Lorry bonus halts more cars

THANKS FOR A £2,150.22 FINAL TOTAL WE HAD to announce our final total—it was so magnificent. Well over £100 arrived yesterday bringing our final figure up to £2,150.22. What more can we say!

Clearly no other paper can boast of such a record. Each month you, our readers, not only ralse our monthly target of £1,750, but, without exception, collect an amount well over the top.

We know that your great response comes from the fact the daily paper that fights for socialist principles every day. And as more and more workers In every industry are driven to. wards a major showdown with the Tory government, this adherance to principles becomes the most decisive question.

We are determined to build a revolutionary leadership throughout the working class and our paper must be in the forefront of this fight. We are confident that you are all us. But we cannot back in any way. Greater support must be won. So post everything you collect to:

February Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London, SW4 7UG BRITISH ROAD Services yesterday continued to refuse its heavy-vehicle drivers equal treatment to those at other transport firms, causing the lay-off of hundreds more Midlands carworkers.

The : total number laid off rose to well over 10,000 at nine factories as assembly-line workers at Oxford and Abingdon joined those already sent home at Birmingham and Coventry.

Supplies of bodies and other components are now completely disrupted. Yet BRS maintained its resistance to the drivers' demand for a £2.50 merit bonus, which is being paid by almost all private hauliers in the area to men possessing the new heavy goods vehicle (HGV) licence.

Meanwhile the 1,000 BRS drivers demanding the bonus remained • available for work at their depots.

But since they have all handed their HGV licences into the Transport and General Workers' Union, they are unable to drive the big lorries and transporters which supply the car factories. HGV licences became compulsory for all vehicles over three tons unladen weight this week. So as long i as BRS withholds the payment it cannot cond the drivers nutside the depots.

To describe the situation as a stalemate, however, would be to leave out of account the enormous power of the weapon the drivers have decided to deploy.

With one action-handing a piece of card to their shop stewards-they have exposed the weakness of car giants like British-Leyland when confronted by united action of just one section of workers.

Hence the embarrassed silence of the capitalist Press, and the union leaders' rush to settle.

The most frequent comments around the depots are about the Press lies about how much drivers earn, the fact that drivers now need three certificates to get a job and the unfairness of BRS's refusal to pay what is already being paid by private firms.

Nevertheless BRS has itself introduced politics into the dispute —claiming it cannot pay the £2.50 because of the pay laws. The drivers' answer is quiet confidence that they can crash the Tory roadblocks.

Jack Jones and the T&GWU leadership instructed Alan Law, the union's Birmingham transport official, to return to the city to try and settle the dispute.

Forge, Titanium Metal and Alloys and Union Carbide UK.

Daniel Doncaster and Sons installed the world's largest screw press at its Monkbridge Forge works in Leeds, primarily to produce compressor blades for the Concorde engine.

There are 300 firms in Britain involved in major work on the Concorde and more than 400 others involved to a lesser degree.

These include Marconi-Elliot Avionic Systems, supplying an advanced auto-pilot, which would eventually include automatic landing (Marconi also supplies navigation and guidance units): Smith Industries (temperature and rpm indicators and other equipment); Triplex Safety Glass (flight-deck glazing); Flight Refuelling and Plessey Dynamics (fuel systems): Graviner, a Wilkinson Sword substitute (fire protection); Lucas (generating equipment); Dunlop (wheels, brakes and tyres) Ekco Electronics (weather radar equipment);

›owiv «ivine contros an • associated equipment); NormalairGarret (cabin pressurization systems); Davall (radiation detectors); Honeywell (switches and control units); Hymatic (gas and liquid control valves); Walter Kidde (oxygen equipment); Thermatic Controls (pressure switches); Bradley Engineering (drain caps); Cementation-Muffelite (racking and elfin cases); Zenith (pressure control equipment); Abex (hydraulic pumps) and many more.

Work undertaken by various firms ranges from. £320 worth to £3.7m.

A similar situation, of course. exists in France-on the eve of the elections!

No further proof could be needed of the total inability of capitalism to maintain living standards for the working class. On the contrary, important technological developments lead only to economic collapse and the loss of jobs for thousands of workers.

The Concorde affair is only one aspect of the ferocious trade war now developing between America, Japan and Europe. If capitalism is allowed to continue the same fate is in store for workers in cars, shipbuilding, steel, machine tools, textiles and every major This underlines the urgent need to mobilize the unions to call a General Strike to destroy the state pay laws, force the Tories to resign and • return a Labour government pledged to the nationalization of all these in*1.25* Ted Groves (above), a driver at Birmingham's Oldbury depot, 1o0k home {29.50 after 50 hours work last week and his was one of the biggest pay-packets in the depot. Here he holds up his pay-slip to demonstrate that even with £2.50 bonus and ten hours overtime, his gross pay was. only £34.47.