THE APARTHEID CONNECTION

BY JOHN The Brit poration deal with Iron and tion of (ISCOR) aestroy inousanas in Britain and 1 plans to build a ne in Scotland.

BSC is negotiating in partnership with German companies, I nyssen ana Klockner. Ine deal would make South Africa a major partner in Common Market steel production.

Instead of improving and building new plants in Britain tion will be expanded in ducAfrica, where wages are low and unions illegal.

BSC's investment in the South Africa project could be as much as £500m - almost half the total amount invested in the entire steel industry in Britain since 1956.

The project would be a death-blow for the expansion of capacity planned at Ravenscraig in Scotland and might well affect BSC's plans for a major development of steelmaking capacity at Scunthorpe, Lincs.

Lord Melchett, the Old Etonian chairman appointed is now examining detailed reports on the South African project drawn up by BSC experts.

They visited the site of the proposed new developments at Saldhana Bay on the aria, remote Atlantic coast north of Cape Town. The hinterland of this part of South Africa contains rich deposits of iron ore.

Under the scheme the British-German consortium, working in harness with ISCOR, would build port facilities and plant to export SPENCER ish Steel Coris negotiating a the state-owned Steel CorporaSouth which could OI JODS orpedo w plant the deal two big August ms. an estimated 8 million tons semi-finished steel a year.

Total crude-steel production for the last full financial year was 20.4 million ingot tons. The South African plant could, when fully operational, supply up to a fifth of current British steel requirements.

Naturally, the South African steel would be much cheaper than that produced in Britain. Wage rates for black workers in South Africa are only a fraction of those paid to British workers— and there are no union problems.

Any disputes are 'settled' by the extremely efficient South African police, backed by the best-armed military machine in the entire continent. A number of British firms—including several BSC subsidiaries, Dorman Long, Stewarts and Lloyds and Baldwins—are already reaping the benefits of investing in apartheid.

The German partners in this enterprise will also appreciate the advantages of operating under these conditions. They were prominent under the Nazi regime in • employing slave-labour and making immense profits.

They are ruthlessly axing their ageing plant in the Ruhr, where production is expensive and wage rates are high. The Ruhr plant is a long way from the sea and local deposits of ore and fuel are becoming worked out.

For maximum efficiency and competitiveness, modern steel plants should be situated by the sea, in a position to import the cheapest ore and coal while cutting transport costs to a minimum.

French and German steel barons are planning such a factory at Fos-sur-Mer, near Marseilles, but the cost is escalating very rapidly and the partners are desperate for more funds.

The drive to reduce steelFactory bullding for Dorman Lo Investing in apartheid. Above: Ih making costs is fuelled by competition from the extremely modern Japanese factories which have stepped up their exports to Britain five times over the past two European firms already have a foothold in the expansion of South African steel manufacture. The Austrian combine VOEST has completed a partnership arrangement with ISCOR for a £170m plant to produce semi-processed steel.

The Austrian firm will have a 49-per-cent interest, leaving ISCOR with a controlling 51 per cent. The scheme is likely who are reaping the benefits of conditions of black workers. to serve as a model for British-German enterprise if this is given the go-ahead.

South 'Africa's interest in these developments is obvious: not only will the apartheid regime be bolstered by huge inputs of additional capital, but the country will have an assured outlet to the Common Market for a considerable slice of its steel production.

In addition, the scheme will give the South Africans another major port which it badly needs to reduce the pressure on the existing ports at Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London.

THE ELECTION THAT DIDN'T THE G&MWU chequer, Lord Brooke, the Jack Jones, the Duke and Derok former Tory Home Secretary, Gladwrin, G&M's southern Ray ernie Harold Wilson's head of the G&M, David Bassnet. former Labour region organizer. Far left: New 1964 government, police com- Left: Pilkington workers at SI missioners, and fire brigade Helens showed what they fell CHANGE Some surface changes may follow this week's election of David Bassnet to head the General and Municipa! Workers' Union in Lord Cooper's stead. But whatever these may be, they will in no way reverse the right-wing policies which have dominated the union.

At 48, Bassnet has been a G&MWU official for more than 20 years. And'as a national industrial officer he has been a cornerstone of the union's rigid hierarchy.

Bassnet's friends say he wants to give the union a more dynamic' image, with more stress on rank-and-file democracy through industrial conferences.

His critics say the only difference between Cooper and the new man is one of style.

Where Cooper liked to be seen as a bluff, no-nonsense sort of chap, Bassnet cultivates the approach of a thoughtful, slightly aloof, academic. But the two men are at one, the critics say, on the fundamental issues facing the trade union movement.

Writing in the April issue of the G&MWU journal, for instance, Bassnet talked about repeal, by a Labour governBut apart from occasional statements of this kind in his union's journal, Bassnet and his colleagues remain on the whole somewhat reticent on the burning questions of the day.

