LESSONS FROM G.E.C. - ENGLISH ELECTRIC

MONDAY'S announcement by GEC-English Electric that there is to be a three-month postponement of its threat to put 3,000 Merseyside workers out of work again places the ball squarely at the feel of the shop stewards.

But in order to carry through last week's decision to continue to fight against the company's plans, by strike action if necessary, all the lessons of the bitter struggle against Weinstock's rationalization — which has already cost 17,000 workers their jobs-must be fully assimilated.

Despite declarations of opposition from trade union leaders, 5,000 were put outside the gate at AEI Woolwich last year.

Then, on September 17 and 18 this year, workers at three Merseyside plants rejected plans to occupy their places of work.

This is not a matter of deciding empirically where things went wrong, drawing up a recipe for the next time • and ending up, as does the revisionist weekly "Socialist Worker', blaming the working class.

Marxists begin with the developing and insoluble CrISIS of capitalism and with the CrISIS of working-class leadership.

The so-called 'International Socialism' group, which publishes 'Socialist Worker' broke from Marxism a long time ago with the conception that Stalinism had decisively defeated the Soviet working class--that the 1917 October Revolution had been 'lost' to capitalism.

In a September 25 article headlined Behind the Mersey Defeat', 'Socialist Worker's' 'Northern Industrial Reporter' places heavy emphasis on the Redundancy Payments Act under which 'many workers stand to receive a few are sacked ounds —as a major factor hundred when they in the votes against occupaGEC-English Electric stewards, the article claims, 'were ultimately defeated by the management - mindedness of their own members'.

Like the 'theory' of 'state capitalism', this is a lie. And it is a lie designed to cover up for the role played by the revisionist groups themselves in this set-back to the strug gle against unemployment.

By presenting the occupation as a publicity stunt, or as the 'Socialist Worker's' September 25 editorial puts it, as a means of showing 'if only for a few days, a glimpse of workers' control in action and the possibility of a planned, rational society free from the demands of a tiny clique bent only on producing profits at the expense of the majority' International Socialism' and the self-styled 'Institute for Workers' Control' helped create a diversion away from the real political fight against the threat of unemployment, and for support amongst those in other factories. docks and building sites in the area.

The editorial also talks of need to draw 'positive lessons' from what happened at the East Lancashire Road.

But without placing fight for leadership at centre, no lessons can learned.

By maintaining a 'snakesand-ladders' conception of the development of the working class, Socialist Worker' 1S unable to see further than the hesitation of September 1718.

The fact that 'B' shop workers, some of whom had marched with right-wing AEF stewards two days before, on September 19 reimposed their overtime ban is left entirely out of account.

For 'International SocialBy David Maude our Industrial Corresponder GEl-english tlectric worker demonstrate last August again: the closure of the Liverioro. No 'recipes' for the fight against unemployment Weistich last year tipie at dear tons from erred thin lead,000 were pushed out at AET ism', Marxism goes out of the window at the first whiff of real struggle. It was, as far as they were concerned, a decisive defeat.

'Socialist Worker's' reporter-with his talk of the 'gallant 300', that 'anyone with an ounce of political education would know that Powell is one of the champions of ruthless sackings in pursuit of the god of profit' *SHOP STEWALDS COMMITTEE 157M5 SHOP A TTEE (Bewley is an admitted supporter of Powell's ideas)-has contempt for those workers who were confused and disoriented by precisely the conceptions he himself advocates.

What the stewards were advocating 'Socialist Worker's' editorial claims, was 'going one step further than their French brothers who occupied factories last year. The English Electric militants say they would run plants'.

'Such an advanced type of action', the paper says, 'demands a high level of political understanding, as well as a solid trade union type of experience'.

Just what is Socialist Workers's' position here?

The only conclusion from its comment is ... that the stewards should not have gone ahead with their plans.

This is a double pronged attack on GEC-English Electric workers-on the one hand their 'managementmindedness' led to defeat and on the other, they are not 'advanced' enough for this kind of action anyway.

Its message to the stewards, who, it says, 'did well in the field of linking up with shop stewards in other industries on Merseyside' but 'also (also!) neglected the political edúcation of their members, is thus no more than a rationalization of 'defeat'.

The fight to build a leadership which can carry through the struggle against unemployment on Merseyside must go on in implacable hostility to such politics.

GEEC

MERSETSIDE.

ACT:CH