Children worked on building site

help pay to keep the strike going.

No new cars • are coming off the assembly lines factory in and are checked by pickets and even new Jaguars compound eight miles away at Coventry Airport have been blacked by T&GWU drivers of car transporters.

As the strike goes on other steps to pressurize Jaguar may be considered including action involving workers throughout the British Leyland empire-already paying in to the Coventry men's strike fund.

Said Mr Richards: 'British Leyland want MDW. We believe we're not just taking on Jaguar but the entire group. The men believe it's become a direct fight between them and management to see who can survive.

'That is what's keeping them going' Jobs danger at ICI 'OUR present return on capital investe d is unsatisfactory-in fact, it is far too low for comfort, declares ICI chairman Jack Callard in the current issue of his firm's 'Head Office News'.

Reports of ICI's staff conference held last month, reveal serious fears of redundancies and concern over the firm's poor showing A flying picket arrived at the site to find young children driving a dumper truck. The site agent got the children out of sight.

But with chants of 'Slave labour, everybody out', the pickets forced the site to close.

An attempt has been made to pull out men on the Cubitts firestation site. But UCATT officials intervened and said the men could stay at work provided the agent paid them £30 for 35 hours.

The intervention brought hostile reaction from pickets who said it would isolate sites and prepare for a sell-out reminiscent of the engineers' pay claim.

Pickets have also been down to the local Social Security office. One building worker married with two children has only just received 40p for his dependants after three weeks on strike. in recent years. These seem to be well justified.

One delegate to the conference declared that the staff were 'very worried about the company's poor results for 19701972'.

Callard replied that, as far as large tonnage commodity products were concerned, 'the reason for our poor performance was largely over-investment by the chemical industry worldwide'.

The problem was that the time between deciding to build a plant and having it in operation was between three and five years.

In fact Callard expressed clearly the crisis facing all longterm capitalist investors due to uncertainty in the world market and currency systems:

'All manufacturers found while they were waiting for their plants that demand had materially changed.

'It was very easy to end up with a large surplus capacity... This led to low profit margins and inadequate returns on investment to finance new investments. This was broadly what had happened in recent years.' As Callard complained, ICI Is extremely dependent on what happened to the national economy which had shown 'negligible growth over recent years. The national plan expand the economy by something like 3 per cent had • not materialized, he moaned.

But ICI now hopes to recover from some of the blows inflicted by this failure (plus the recent miners' strike and the steps taken to keep ICI out of the American market) by producing more cheaply • within the Common Market.

New Dlant. Callard told his plant, Callard told staff, would go where In the eastern region, stretchIng from Southend to King's Lynn, pickets are also pulling out every possible site.

In the Southend area, Sindall's Post Office site and a new library being built by Bates are the immediate targets. Pickets are also moving into Tilbury and Basildon to pull out housing sites.

George Chadwick, ex-marine and UCATT convenor at the Bovis site, Southend, told Workers Press : it was the first time he had been on strike for 35 Nationalization of the building industry, he said, was essential to remove the great exploitation of workers and home buyers. It was the only way to get a guaranteed wage for all trades.

He was in favour of a General Strike to force the Tories to resign. product could be mum cost'.

Britain was now joining Europe, he declared, and whereas in the past, decisions on the location of plant were affected by the tariff situation in the Common Market countries, these barriers were coming down.

'In this situation there would be increasing flexibility about where plants could be located.' This threat was underlined when Callard pointed out that comparisons over the years showed that ICI required more people to do a job than its competitors did:

The number of people employed by ICI had stayed pretty constant over the past 20 years but the chemical industry was not likely to be a large employer of people in the future.' The future in areas such as Scotland and Teeside looks particularly bleak.

When delegates expressed concern over possible redundancies in the research and development departments, Callard replied: 'It is no good just pursuing bright ideas because they are tempting and spending and more money on them, hore ICI's research director, Dr A. Spinks, added: About two-thirds of the £60m spent on research went on salaries and wages.

'Unless trade increased at the same rate as wages and salaries there would be heavy pressure to secure economies in so large a scale as this.' Even recent increases pay carried a string.

When a delegate asked if these could mean redundancies h was told: 'If we paid ourselves more money, costs went up unl ss it was paid to fewer people.'

4 Workers Wasterday given. Do you want me to narrate what I have given? In the last six months about 750 Taka have been given in relief.' The workers are not satisfied and mass pressure has forced Rahman not only to take up the profiteers, but to make the whole business community see that they cannot bask riches while the workers and peasants rot.

Addressing himself to Bengali businessmen he says: You must understand that workers and labourers have been demanding nationalization of the industries, etc, which means they want liquidation of exploitation.' Rahman is balancing between conflicting and potentially explosive forces peppering his regime with criticism. He alternatively castigates and cajoles the business community and alternatively chastens and then pleads with the workers.