Workers at Transport Equipment (Thornycroft) in Basingstoke, Hampshire, began an indefinite occupation of the factory last Tuesday (15 August). At a mass meeting of the 1200 workers held at 9.00a.m. Inside the factory only 3 votes were cast against the recommendation of the shop stewards" committee, said Mr Pat Farrelly (District Secretary of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions) on Tuesday night. And immediately after the meeting, workers established complete control over the whole factory from the board zoom to the gates. ousting both Thornycroft management and representatives from Eaton Corporation, the firm that is due to take over the piant on 1 Octoher.
REDUNDANCIES The decision to seize the plant comes over two months after British Leylands' management at Thornycroft's first announced that the firm was to be sold off and 344 workers made redundant. As explained in the last issue of The Red Mole, British Leyland have sold the site to a property "developing" company called English & Continental for E2%6 million. Eatons however, are only interested in operating the transmission section of the factory (making gear boxes on contract to BLMC), with the result that 344 workers from the non-transmission section were told that they would be made red undant These moves by BLMC are clearly part of their plans to "rationalise" and "streamline" in preparation for entry into the Common - Market. Thornycroft's is the sixth factory in the BLMC "empire" to be sold off inr this way, and over the last tio years BIMC have made thowands of workers redundant. The first response of Thornycroft workers was to vote overwhelmingly to reject the red undancies. But no perspectives for a struggle against the redundancies were put forward by the shop stewards committee at that time. In fact, the whole development of the struggle has been marked at every stage by the extreme caution (not to say pessimism) of the local rank-and-file leadership.
Fora period they clearly thought that the only thing they could possibly get support tor was a fight for higher redundancy payments.
LCDTU INITIATIVE In contrast, the local Liason Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions (whose political programme was published in The Red Mole 43) came out immediately with a clear stand on the issue, In their weekly bulletin (The Spark) which goes out to all the major factories in the town, they said: "In order to give real meaning to the Thoryeroft workers' decision not to accept the redundancy notices, we suggest that the shop stewards commIttee needs to call on the BLMC combine committee to organise solidarity actions throughout the corporation, to call on the local labour and trade union movement to organise solidarity actions throughout Basingstoke, and to recommend an occupation of the factory by all Thornycroft workers (to prevent any further movement of plant by the management). This sort of approach is the only one that con prepare the ground for imposing upon the bosses a solation which is in the interests of the workers concerned:
that is WORK-SHARING WITH NO LOSS OF PAY. If there isn't very much work the best thing workers can do is foree the employ.
ers to share out what little there is so that our ranks are not divided into empioyed and unemployed. By maintaining our own unity in this way, we can also ensure that this workSUBSCRIBE!
I enclose El.50/£3.00 tor 6/12 months. RED MOLE Nome:
Address:
Maney Orders to Red Moie, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.I.
Occupation Comminer hard ar work ir Thomycroft's Boardroom shuring does not result in any loss of pay as well".
Momentum began to gather for a fight seainst the red undancies themseives. The may be taken by Thornycroft workers to protect their jobs"
WORK TO RULE Encouraged by this kind of support, but still tending to be pessimistic about the out comie of the struggie, the shop stewards committee put a recommendation to a mass meeting on 7 July (that is one month after the redundancies were announced by BLMC) that Thornycroft workers should start operating a work-to-rule in support of the following demands: 1) That Thomycroft's remain part of BLMC; 2) That there be no redundancies except for volunteers, who must be kept on full pay by BLMC ustil they find alternative employment. This recommendation was accepted by the meeting, but not without some workers calling for an immediate occupation. So the fight began with a work-to-rule - a weapon which in any other kind of struggle would have been extremely effective at Thornycroft's (since it has the effect of reducing production to about 10 per cent) but which in a fight against the closure of the factory was clearly inadequate from the start. The local leadership undoubtedly saw it as the only basis on which they could maintain the unity of the workers involved. And we should note that there were good tactical reasons why it would probably have been a mistake to have recommended an immediate The annual two-week holiday was just coming up, and the BLMC Combine shop stewards committee had not, as yet, shown what it would do to help in a practical way in the event of an occupation.
At this point, the LCDTU ran an article explaining the different possible tactice in the struggle - work-to-rule, strike and occupation -and why the tactic of occupation was the only one with any real chance of success. To the best of our knowledge no one had made any FOREIGN SUBS: Asiai Africa, Australia/N. &-S. America: 16 per Year firmail): E4 per vear (ordinary). Western Ewope: 14 рет yea, attempt to do this up until this time, and even now, when local trade union officials Hke Pat Farrelly claim it was their plan all along to try to get an occupation, they explain their "tactics" in purely mechenica! terms: with the work-to-rule, work would rus out and then worken would be "forced" to consider occupying the factory, etc. NATIONAL STRIKE Support for the idea of an occupation was growing, but the decisive factor which finally encouraged the Thornycroft shop stewards to recommend an occupation was the response from the Combine shop stewards Early on in the struggle, motions of support had been passed and all Thornycroft work had been blacked throughout the Combine- But now came the decision to organise a mass picket outside Thornycroft's on 14 August and a one day strike throughout the Combine on 28 August (although a Bank holiday, BLMC work this day). The Combine Committee had decided that Thornycroft's was the place where they would try to call a halt to BLMC's policy of rationalisation. Delegations came from 21 factories for this picket - all the major local factories, as well as factories in the BIMC combine. Speakers at a mass meeting of the picket held on waste ground near the factory gate stressed the organied strength of the workens in the Combine, and that it was now the time to say of BLMC's rationalisation. "Enough's enough", — there must be no more factory closures, Thomycroft's was where it must stop. It was not just a question of 344 redundant warkers, they said, but of the effect that allowing BLMC to get away with such a blatant breach of agreement would have on all future relations between workers and management, both in BLMC and in Basingstoke.
WORKERS' VETO But what really makes the occupation at Thornyeroft's so important is that the seizure of the plant is designed to throw a spanner in the works of capitalist rationalisation. It to the interests of the workers involved.
It is, in other words, the beginning of an attempt to impose a workers" reto on one of the most fundamental processes of whole struggle against unemployment As Dick Wolfe (local TASS official) put it ut the mass picket the day before the occup ation began: "*We have to make a stand against the so-called economic argument that profits are good and that more profits mucan more jobs. In fact, the continuous search for more profits today merely means more unemployment"
Paul Hunter All donations should be sent to: Thoritycroft Shop Stewards Fund, c/o A. U.E.W. 2 New Street, Andover, Hants.
----- pull-quotes -----
following week a meeting of local trade un- ionists and Labour Party members care out in favour of calling on the Jocal Labour controlled council to support "any action that
is not a question merely of a novel tactic for pushing up arages, but of the seizure of u capitalist property in order to prevent it being disposed of in a way which is harmful
capitalism — the tendency to rationalise. As such it can become a focal point for the