Nosympathy BSC cutbacks mean 80,000 lost jobs

OWN NA Labour's shadow Employment Secretary, has been bitterly criticized for saying he has no the sympathy four jailed dockers.

Prentice, who sits for dockland seat of East Ham North, told the capitalist press within hours of the arrests:

I have no sympathy at all with Bernie Steer and the others. They were wrong to organize picketing and blacking against the policy of their union. They. were even wrong to defy the court.

Trade unionists should not rally round these men as though they are latter Tolpuddle Martyrs. They are just not worth it' Before entering parliament rentice was on the full-time statt f the Transport ' and General Workers' Union at Transport House.

His reactionary outburst has produced an angry response from East End dockers and other trade unionists.

Tower Hamlets electricians' branch has passed a resolution unanimously calling on Prentice's constituency party to demand an apology for the dockers.

The resolution concluded by saying , the people who make statements like Prentice's have no right inside the labour or trade union movement or to profess to represent workers.

It will be sent to Prentice's constituency party and the West Ham Trades Council.

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(Please tick) TUESDAY Or Full subscripti days) for AMI DDI Amount would like information about THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE Fill in the form below and send to NATIONAI SECRETARY, SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON, SW4 7UG. Name Address out a subscription enclosed £ THE BRITISH Steel poration closed 54 plants or sections of works last year and almost 20,000 workers lost their jobs.

And BSC says the process of rationalization and closure is by no means complete. Another 80,000 steelworkers could lose their jobs. The annual report states: "Very substantial rationalization has still to be effected as the Corporation's long-term development plans are plemented.' BSC says it hopes further sackings will be made with 'the close co-operation with the trade unions in the industry.

In the year ending March 1972 BSC made a loss of £68m. Although there was a trading Block on Tube Investments ma DURING THE holiday closedown at Tube Investr ments, Walsall, trade unionists will take steps to see that no equipment is removed from the closure-threatened factory.

If the closure goes ahead, 1,400 workers at the stainless steel plant will be thrown on the dole. Walsall is in a part of the Midlands engineering belt already hit by severe unemployment. The US wavers over The daily paper that leads the fight again the Tories. Clapham THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY• mor surplus of £6lm, huge interest payments (£37m) among other things turned it into a deficit.

Home sales fell by a massive 24 per cent last year to 12.6 million tons, the most severe decline in UK steel demand since the war as the recession developed throughout British The Tory government last year forecast that the deficit would run to £100m. And BSC says in the report it only managed to keep it to £68m because of closures.

The Corporation blames the government for much of the deficit by its refusal to sanction the required rise in steel prices.

The halving of the proposed increases in April 1971 is said to have cost BSC some £65m in lost revenue.

Mr Albert Pritchard, spokesman for the Tube Investments action committee, told Workers Press:

'Our meeting with Lord Plowden, chairman of TI, was a complete waste of time. He told us that our best interests would be served by running the place down in an orderly fashion! If that was done he would help to "mitigate the social consequences".

'He could give no guarantees of a takeover and said that the plant and site would be sold. the dollar crisis THE DECISION of the New York Federal Reserve Bank to intervene for the first time since last August to support the dollar exchange rate represents a desperate attempt to buy a little time in the face of a rapidly - maturing world capitalist financial crisis.

In his August 15, 1971, measures, President Nixon broke the link between the dollar and gold.

The dollar became inconvertible and the basis of the 1944 Bretton Woods arrangements was destroyed. And once these forces were put into operation they could not be reversed.

Since that date US policy has been clear. It has been determined to force a series of currency revaluations on the Common Market which would leave the Europeans with an impossible disadvantage in the struggle for exports.

It is for this reason that for the last 11 months the US authorities have stood by and allowed dollars to flood into the European money market. The entire burden of supporting existing parity rates-agreed at in talks last December-has fallen on the backs of the Europeans, notably the Germans.

In their attempts to ward off a revaluation which would have put their , exports at such a crippling disadvantage, the West Germans and others have been obliged to increase the volume of their dollar holdings under conditions where the dollar has no gold backing and is a grossly over-valued currency.

Last Wednesday the US banks made a partial change in this policy when they supported the dollar by selling a portion of their mark holdings.

But, as the West Germans About 50,000 workers have been sacked by BSC since nationalization in 1967. And it is now clear that the government is planning to decimate the industry and concentrate production in five key centres.

In May the Tories announced an output target of between 28 to 36 million tons by 1980, with clearly the lower figure in mind. But that is not far below BSC's output at present.

Shortly afterwards 8,000 Scottish steel redundancies were announced. And there are undoubtedly secret plans to sack at least another 80,000 workers throughout the industry.

At Port Talbot 1,400 blastfurnacemen walked out yesterday closing down the giant steel plant. They were protesting against the jailing of the dockers.

That makes us subject to laws of the market and we won't accept it' Mr Pritchard said the • campaign was gaining financial and moral support, despite the fact that it was only in its early days.

'There is f2m worth of steel stockpiled here and we wal it to shift much of the produ ction from here to their other factories. We had a meeting union officials and we have their were quick to point out, this can be only a very short run 'solution' to the problem because America only has a paltry $429m worth of foreign currency as a component of her reserves.

Continued support for the dollar would involve the US in either • Selling more gold. But the official gold reserve is severely depleted. • Activating the 'swap' arrangements through the International Monetary Fund.

Under such arrangements, one country is allowed to swop its currency for that of another in order to preserve existing parity rates. But as the bankers know, such schemes were possible only in a period when all currency was linked through the dollar to Since August 15, confidence in the stability of all currency has been severely shaken. The hope that in these circumstances the renewal of 'swap' arrangement— the recycling of paper moneycan solve anything, reflects the seriousness of the plight which the capitalist class is in.

There are indications that the American capitalist class is split on its tactics to deal with this crisis.

One group, centred mainly on the US Treasury, wants to force American policy immediately upon the Europeans and Japanese.

It was Federal Reserve Board chairman Arthur Burns who was largely instrumental in bringing about the change in US policy.

He was supported by President Nixon. Election considerations are certainly at work here. But whether the Americans will be able to wait for November until they move decisively against Europe is doubtful.

A high Treasury official in Washington was certainly right when he said of the support operation: "It is a useful tactical manoeuvre, but not a solution to international monetary lems' Nothing is solved because in the background stands the unresolved US balance-of-payments crisis. Only an improvement in the US payments balance can hope to strengthen the dollar.

But a stronger American payments position means an intensified payments crisis for all those countries whose survival depends upon the US market. n any case, lears are being openly voiced that the soon to be published half yearly US payments figures will mark a further deterioration.

'When we try to get to this basic problem in talking to the Europeans,' said a senior Treasury official last Thursday, 'we meet resistance everywhere. The official said that other countries do not want to limit their exports, change their exchange rates or agree to American proposals to cut troop commitments abroad.

*What they would really like to see', he said, 'is higher interest rates here, and capital controls-and we're not about to buy that.' The Americans are to urge the Japanese to buy an extra $1,000m worth of US goods this year. Otherwise America will be forced to take more steps towards protectionism.

Japan is being urged to make major purchases of US-enriched uranium and grain to close the curren near $4,000m trade surplus in Japan's favour. US Embassay officials preparing for the talks said that while the Japanese seemed aware of the great dangers, 'no one seems to have any urge to do something'.

The Japanese are to be told that unless they respond immediately to American proposals, 'they will face another Nixontype shock' This is the real language of American capital as it prepares to do battle with Europe and Japan in the fields of trade and finance.

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