CLYDE WORK-IN FAI TISH JOBLESS I

THE STRATEGY Tory government create widespread unemployment and then to use this to weaken trade union organization and drive down living standards and conditions of work.

Above all, the Tories want to take away the basic right to strike. Without this right, established over 200 years of labour struggle, the working class will be unable to resist the imposition of intolerable working conditions.

This is the central purpose of the Industrial Relations Act.

And nowhere is this strategy being more ruthlessly carried out than in Scotland, where the latest figures show 138,544 people registered unemployed (6.5 per cent). When UCS went into liquidation in 1971 the figure was 114,600 (6 per cent).

Over 24,000 workers have joined the Scottish dole queues in the last year.

The UCS settlement can only be understood in relation to this Tory strategy of creating unemployment in order to break When the Stalinist-led work-in began on July 30, 1971, there were 8,500 men employed in the yards. There are now about 6,000. And neither the newlyestablished Govan Shipbuilders concern nor Wayne Harbin's Marathon Manufacturing company will save these jobs.

On June 27 shop steward Gerry Ross— a leading Communist Party member — announced details of the planned transfers of labour from the Clydebank yard to Marathon. These revealed that the fate of 1,000 workers depends upon Name Address Subscribe!

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Or Full subscriptic x-days) for NAME DDI would like information about THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE Fill in the form below and send to NATIONAL SECRETARY, SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE, 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON, SW4 7UG. out a subscription MONDAY TUESDAY Amount enclosed £ new orders of which there is no sign whatever. When two existing ships are completed next month, there is nothing left for these men.

Meanwhile Marathon had announced that it could employ 2,000 workers at the most-and that not for another two years.

In fact Marathon undertook to employ only 151 of the 176 Clydebank workers sacked in the first days of July.

It must be stressed-and the Communist Party's 'Morning Star' has been completely silent about this - that these 151 workers are the ONLY men that Marathon is efinitely committed to employing immediately.

Marathon has promised to take on 500 men by the end of September, but it has signed no agreement to this effect.

The company has said it will employ 2,000 men in 18 months' to two years' time, but, again, it has signed no agreement to this effect. So the 'Morning Star's' claim on July 21 that there was to be 'a smooth transition without fear of temporary redundancies' was totally false.

Not only will there be plenty of redundancies — they will be permanent.

And early promises that Govan Shipbuilders would be able to take on any Clydebank labour not required by Marathon rapidly proved worthless as a dearth of orders for the new complex was announced.

The daily paper that loads the fight again the Torles. to Workers THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY• months.

Indead Cnvan Chinhuildore far шисси uuran эшкиинибко, кыы from being able to absorb more labour, was to start trading with no confirmed orders whatsoever. And this was at a time when orders for new ships in British shipyards fell by one-third in the 12 months ending in June 1972. Thus unemployment haunts the Clyde once again. Despite all the Stalinists' talk of 'victory' the Tories have been allowed to get away with their strategy of increasing unemployment.

Repeated pledges by James Reid and James Airlie were prominently displayed in the 'Morning Star' that no settlement would be accepted that did not preserve all four yards and every job.

But precisely such a settlement has now been signed. And having succeeded in creating widespread unemployment in the yards the Tories are now pressing ahead with their onslaught against the unions.

Those workers left with jobs have had their union rights signed away.

When Trade Minister John Davies announced government backing for the new Govan Shipbuilders consortium this did not, as the 'Morning Star' claimed on July 1, 'set the seal on the UCS victory.

For as the 'Star' reported without comment, this backing was based on 'an agreement on working practices acceptable to the government'. As every worker Innwe the onvernment is seeking to base all working practices on the Industrial Relations Act.

And John Davies made it clear that further backing for Govan would • be dependent upon increased productivity and reduction of 'restrictive' practices.

But the agreement signed with Wayne Harbin of Marathon went even further than this.

This was exactly the type of agreement that the Tories would wish to impose on workers everywhere. It is the Industrial Relations Act in practice.

early at January 28 that Harbin wanted a four-year no-strike guarantee before he would buy Clydebank.

And that is exactly what he has got.

The agreement cannot be described more explicitly than it was by boilermakers' president Danny McGarvey, one of the signatories to it:

'There is no going back. The boilermakers have done something here that they would do for no other employer.

'Everyone knows what this means. There will be no strikes during the term of the agreement [four years]. We have agreed on this.?

It was on this basis that Marathon was able to announce that bonuses would be paid every six months and would be forfeited completely if more than one and a half weeks' work was lost within that period without legitimate cause'.

This means only one thing. Strikes are outlawed at Clydebank. And this is what the Industrial Relations Act is all about.

The trade union leaders, Communist Party stewards and their so-called Liaison Committee have opened the door to the application of the Act in practice. No amount of one-day protests can cover that up. This is a victory for the Tory government.

But it is a victory the Tories need not have won.

For hundreds of thousands of workers followed and contributed to the UCS fight.

Trade unionists throughout the British Isles sent thousands For many le l of pounds to maintain Russian shipyard workers had contributed €15,000 by the end of 1971. The Irish Transport and General Workers' Union sent a large donation. Actors, folk-singers and other entertainers staged concerts and films to raise funds.

UCS stewards received hunJONES-ALDINGTON solves nothing-that is the feeling of most port shop stewards and rank-and-file dockers at Hull. Three of their leaders told Stephen Johns why.

