ON THE ROCKS The Collapse of the big travel firm Court Line has left a lot of egg on a Jot of faces.
Most embarassed are those circles of the ruling class who have recently been spending huge sums of money to extoll the virtues of petrate enterprise across the length and breadth of the country.
The Court Line debacle has served as a more powerful object lesson In the real nature of capitalism than all the "Aims of Industry" pamphlets and ads put together.
The fate of Court Line has had a direct effect on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people-both customers and employees of the firm. But the decisions which led to this fate were made in total secrecy by a small handful of company managers and directors.
When the Company collapsed:
-there was no cash in the company's coffens to cover the cost of holidays already booked and paid for.
-there was no cash to pay for the return fares of those already abroad.
little or no cash had been passed on to pay the hotel bills of those already on holiday.
So where had all the money laid out by Court Line's customers actually gone? As figures released after the firms bankruptcy showed Court Line was a virtual bottomless pit, with assets of only about E2 million and debts totalling close to £60 million!
The policies followed by Court Line ended up cheating the company's customers out of both their money and the few weeks of hard-carned pleasure that capitalism permits, and the firm's workers out of their jobs. But such policies are perfectly legal under capitalism-Indeed they are just a slight extension of the run-of-the mill policies according to which every capitalist firm operates.
The Court Line crash & not jose a 'special case. True, the package holidays industry-especially dependent on the exchange rate of the pound, fuel costs, and the existence of a level of working class incomes able to afford such luxuries' as overseas holidays-was bound to be amongst the first to suffer as the waves of capitalist crisis began to rise.
But every other industry will feel the shock in its time, und "Court Lines' will spring up in every nook and cranny of the British industry.
The other faces to emerge from the smoke of the Court Line crash bedecked in yellow streaks belong to the Labour Government, in particular to Indusiry minister Benn.
The Government was aware of Court Line's troubles two months ago, and was planning stepe to bail them out (basically by buying out their shipbuilding interests at a generous price).
But rather than warning Court Line's customers and workers of the impending dangers, and taking resolute measures to solve the problem, Benn issued statements that allowed Court Line to put up a false front and continue raking in customers cash until the day before the firm disintegrated.
If such policies are repeated when two three, many Court Lines, begin to sweep the country the consequences for the working class will be dicisitous.
The Court Line affair show the uselessness of Labour's present policies and underlines the importance of the labour movement taking up and fighting for a trade union pian to meet the economic crisis. A basic part of such a plan must be the demands:
OPEN THE BOOKS all capitalist business affairs to be open to regular and close scrutiny by the trade unions.
NATIONALIZATION not redundancy-all firms unable to keep their employs in work should be nationalised in full, without compensation, and with tirm guarantees of employment for all workers.
Red Weekly 29 August 1974 Page 2 smashing a general strike| for fear of being accused by the Unions of strike breaking and union bashing' The forces lined up behind the anti-strike groups and tactics are very motely which supplies most of the ideological indeed. But they do show a fair cross section of at least parts of the ruling class.
First are the army officers. Most of the major figures in these groups -Colonel Stiling, Generai Walker, Wing-Commander Goding, Major Greenwood-come from the armed forces. Neither are they individual isolated men. General Sir Walter Walker was the commander of NATO land forces in Northern Europe. Stirling was the founder of the Special Air Service. These are people from the very core of the armed forces:
General Sir William Walker Neither is there any reason to suppose that these retired officers have lost their links with theit colleagues who material standards that ure threntened are still in the army or that still serving officem do not share their views. On the contrary the exact opposite is the case. Here the key man is the head of infantry training Brigadier Kitson. He has already called for the Government to prepare army forces for strike breaking by setting up specialist individuals and units within the army to enable essential civil services to be. maintained in the event of civilians being unable or unwilling to maintain them.
The second clement in the situation is a number of sectional groups of the ruling class. The old engineering firmn GKN, whose director Brookes is the main leader of the swing to the right in the CBI. has a known association with fascist organisations. A main director of the Brentwood Company. Charles Gordon, is the founder of the Great Britain Coalition Party, which has declured its aim as ending the "criminal lunacy of rule by politicians. Wealth stockbroker Major Alexander Greenwood has founded the Society of Friends' which claims to have 900 volunteers ready to go into action in squeezed smail busincasmen and middle classes who are organised in such groups as the National Ratepayers Association. It is of course this group ravings.
The attitude of the big industrial bourgeoisie to these extreme right wing organisations is however more complex, They have no confidence whatever that the social contract will get the unions under control. The Intest Buriness Decisions Led survey indicated that two thirds of the firms polled thouglt the social contract would have no effect on current pay clairs and none thought it would pre vent further acceleration of claims, The bellet that the Social Contract will not work and that the policy of integration of the unions cannot succeed is compounded within the ruling class by an absolutely widespread belief that the present econom situation is destroying all the institutions of bourgeois rule, In its projections for 1974 the Financial Times says "The economic successes needed to restore (notably Parliament and the City), to "sell" the EEC to a septical publie and to ease the tensions in British pubiic life have simply isiled to materialise. And the troubles have actually become forse in consequence. The Financial Times doubts whether our political institutions will stand the strain. It will not be mercly our but the whole fabric of freedom and decency which characterise our country.
It is this line of thought which led to the 'coup d'etut" in the CBI and the emergence of a new bard right-wing line led by Brookes of GN.
HARD LINE
be, was well expressed in one of the main mouthpieces of industrial capital The Economist. On the 2 February it wrote: The recent ambulancemen's strikes were largely beaten by middle class blacklegs. There are not likely to be many middle class blackleg's streaming across the pithead pickets to dig British coal, but there gradually could be to yers will need to show greater willingness to sack contract-breakers, use black-legs, resist pickets, import coal."
But while the whole logic of the big bourgeoisie's position drives it strike. When police waded into the pickets during the Footprint tools dispute in Sheffield, and arrested the District Secretarv of the AUEW. this led to a district engineering strike.
The result of this conflict between the logical evolution of their position and their worry about the working class response, is that the bourgcoisie continually flies kites ahout the whole thing For example The Times in recen wecks has had no less than three major urticles discussing the possibility of a Military coup while papers such as the Observer have taken to running articles on whether the army could in tact takcoser if it wanted to. It is beginning, although only beginning to move towards the position of the Italian ruling class whose whole state apparatus covers up for the fascists and strong arm men. But the ruling class itself is continually scared by the massive working class response to fascist and strike breaking activity Semilarly the Tory Party will not be openly associated with the strike breaking groups but neither will it openly condemn them THE FUTURE We must avoid alarmism. What is ainportant is not what the borgeoisic would like to do, but what it is able to do. The defence against the strike breakers and neo-fascists is not whethe the ruling class does or does not favour them but the strength and militancy of the working class. Here che situatio is much more favourable. The orginisations of the working class in Britain are formidably strong The social structure of the country is the most unfavourable for fascism or for a military takeover, Finally it is quite clcar that a simple undisguised physical assault on the working class cannot succed. The working class to Just now hard this right-wing line can he defeated must first suffer a major polifical defeat on a question such as racism or Ireland.
Bur the alarm bells should start ringing. The organisation of working class self-defence must become an increasing part of militants activity in the coming years and months. We must never forget that Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and the Chilean junta aiso started from small beginnings.
The full text of Col, Srirling's con fidential plans have been published in a special issue of Pence News Aüable from Peace News, 5, Caledomian Road. London, A.T.
.. in Lancashire TUC Conterence
----- pull-quotes -----
deliver supplies of oil and imported coal to power stations.* On 16 February it wrote: In 1974-79 emplo,