Islington protest as Labour votes Bill

BY MARTIN SEVERAL hundred council and private tenants demonstrated outside Islington Town Hall on Tuesday night in protest against the council's decision to implement the Housing Finance Bill. There were continuous chants of 'Out with the Bill!' outside the hall, and inside nearly 100 tenants were ejected from the public gallery by a strong force of police.

Two weeks ago the council, which apart from six Tory aldermen is 100 per cent Labour-controlled, split 28-18 in favour of implementing the Bill when it becomes law.

The majority argue that they can only try to soften the blow because if they openly defy it they will lose a flim housing subsidy and each member of the council will be liable to a surcharge ganized by ake slington Council Tenants Private Tenants' Association, condemned attitude as cowardly.

Harry Weston, chairman of the Association said: •This Bill is going to be a landlords' charter, a landlords' bonanza. It is going to decide how poor we are going to be. The rent rebate scheme will be intolerable. It will mean that any wage increases won by workers will be negated by loss of rebates.

"To begin to fight this Bill, we must first fight our own council. How can any Labour council say that it is best to implement this Bill? These men are nothing more than collaborators and Quislings. They should resign and make way for those who are prepared to fight.' Victor Cordwell one of the minority group of councillors and also secretary of the Tenants' Association emphasized afterwards that one of the main aims of the Bill was to crucify the trade unions.

Sooner or later, he said, all wage-earners up to about £30 would be rebate so the hard struggle of unions to increase wages would be simply neutralized by cutting the rebate.

An emergency resolution from the minority group on the council calling for non-co-operation with the Bill was finally ruled out of order in the early hours of Wednesday morning, after the demonstrators had gone home.

The minority group will now emergency council meeting to publicly.

UNIONS

was and this be arranging an discuss the Bill KITH PHE RENI BIL Above: A new protest T-shirt.

Below: Victor Cordwell, Labour councillor and tenants' association leader wid Mau BILL newspaper-me Bleak future warning for British-Leyland in new report INDUSTRIAL BRITISH-LEYLAND Motor Corporation, Britain's largest motor manufacturer, has been warned it faces a bleak future after 1974 unless radical policy changes are made.

This is the sobering advice for. Lord Stokes, Leyland's chairman, from Dun and Bradstreet and the Economist Advisory Group.

Their findings are contained in a survey, "The Motor Industry', produced by a team led by Graham Bannock, former economist with Ford and Rover.

The main recommendation is that Leyland should cut back its product range and concentrate on fewer markets.

Although Leyland can claim 45 per cent of the vehicle sales in Britain, the company is 'relatively weak' overseas.

This weakness could be restored by a link with a foreign manufacturer, 'possibly Japanese'. Within hours of the report being voice protest published, Leyland issued a strong denial that it was contemplating any tie-up with the Japanese motor industry.

A spokesman said: 'Much of the information on which the report is based is out of date and consequently is often irrelevant and occasionally inaccurate.' Despite the official denials, there is no doubt that the company is dangerously vulnerable to overseas pressures, particularly from the Japanese.

Only a few days ago the rumour was being punted around the stock markets that Leyland was engaged in merger talks with Chrysler, part of the General Motors group.

The report also highlights the heavy dependence Leyland has on the recovery of its Austin-Morris divisions for future growth and viability.

It adds: 'In the absence of changes in its policy, its outlook is unfavourable compared with that of its overseas competitors.

'The corporation does not have the management resources for its diversification, nor is it likely to want to divert scarce capital resources to this purpose.' talks with Marathon WITHIN 24 hours, 24 Communist Party shop stewards at Glasgow's Clydebank shipyard will ring down the final curtain their on tenmonth long saga of betrayal at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders.

The stewards, union officials and executives of the Houston-based Marathon Manufacturing Co., are expected to reach final agreement on the takeover of the yard by tonight.

The stewards have already agreed 'in principle' to the Texas oil rig firm's conditions of work. ing which include an Americanstyle pay and productivity deal and a four-year, no-strike pledge.

The Stalinists were thought to be so eager to put their signatures to boilermakers, "nal contract that leader Danny McGarvey felt free to leave Glasgow for York on 'other Before he went, McGarvey told reporters: With the goodwill already expressed by local officials and shop stewards, we'll find our way round the toughest snags.' And Eldon Muss, senior Marathon vice-president, said he expected no 'stumbling blocks' in reaching a deal with the unions.

Maintaining to the bitter end the fiction: that an • uncompromising fight had been waged to defend the 'not a man down the road' policy they began with, Stalinist Clydebank convenor James Reid said on Tuesday:

'The real talks on the vital issues start tomorrow. These issues are redundancies and disputes procedures' The stewards are demanding that none of the existing 2,300 strong workforce lose their jobs as a result of the takeover. Marathon want to sack 300.

But whatever agreemént is reached about these 300 jobs, the fact remains that when UCS collapsed, Clydebank employed about 3,200 men.

During the Stalinists' 'fight', 00 jobs have already been axed.

And under the proposed deal, some of those left in the yard vill almost certainly be fired.

Marathon is prepared to guarantee the size of the workforce, but it cannot guarantee that the men presently employed have the skills it will need to build oil rigs.

The only other stumbling block to agreement is whether Marathon will agree to the rules of disputes procedure of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions applying under their management.

With all sides, including the Tories and the liquidator, so obviously confident, it is unlikely that either of these Issues will prevent the Stalinists from clinching a deal with Marathon before tonight's deadline.