Huti and Humber Seyedsteward, • There is nothing for us in the Jones-Aldington report unless all the unregistered ports are going to come inside the scheme. This is the most serious threat to the dockers in Hull and this is what all the picketing is about.

We have seen this problem coming for eight years now. We have tried to get the unions to do something about it with no success. All they were interested in was membership, membership at almost any cost.

This wasn't helping the docker and it didn't help the men in the unregistered ports either. They work under very poor wages and conditions.

Really the issue in these ports and modernization is the National Dock Labour Scheme.

The employers have been unable to get rid of this directly so they have been going round it with the development of unregistered ports and container depots. In other words the whole of the dockers' gains are at stake in this struggle.

I do not look on the conditions we have obtained under the Scheme as some kind of special privilege — they are a right.

The right of stopping workers being thrown right out on the dole is an important right. It is one that should not be eroded but extended to all workers. The fact that the unions have never in dreds of invitations to explain their fight at meetings all over the country.

Students, old age pensioners and schoolchildren sent in donations.

And workers were prepared to show their support in action. When the closure was first announced 100,000 Glasgow workers joined a one-day strike 'All Wor a job', s fought for this-particularly the T&GWU-is completely baffling.

The guarantees under the Scheme are important for the development of militancy as well.

In struggles like Pilkington's, whole groups of workers, men who fought so hard for wages, were able to be thrown out of the factory; they were isolated and victimized.

This is why we supported them down here on Hull docks. Without the guarantees the employers just wait and strike out when the time is right.

I cari't stress enough that behind this struggle is Scheme and the rights we have The other big issue is the way we are drawn into conflict with some of the lorry drivers.

This worries me because it might make relations bitter. The dockers have always backed the lorry drivers and tried to help them by 'blacking' firms who were giving them trouble.

This shop stewards' committee I am on is the most socialist I have ever had experience with. And the dockers will respond. Their past in Hull shows this.

We backed the Pilkington men, the council workers, the postmen and of course the miners. I hope the drivers realize this.

The other thing to stress

kers need right to ay Hull dockers on June 24, 1971, and 50,000 marched.

On August 18, 200,000 Scottish workers downed tools and 80,000 marched.

The working class needs to know why this enormous support, equalled only by the support for the miners' strike, was dissipated.

The fight was lost that these men going through the picket line are not the majority. This confrontation should not be necessary. The men who are prepared to hide behind the police like this must have no principles at all.

The way the police go at you is a shock at first. Then you realize what they are up leadersnip remainea in tne nanas of the Communist Party memlanan nt the hand of th. otis al lue mcau or lue snop chan stewards' co-ordinating committee and their collaborators, the reformist trade union leaders.

These people refused to link the fight for jobs with the fight to bring down the Tory government. Reid and Airlie explicitly stated that they were 'in business to save jobs on the Clyde, not to bring down the government' When the workers turned out in their hundreds of thousands, who did the Stalinists place at their head?

They chose: Vic Feather of the TUC, who had recently left the postmen isolated and open to defeat; engineers' president Hugh Scanion, who was to retreat from the national pay claim; Anthony Wedgwood Benn of the Labour Party's NEC which had refused to nationalize shipbuilding when in office; and William Wolfe of the Scottish Nationalist Party, who argued that the closure was a 'Scottish' problem and not a class problem.

Amidst this welter of confusion the Stalinists organized a work-in which workers not only produced ships for the liquidator but handed them over as well.

The Stalinists did not call for occupation of the yards and call on other workers to join them. They organized work for the Tory government and kept the UCS men basically isolated from other workers, who were asked only for money, resolutions and participation in occasional demonstrations.

In these circumstances men drifted from the yards and, as resistance weakened, the Stalinists moved towards a deal.

Despite a mass meeting decision in November that no more ships should leave the yards without a firm pledge on the four yards and every job, Reid and Airlie persuaded the stewards in january to recomtime of Devlin they might have been worth it. But it's different, in this period. The employers are just trying to get over a crisis by a few nice words so they can keep getting their pound of flesh.

What we really want is a complete overhaul of the industryReld: pledges broken mend releasing the New Westminster City in January because McGarvey had fiown to Texas to seek a buyer for Clydebank.

In April two more ships were released in order not to jeopardize the Marathon negotiations.

The firm guarantee condition, and with it the pledge to save all jobs, was abandoned. A month earlier Reid, who is on the NEC of the Communist Party, had assured the readers of "The Times': 'We shall honour the agreement we reach not only in the letter but in the spirit.' A few weeks later, James Fox, who was being groomed by Harbin for the presidency of Marathon Manufacturing (UK) explained what this meant: 'I am afraid there must be some redundancies.

It is inconceivable that this will not happen.' Thus the Communist Party, despite the spirit of the men of the Clyde and despite the magnificent response of the working class, has adopted a policy of accepting sackings and accepting employer - dictated terms, including no-strike pledges.

This is precisely what the Tories set out to achieve when Nicholas Ridley's Axe the Clyde' plot was first revealed.

The lesson of the Clyde is that it was through the agency of the Communist Party and the trade union leaders that Tory policy was imposed on the By itself the militancy of the workers was not enough to prevent this. The crisis of the working class remains the crisis It is the task of the Socialist Labour League, in constructing the revolutionary party, to resolve this crisis. severance, of firms going out business-until we have nothing else to give.

Tony Fee, Hull docks delegate.

I voted against this report because it solves nothing. It tackles none of the problems facing the docker. Its real pur6.50 7.15 7.40 9.00 9.25 10.15 10.45 11.45 11.50 GOLDEN SILENTS.

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