Sus the Right

Scan page 9

''With a daily picket outside, the gates chained and cemented together, and the keyholes blocked up, there haven't "Strike fast, strike hard, and don't depend on officials, councillors, or 'public opinion' — only on your own strength and the support of other rank Barry Blinco, Ansells shop steward talking on the lessons of defeat.

passed the Irish plants were of the Sheffield District, undermining their struggle. dominated by the hard (or dispute. Financial and emo- failed to link up struggles tional support is welcome, at Plansees and Hadfields. the goals. Plansees convenor said, "The It is also clear that District Committee was pressure for this has to come never particularly helpful: from the workers them- we didn't see them for eight selves. Offers to black are weeks."

''We had hoped to stem the tide of sackings and redundancies by winning at Plansees. With support from the start we could have done that" lan Paisley, convenor, Plansee ich we fought this 'e and no enforced 'e settled for less i' Il-out of the worktogether whole-' this long and e more than just a lational beacon of e dole queue. back it in".

Dennis Barry, ir, Laurence Scotts another job. We had to fight."

The miners have a tradition of successful struggle and were confident of victory. Similarly Gardiners workers, after a successful struggle in the mid 1970s became one of the best organised factories in Manchester.

Wage-cutting But in British Leyland the failure at Rover must be seen in the context of participation, union sponsored job selling, wage cutting and victimisation - a recent tradition of betrayals, unsuccessful struggle, demoralisation and cynicism.

In many plants too the centralisation of • decision making negotiations and procedures and the separation of senior stewards and committees from the shop floor has weakened sectional stewards and grass roots participation and confidence.

In an evenly balanced situation the ability to convince certain ; particularly crucial sections of the necessity to fight before the issue is taken at factory level can be decisive. Ii helped Gardiners where sectional autonomy was based on piecework.

There is also the need to grasp the bosses' longer term strategy. If there had been a leadership in Chrysler over the last year's campaigning on the basis that the employers had one ultimate objective - total closure - tne affair might have been concluded very differently.

United Glass in St Helens is typical of other situations. The bosses asked for 80 forced redundancies and came down to 65. When the workers struck they added changes in working conditions to their demands. The compromise was 50 voluntary redundancies. The workers claimed that they had saved 30 jobs.

An occupation rather than external picketing is essential. So is official support and preparation for the use of the law.

It is rather important to ensure that the service of eviction notices does not lead to demoralisation, by campaigning for immediate supporting strike action and mass demonstrations by other workers.

Whilst an occupation hits the employer (valuable machinery and millions of pounds of goods can be held as at Lee Jeans) and provides an essential base for organising, It Is the organising of an outside struggle involving other workers which is vital.

Time is vital

There is a need from day one to establish a map of the pressure points which must be hit to win the dispute. Take Laurence Scotts. Given the parent company's essential use of British Oxygen products, their use of Hull Docks for valuable exports, and the supplying to the mines with essential machinery; blacking was required - which, if effective, could have shut the company down in days.

Similatly in the Lee Jeans case the key was stopping the movement of goods to and from the company's Irish factories, which required support from the dockers.

Time is vital here. Yet in both cases it was months before even an attempt to win this blacking was seriously mounted.

The Lee Jeans strikers for example, seem to have accepted the advice of their officials that to ask for support would damage their and file workers" image. Yet every day that Images never won but it is blacking that scores like swallows in winter. 'It the TUC gave a lead and threatened the government with direct action we would get somewhere, said Arthur Scargill at the end of the People's March: but Scargill, a General Council member, has done nothing to encourage that direct action by trying to get the Yorkshire miners to black Scott's machinery!

Moreover it is obvious from recent struggles that workers cannot rely on their own officials to organise essential secondary action. IT AN A MADE LATER Thay have tn dn•it them. selves.

This can be difficult and exhausting for a small group.

In the present situation workers in small workplaces particularly look for a lead to the full time officials.

The extent to which this comes from particular officials may vary - but in the end all are operating under bureaucratic pressures.

In the Gardiners and Laurence Scotts disputes the broad left AUEW officials did give a lead and were far to the left of Peckham Road.

They were also to the left soft) CP, who markedly As lan Paisley, the TL. ine Mancnester orriciais fought the Duffy Cure sellout bid at Scotts - but when the AUEW leadership came down hard they stood in been many buyers"

And the increasing problem is that the right wing leaders will not go away. They will show an increasing tendency to intervene.

Duffy and his executive, for example, were quite willing to let Scotts workers get on with it as long as they stayed innocuously in barracks. When they started picketing other plants with some success Duffy moved in.

Faced with a membership declining because of a lack of leadership in the fight for jobs, Kitson and the TGWU bureaucracy are now instructing officials to cut out long expensive disputes and avoid potential confrontation with the Employment Act.

Sabotage So at Ansells Brian Mathers moved in quickly to sabotage the picketing at Romford and Bolton.

When a dispute at Leeds • provided the possibility of extending the Ansells struggle, the workers left it Plansee picket, July 1981 to Mathers - and Mathers left it to the birds.

With the struggle isolated and with no apparent solution, he was then able to run his own secret ballot with well bent' questions. With Mathers around who needs - the Employment Act?

Isolated

The Bestobells laggers in Scotland fell into all these traps. A group with a strong tradition of self reliance, they failed to take the struggle outside their occupation.

TGWU Regional Secretary Hugh Wyper failed to make the stoppage official and, isolated, they were hauled before the courts for Scott struggle? defying a writ fined -with the result the dispute collapsed.

These kind of obstacles can only be overcome if they are clearly understood from the start, if a firm campaign is mounted to prepare the members to meet them, and if regular mass meetings are held to keep up participation and resist demoralisation and official manoeuvring.

There is no magic wand which will conjure up overnight success. We need patient argument, careful planning, better organisation and a fight for a new leadership.

Our support is at the moment tiny and generally outside positions of influence, whilst socialist ideas have a minority hold in the workplaces.

However we have to organise and increase that minority and work for the most ambitious development of each dispute, remembering all the time that whilst we fight for a government which will act in the interests of the working class the best guarantee of that will be the intensification and unification of struggles against the Tories now.

Scan page 10

Socialist Organiser August