Times on December 16, about the election of Alan Thornett to the post of deputy senior steward at the Cowley assembly plant.

The editorial, the latest in a long line of witch-hunting articles in the local Press, says that if the TGWU is to move against Thornett they should do so quickly-before he takes office after the Christmas break.

Spectre

It offers the spectre of strikes in support of Thornett bringing a new crisis if Leyland refuse to recognise him in his elected role.

And the article reflects the official line that 'apathy' elected Thornett, describing his vote as 'by less than 700 of the union's 4,300 members.' In fact Thornett's vote (of 796, not'less than 700") rose since the last elections in a declining poll and took place Alan Thornett - duly elected but still witch-hunted.

under the usual anti-Trotskyist barrage of propaganda.

What the article-wrong voting figures and all- lett out was the massive swing away from Parsons.

He was defeated not by apathy but because his class collaboration policies were decisively rejected.

Bobby Fryer-elected as convenor in place of Parsons -polled 1,195 votes.

And Fryer and all the elected deputies polled far more votes than any Tory-inspired. postal ballot would produce.

In fact when the ballot was introduced three 'years ago, the Press hailed it as the end of at Cowley.

However. the niceties of democracy are not allowed to get in the way of a good old fashioned witch-hunt.

it started, before the electons, In the Uxfora Mail, the daily sister paper to the Times.

The last issue published before the vote abandoned all attempts at balance,-reprinting lengthy extracts from an election leaflet by Parsons complete with his list of favoured candidates.

The leaflet-and the article-complained of 'unsigned soggy socialist swill' and "Trotskyist extremism' backed by about twenty people.

After the elections the same paper published further lengthy statement from Parsons attacking the lefts who were elected as "Marxist elements who are like maggots'.

*Mole' The witch-hunt was continued in the national Press by both the Daily Express and the Telegraphwhich ran a piece under a headline 'Trotskyist 'Mole" may be pressed onto Leyland".

The burden of this story was that Fryer was likely to insist on Leyland accepting Thornett as a deputy senior steward.

The sole basis for this sinister plot according to the Telegraph, was that Thornett had been duly elected!

It also quoted an unnamed source as saying:

'Everybody with any interest in what's going on at Cowley will be looking for the first signs that Thornett has put Bobby Fryer in his pocket.

Average So there we have it. Wrong election figures, blatant campaigning for the right wing and support for moves to set the decision aside.

It was about an average sized meal for the Press and one that may yet give them indigestion.

For, as the Oxford Times teared, moves by the TGWU bureaucracy ot British Leyland to set aside the election results are likely to be met by a stronger force-the anger of the workine class.