CASE HISTORY OF REFORMISM

By lan Yeats. Part 2. The day after Frank Tomany was elected AUEW convenor at Omes Faulkners, Colnbrook factory in Buckinghamshire, the entire shop stewards' committee were summoned to meet the district committee.

Having just been elected convenor Mr Tomany was entitled to suppose the shop stewards would back him in a fight against redundancies. And since most of the 439 workers at the plant belonged to the AUEW also felt he could rely on the DC's support.

At the shop stewards' meeting on March 8—before they went to the DC-Tomany claims Communist Party opposition to him began to take shape. 'I thought we should have a joint policy for fighting the redundancies ready to put to the DC, but ex CP convenor Derek Howes would not hear of it. He argued we should all be free to say what we liked 'I went to the meeting with the DC without notes or anything, but the CP members all had prepared statements and they followed the line that I was frustrating management at every turn by creating difficulties. "They said Omes Faulkners were a decent management and that I was obstructing them at eyery turn when they were doing their best to keep the factory open.' It was at the DC meeting that Mr Tomany claims the CP opened up a second line of attack designed to stifle any fight against the redundancies: 'The CP members declared that my obstructive behaviour had created bitterness and split the factory so that there was no hope of getting the men to back a fight, even if we called for one.

I think the CP were trying to discredit me and build up to getting my card withdrawn. But fortunately, the full district committee were there and when I put the record straight they voted to oppose the redundancies and discuss work-sharing and the possibility of a four-day week with management. 'I was on the district committee between 1967 and 1969 and I was approached to join the CP, but I said I was there to represent the shop floor. 'At the factory the CP members of the shop stewards' committee have done nothing try to take the heat out of every situation.

'Their tactic has been to give minimum leadership and constantly stress the danger of the whole factory closing fought against almost anything management did.

'The CP has constantly fought against me but I was only doing my job and defending workers.

ECOND It was my record of standing up to management that set the CP gunning for me. Now that I have been sacked there is no. body left in the factory to lead a fight. d is completely CP Ex-CP convenor Derek Howes told me in his view it was question either of accepting that reorganization in Mr Tomanv'c maintenance department was absolutely necessary to keep the works running, or face the possibility of seeing it shut down completely said. «We've got to maintain factory witl workers in t able to earn a decent standar are going to fight. 'But in this situation we had to consider whether it was worth 450 workers losing their jobs for the sake of a bit of reorganization.' I drew Mr Howes' attention to the fact that engineers in other parts of the country were occupying their factories as a lever against the employers.

He commented: 'I don't think we could have called for an occupation here because we couldn't have carried on production. All the materials have to be brought in from outside. Even if we were in the factory, they could have just stopped paying us. We didn't believe it would have been an effective answer!

Commenting on his replacement as convenor by Mr Tomany, Mr Howes said: "The shop stewards voted me out of the leadership and actually I was quite relieved to be out. In a situation like that you can imagine some difficult decisions might have to be imade.' Did Mr Howes feel management had victimized their convenor? 'They put the whole machine section of the maintenance department on the list, not just him personally.' Later I put the question to CP district committee secretary George Currell.

Commenting on Mr Tomany's claim that he had been victimized, Mr Currell said: the whole maintenance depa This is indeed what happene On March 24, 66 men we sacked, 15 out of the 62-strol maintenance department, inclu ing the entire machine sectir where Mr Tomany worked. The object was to sectionali maintenance by attaching squa to individual departments al thereby do away with the cc of a separate department as wi as speeding up repairs. Major assembly and repi work would now be sent out another factory-mainly to largely non-union Gay's Hampton.

On Monday March 13 t fight to save 66 jobs had n yet been lost.

On March 10 manageme rejected the joint shop stewar‹ and DC committee's proposal 1 work-sharing and a four-d This was reported to the sh stewards and CP district sec: tary Currell on March 13.

According to the minutes that meeting, Mr Currell to the management's own contrary to the March 8 decisi of the full DC, that short-til working was not 'practical' 1 AUEW members.

In line with the DC's Mat 8 resolution to oppose redundancies ETU steward Si Roe proposed that if mana! ment went ahead and creat redundancies, all labour wor rch am geted uld FRIGHTENED Said Tomany: "The stewards decided not to vote because they had been frightened by the CP members' insistence that a fight would mean closing the factory. 'We already had the joint shop stewards' DC resolution opposing all redundancies, but the DC did nothing themselves to implement it.' The works meeting which followed heard the full list of 66 redundancies. Mr Tomany was asked to read it out and no other shop steward spoke.

Publishing the list to the men had an immediate effect. It damped down the fighting spirit of all those not on it.

Although ex-CP convenor Howes denies it, Mr Tomany alleges that instructing him to read out the list was a deliberate manoeuvre to weaken him when he subsequently called for support. 'They asked me to read it out and there was nothing I could do, he told me.

The maintenance department later met separately and four resolutions were taken. Twenty voted for the sit down, but Mi Tomany claims a fourth resolution-denied by Derek Howeswas taken, proposed by J. Saunders.

The gist of this was that since 46 of the 55 men present at the meeting had expressed some sort of dissatisfaction over the redundancies and no agreement between them looked like being reached they should all stop work. The motion was carried.

Next day' the maintenance following the tradition of shop in acting alone, Mr Tomany led the 62 men in the shop on a sit-down strike against the redundancies.

Immediately a resolution proposed by A. Mullen endorsing the sit-in and recommending no-one did maintenance work was passed by the shop stewards' committee.

ETU steward Sam Roe told me: 'Previously when we had gone on strike the stewards had let other men do our work, so I asked if they really meant it when they said they would not allow it this time.

"The stewards said they did, but a CP member stressed that they could not physically stop any man doing maintenance work' On Wednesday only half the 62 men were allowed into the factory-the others were locked out. Eventually the entire department struck outside the works.

By Thursday morning they were all back at work, the fight stewards' committee passed a resolution proposed by Howes alleging that opposition to the maintenance men's strike from the shop floor was so great that there could be no question of solidarity action. Without support the strikers were forced back to work.

Asked why the DC did not back the strike, Mr Currell told me: 'The maintenance department were isolated when they came out on strike. They took the action on their own and the other departments did not respond.

It was a tricky and difficult situation. If you take an action like that, you are taking a gamble and on the basis of what we had we could not let them stay isolated and get knocked Mr Tomany claims AUEW district organizer Mr William McCloughlin was kept informed developments at Omes Faulkners.

But a spokesman at his office said: 'Mr McCloughlin has been ill and away from the ofice. He had no idea there any trouble at the factory,, was of many other trade unionists at the factory is that with the maintenance department dismantled and its tradition of militancy abruptly ended, a blow has been struck at trade unionism from which it will be hard work recovering.

Said Mr Tomany: 'I think it is a real tragedy that a group of working-class men have been abandoned. Some of my lads have already said they feel like tearing up their union cards. 'But the union is not to blame. It was the policies of the CP members of the two committees which are to blame. 'Workers have to be led. They won't take any action unless they get direct leadership. But this was never given. "The CP did everything possible to weaken the workers. It was stressed that there had been marches and demonstrations against redundancies at another local factory, Modern Wheel Drive, but that all their efforts had been in vain. "Their line was that we had a "good management" and that we should not be too hard on them.' The management has now sacked 66 men, and is sending other work outside to a non-union firm.

A severe blow has been struck at trade unionism in a factory once claimed to be the best organized in SE England.