PRESS GANG King Edumondes

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The chorus praise that greeted Michael Edwardes speech last week to an assorted mixture of managers, class collaborators and shop stewards had been a long time brewing.

The Edwardes plan, half formed, vague and inadequate for the problems of capitalism though it is, marks a turn from the policies of Lord Ryder, a decided shift in the direction of confrontation.

Since Leyland has been the whipping post for Fleet Street for years the press was guaranteed to hail any move towards an attack on the workers.

The Daily Mail hailed it:

"Bravo to the new boom ... Union leaders cheer as Leyland lays it on the line"

Focusing on the grovelling reaction from Communist Party and right wing collaborators, the Mail posed the question for Leyland in the following form:

"Can the shop stewards control their membership, sell them the idea of redundancies, and help management restore the notion of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay".

But behind the razzmattaz of the Mail and other populist papers lies a deeper unease based on the knowledge that what is crippling Leyland is a crisis of capitalism far deeper than promises of good behaviour can cure.

The Financial Times, noting in its news page that Edwardes' reception was certainly no warmer than that given to Lord Ryder, two years ago, nevertheless echoed the Daily Mail's focus in an editorial headed 'New boom at Leyland' Beneath the heading, however, the text took a different What the FT understands (but obviously cannot openly state) is that no policy for Leyland short of closure can cure its ills under capitalism. The populist option of closing volume car production is not on.

The Financial Times says: "To abandon volume cars at this stage is hardly feasible. Quite apart from the political objections, it is extremely doubtful whether Jaguar, Rover and Triumph are viable on their own. They depend for bodies and other components on factories whose main volume comes from Austin Morris; if Austin Morris disappeared, the economics of those factories would be undermined...

"The present system of making cash injections vaguely dependent on good behaviour is unsatisfactory. In the financial reconstruction which seems likely in the near future the cardinal principle must be to put responsibility for Leyland's future where it belongs-with the people who manage the company and work in it. "To the extent that they are unable to generate funds out of their own operations, a further contradiction must take place-and this, too, is a matter for management to decide."

In other words, the Financial Times is hoping that 'political considerations' (i.e. working class resistance) will disappear in a cloud of management decisions.

To achieve that capitalism will require more than a new boom.

They will require to stamp out all opposition to closures ... a task beyond even the considerable powers of Derek Robinson, Terry Duffy and the other collaborators at the Kenilworth meeting. these two years the loss of jobs has been greatest in the following industries: ferrous foundries, office machinery, process plants fabrication and constructional steelwork, telecommunications equipment, and artificial fibres.

They also show a number of industries where production fell relative to employment and which are therefore, likely to be key striking points in the capitalists' latest offensive against jobs.

These danger point industries include machine tools, industrial engineer textile machinery, mechanical handling equipment and industrial trucks, telecommunications equipment and man-made fibres.

This kind of information can be an important acquisition for socialists since it can enabie a socialist leadership to understand better the inter-connected manifestations of the capitalist crisis.

It opens the possibility of adjusting tactics in the workers' fight against the effects of the crisis and for the social overthrow of the capitalist system which produces it.

In the hands of the Tribunites who have obtained it, however, information like any other potential weapon of the class struggle is unloaded, made harmless and used as the basis for one of their unprincipled class collaborationist schemes.