'Industrial Freedom vs State Interference—the Choice is Yours—Vote Conservative' proclaims a massive hoarding on the road running out from Kirkby to Liverpool. A sick joke perhaps, but not so funny if you're one of the 1200 workers at International Property Developers (Industrial), formerly Fisher-Bendix, on Kirkby's Industrial Estate.
There, for the second time in just over two years, the workers have been forced to occupy their factory against closure and mass redundancies.
Unemployment was running at a record level of 23% in this small, 'new' town when the workers at Fisher-Bendix occupied in 1972. Archie Breden, the electricians' steward at what is now IPD, told Red Weekly. Looking back we believed that with our fight being successful we reversed the trend in Kirkby towards closures and mass redundancies. We feel that this time, if this place is allowed to close, there will be more closures and redundancies. Already many of the factories on the estate are empty and more are threatening to close down.
SPECULATION
International Property Developers (IPD), which took over Fisher-Bendix, has assets of £20 million tied up mainly in overseas property, building and speculation. It has no other industrial concerns in this country. Its most recent speculation spree has been to use the Kirkby factory for hoarding steel to take advantage of soaring steel prices.
IPD are blaming the closure of the factory on the failure of the Labour Government to fork out a loan (a similar request was rejected by the previous Tory administration).
Convenor Jack Spriggs told Liverpool Trades Council delegates at a meeting on 18 July what happened: 'Suddenly we started getting into liquidity problems: bills weren't being paid; money that was coming in was disappearing into a bank account that we didn't know of; and Barclay's Bank, who had given overdraft facilities of £1.2 million were getting a little concerned about their investment . . . We now know that there was something crooked about the deal right from the start.'
On Wednesday, 10 July, the receiver was brought in at IPD after lay-offs and threats of redundancies. On Friday morning he made his proposals—750 sacked now, the remaining 400 to be phased out. Archie Breden explaine[d th]e workers' reaction: 'At the mass [mee]ting it was decided there and then that the mandate would be 1200 jobs or nothing. The decision was taken to throw the receiver off site.'
The gates were welded up to prevent any of the £2.5 million worth of plant being shifted out and 'feelers' were put out to workers at Heathrow airport, dockers and transport workers.
LABOUR GOVERNMENT
However, the stewards are hoping for a quicker solution this time through the intervention of the Labour Government. Both Industry Minister Tony Benn and his assistant Eric Heffer have promised that the jobs will be maintained. But so far all they have turned up with is a 'feasibility study'. The results of this are expected as Red Weekly goes to press.
IPD could well become a test case for both the fight against unemployment and the Labour Government's attitude to nationalisation. Last month's unemployment figure rose to 610,000 at a time of the year when it usually falls. With a predicted wave of mass redundancies likely to take this number to the million mark by Christmas, a spate of factory occupations (the only effective way to resist closures), can be expected.
'We expect the support of the Labour Party,' said Archie Breden, 'because there is a lot of people in here, especially during elections, who've done a lot of work for the Labour Party.'
The best way the Labour Government can aid the fight against unemployment is to nationalise firms such as IPD who create redundancies and place them under workers' control—that way the workers at IPD won't need another factory occupation in two years time!
LIVERPOOL IMG