They are judged, therefore, by their actions. And their actions during the biggest upset to hit the union in recent years are remembered with bitterness by many G&MWU members. * The 1970 Pilkington strike was opposed from the outset by the man who now heads Britain's third largest union. Bassnet, who as national officer was responsible for the firm, wanted a return to work on the management's terms, 'a drastic reform of the wages structure and a complete overoutmoded industrial Pilkington's terms at that time were 50p on top of the existing £14.50 basic rate. More 11,000 glassworkers at St Helens, Pontypool, Doncaster, Glasgow, Birkenhead and St Asaph had struck for a 10 guinea increase. Talk of return was treated with derision.

But when the company upped its offer to £3-with'strings' Bassnet and the G&MWU executive were able to get most of the smaller factories back to work, leaving the 8,000 at St Helens out on their own. Gerry Caughey at about this time, were 'a now-you-see-itnow-you-don't affair'.

The £3 would not be placed on basic rate. It would be a flat payment remaining the same no matter how many hours of overtime were worked, but being cut down if anyone worked less than 40 hours.

With the strike five weeks old, the strikers were brusquely informed by G&MWU local officials that they could no longer be considered shop stewards for the union. It was an acid comment on the role of the union leadership that this penalty for leading a mass, popular movement for wages should be announced, as it was, on May Day. Small wonder that workers should carry placards through St Helens that day reading 'G&MWU-RIP' stewards in vicious Press But the great store of hostility they were building up against themselves did not stop Bassnet and the GaMWU leaders trying, trying and trying again to end the strike.

Towards the end of May 1970 the union even stooped in desperation to calling in local clergy to 'supervise' yet another secret ballot. Even that failed to break the strikers' ranks.

It was left to Victor Feather and the TUC to pull Pilkington's and the G&MWU's chestnuts out of the fire.

By May 23, 1970, with the Labour leaders just four weeks away from their poll battle with Heath's Tories, Feather had persuaded the glassworkers back to their jobs with promises of changes in the union.

Ten days later G&MWU secretary Lord Cooper and his executive virtually forced the wanted representation by someone he chose.

After more than two years of company stonewalling and union prevarication men who led the 1970 strike remain workless and blacklisted today. BUSINESSMEN Meanwhile Bassnet has got on with his 'reform of the wages structure'. This has brought the Measured-Day Work system to Pilkington factories, alongside a corporatist-style network of joint committees for fixing pay and dealing with disputes.

There are other. leading lights in the union who deserve special mention.

Derek Gladwin, the southern region organizer, is one of the GENERAL & NUNCAN WORK IS LINION RIf HELD 12. been hailed by the Industrial Society's director, Mr John Garnett, as a great step in the Society's development.

Gladwin was among the group of trade unionists and CBI leaders who went to Buckingham Palace a week ago to talk with the Duke of Edinburgh about a conference to be held on industrial relations in Oxford in 1974.

The motives of this conference were clearly expressed in a Press release which said: 'The aim of the conference is to bring together men and women under the age of 45 from management and the trade unions to consider what they can do to improve the relationship between industries and communities and between individuals and their work. These will be people who in the future will be responsible for decisions likely to affect their fellow citizens.' In other words the conembodies this philosophy in the most dramatic way. He is both trade union official and 'boss'.

Four years ago he became chairman of the Newcastle Airport Authority, which just happens to employ a number of his own members. Picture the scene when the ground staft at the airport, represented by Cunningham, go to the management (Cunningham) for increased pay, shorter hours and better conditions!

And this is not Cunningham's only link with management. He is also chairman of the Tyneside Passenger Authority which runs the bus service in the Newcastle district, chairman of the Durham Police Authority and a Durham County Councillor.

His active business life was also revealed in a dramatic way during the Poulson bankruptcy hearing at Wakefield. Under cross-examination from Mr Muir Hunter, QC, John PoulThe choice of Portugal for a free holiday at the expense of Poulson's empire is astonishing —if only because Cunningham also sits on the Labour Party's Southern Africa Solidarity Fund Committee which is allegedly pledged to supporting African guerrilla movements fighting Portuguese colonialism.

Cunningham carries his personal politics right to the top of the Labour Partv. He is à member of the 26-man National Executive Committee, the senior administrative body in the Party. And he got there this year, for the eighth successive year, by virtue of the one million votes of Jack Jones and his Transport and General Workers' Union.

Cunningham is not actually Robinson in the G&MWU when he accepts fee-paying chairmanships with the ruling class. Lord Cooper, on his retirement as general chiefs.)

There is, perhaps, no more exaggerated example of a British trade union so dominated by right-wing bureaucracy.

visit the union's palatial headquarters—a manor house called Ruxev Towers • UTENAN set in rolling lawns of Esher, Surrey-is enough to convince any trade unionist of the direction which the present leadership is attempting to direct the union.

The right-wing road being Press, Friday November about the G&MWU.

a gain or a loss to the whole of the army, which by its organization is marching ... to its ultimate goal - the emancipation of the working class. Workers Unite!' Only the All Trades Unions Alliance, the industrial arm of the Socialist Labour League, fights within the trade unions for the construction of a leadership which can carry forward these socialist objectives.

Glassworkers, shipyard labourers, laggers, cleaners, dustmen, kitchen staff, dockers and the variety of unskilled workers in the G&MWU have the power in their hands to end the class-collaboration and the reaction of their leaders.

At the ATUA national con-