IDEFEND REMEMBER SHRES/SASAY THE RIGHT UNITE AND • FIGHT The ever-growing dole queue at Kirkby-in Liverpool unemployment has reached a staggering 10 per cent ism. It would be an attempt to export our unemployment onto the backs of the impoverished masses of Asia, Africa and Latin America. If import controls on any significant scale were applied to the products of our more powerful capitalist competitors, they would do exactly the same to us. In that sort of trade war, decrepit British capitalism is strictly a loser. Workers fighting for their jobs at Cammell Laird shipyards have come up hard against police attacks, which have so far claimed 11 arrests. A mass picket of more than 600 on 27 August was their response.
the capitalist state should carry out would simultaneously intensify the economic crisis whilst sowing reactionary illusions in the working class.
By comparison the most basic demand to defend the right to work is simple - the immediate reduction of the working week to 35 hours with no loss of earnings. This would benefit the entire working class, employed and unemployed. It can be taken up in local bargaining, national claims, and in demands for Government measures. It has already been adopted in a token fashion by some unions. But the union leaders have no intention of leading a serious fight for this demand. In fact, the TUC's guidelines on the implementation of the f6 limit specifically exclude improvements in non-wage benefits as a way of 'getting round' the £6 limit. Any reduction in hours would have to count as part of a pay increase. Of course, the 35 hour week is not an instant cure-all for unemployment, but * No to redundancies - work-sharing with no loss of pay - nationalise without compensation all firms declaring redundancies and place them under workers' control with all jobs guaranStop the cuts in public spending - for a major programme of socially useful public works * Stop employers' sabotage of jobs - open their books and prepare a workers' plan for producthe fight for the 35 hour week will help devel op more advanced struggles against unemployment by unifying the workers' movement in a common fight.
When faced with a specific redundancy struggle, the left reformists' usual response is to claim the firm is "viable' or that it is an industry Britain cannot afford to lose. Statements along these lines have recently been made in Tribune about the British motorcycle industry, though no 'left' MPs have throughout the working class for the nationaalisation of the whole motor-cycle industry under workers' control - all too necessary in the light of recent events at NVT Wolverhampton. Instead the early enthusiasm of the workers was whittled away through months of wheeling and dealing between union officials. Leslie Huckfield, and the Department of Industry. The Sunday Times (28 July 1974) commented on the final agreement: "So far undisclosed plans are to turn out 12,000 bikes with a workforce of 450 in the first year, stepping up employment to 750 to double output in 1975. As Meriden never turned out more than 30,000 machines with 1,750 men on the payroll under previous managements. this is a productivity boost of at least 85 per cent. Not surprisingly the workers at NVT's Small Heath factory in Birmingham became very concerned for their jobs, and virtually shouted Benn down at a meeting later in the year.
The workers' co-op at NVT Meriden was hailed uncritically as a triumph by Tribune and the Communist Party's Morning Star. In fact the intervention by the lefts' isolated a struggle, sowed divisions in the working class, and posed no class-wide answers to unemploy ment. Now Tribune turns round and accuses the NUV workers at Small Heath and Wolverhampton of being responsible for this poor state of affairs! At the time of the Meriden sit-in, there was a certain amount of feeling at Meriden that they were not getting all the support they might from Small Heath and Wolverhampton. The "we're all right Jack" attitude has certainly rebounded on some people at Wolverhampton and if little support comes from the Meriden co-operative, they have only themselves to blame for creating the ill-feeling in the first place (Tribune, 15 August 1975).
With the benefit of hindsight, Tribune continues: Had the entire group fought Poore and his decision to close Meriden in the first instance and demanded nationalisation, then perhaps the current situation would not have arisen, argue some union leaders. Which is all a little like leading a blind person half way across a road then blaming him for getting Knockeu uown When the Labour lefts do raise the question of nationalisation, they do so in a totally confused way. It is never clear whether they regard it as an anti-capitalist measure or juşt a better way to run or salvage a 'vital' capitalist industry. Nationalisation for them is something implemented by a government
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