The victimisation of 1974

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ALAN Thornett, at that time a full-time deputy convenor in the Cowley Assembly Plant, was first victimised by management in April 1974. Following a series of strikes against the arbitrary introduction of work study onto the tracks, management withdrew all recognition from him in any trade union capacity whatever — even as shop steward for his section.

After a strike lasting one month by the transport drivers, despite the pressure of a national witch-hunt by press and TV, his recognition as department shop steward was restored. He remained, however, unrecognised for all other offices.

The strike was used by T&G General Secretary Jack Jones and Region 5 of the TGWU to 'reorganise' the plant trade union structure and successfully install a right wing leadership for 3½ years.

Although remaining unrecognised, Alan Thornett has been elected deputy convenor for the past .... he hallst unste of tha mamherchin. the membership of the whole plant.

The victimisation i November 1979 o Longbridge conven and combine com mittee chair Derel Robinson (left) opened a new era i BL. BL had given notice that any trac unionist who fougi or even spoke ou. against manageme was in the firing lin The sacking of Ala Thornett is a move establish a new precedent in this drive against trad union organisation.

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work faster or get fire Michael Edwardes as boss of BL spearheaded the whole ruling class assault in the factories.

Now Edwardes has moved on, but the assault continues Harry Sloar reviews the record.

MICHAEL Edwardes may now have left BL — but workers on the shop floor have bitter reason to remember his five year reign of destruction and intimidation, which axed at least 82,000 jobs and over a dozen plants, and which has laid waste the powerful combine trade union organisation developed over many years of struggle.

A joint standing ovation from BL convenors and managers welcomed Edwardes the axe man as the 'saviour' of BL in 1977 (and the Morning Star commented that it would have been "irresponsible' not to approve Edwardes' plan).

Initially brought into the National Enterprise Board had been appointed by the Wilson/Callaghan government to carry through an all-out onslaught on jobs and working conditions, in the bope of making British capitalism's only major car manufacturer profitable again. But Edwardes arrived at a point where whole sections of convenors and the shop stewards' movement had been softened up to collaborate with management through the so-called 'workers' participation' plan put forward by Lord Ryder in 1976.

A network of plant and national level committees drawn both from management and union 'representatives' had been created to give the illusion that the unions could in some way 'control' the actions management, and therefore enjoyed some common interest in "saving the company'.

Sinker

Leading convenors, including Longbridge's Derek Robinson, swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker, and began echoing management talk of the need to it Joanly to restore viabit - at the expense of the jobs and living standards of workers on the shop floor.

Under these conditions the arrival of Edwardes -a hard-line union-buster who had previously sat out a prolonged strike at Chloride - was seen not as a threat but as an advance by the BL union leadership.

And Edwardes was able initially to make use of these illusions to pilot through, with the acquiescence of Robinson and other convenors, a number of the changes mapped out under the Ryder plan - in particular the abolition of individual plant bargaining, its replacement with corporate level national pay talks much more in the hands of full-time officials, and the imposition of a rigid fivegrade pay structure which would eliminate sectional pay struggles.

In May 1978 Edwardes was able to rely upon combine committee chairman Derek Robinson, a leading Communist Party member, to head off any real tight against the first plant clogure - that of the Triumph plant at Speke. It subsequently emerged that the plant had been 'fingered' for closure by a joint "participation' committee.

But already the growing shop-floor antagonism towards such collaboration -spearheaded by the opposition by the Cowley Assembly Plant shop stewards -meant that participation' was of increasingly limited value to management. Its apparatus was gradually wound up.

The election of Thatcher . to office in May 1979 gave a new impetus to the Edwardes offensive, which was already moving forward with the full implementation of corporate bargaining to come that autumn.

Simultaneously with his announcement of a miserable 5% pay offer, linked to 92 pages of strings which embodied a wholesale demolition of existing agreements, Edwardes put forward what he laughably described as his 'survival plan'. . The plan called for the closure of 13 BL plants and the axing of some 25,000 jobs in a wholesale rationalisation of the cars division.

To promote his plan, Edwardes summoned the petrified leaders of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions to a top-level 'briefing' at which he put the wind up them by offering them what Confed secretary Alex Ferry described as "a look over the precipice".

Edwardes threatened that if the union bureaucrats did not support his scheme for large-scale redundancies, he and the Tory government would pull the financial plug on. the whole enterprise and allow BL to collapse -with the probable loss of up to one million jobs in engineering and related industries.

For union leaders, who in any event looked upon the problems of British capitalism as 'their' problems -to be solved jointly with the employers — rather than as attacks by the British ruling class upon their shop floor membership which must be resisted, the argument was compelling. Not troubling even to query the figures they were offered by Edwardes, they all, with the exception of the TGWU, accepted his plan.

When Edwardes went further, and announced his intention to impose his scheme by seeking a ballot of the BL workforce, the Confed not only acquiesced - they offered to help! They published expensive adverts in the popular daily papers, calling upon their members to voté 'yes' to 25,000 sackings.

The TGWU opposition amounted in most cases simply to a form of words - TGWU leaflets arguing for a 'no' vote were not issued until after the ballot.

It was in the midst of these pay talks, and after Edwardes and his Confed backers had secured seven to one ballot vote in favour of the "survival plan', that the most spectacular victimisation took place.

Derek Robinson, having convened a rare meeting of the Combine Committee -which had become almost defunct during the period of 'participation' - put his name to a pamphlet whose line of 'survival plan' échoed the official position of the For this 'crime' Robinson was summarily sacked by Longbridge. management. 32,000 BL workers in the Midlands immediately walked out in his defence - only to be met by the treachery of the AUEW leadership.

The day after Robinson's sacking, the AUEW executive met - but refused to make the strike action official, or to call out other BL members in support.

A national conference of BL convenors held the same day failed-to make any call for strike action.

A demonstration in Birmingham a week later saw a boycott by AUEW leaders, and no speaker from the union's engineering section on the platform of the final rally, while TGWU leaders made militant speeches in Robinson's defence Eventually AUEW officials negotiated a deal which saw Robinson placed in the limbo of full pay while an AUEW "inquiry' was held, and the strikers were sent back to work.

Throughout these manoeuvres neither Robinson nor any of his 'comrades' from the Communist Party attempted to expose the treachery of the AUEW leaders.

Three months later, in February 1980, with the strike action long subsided, the inquiry pronounced that • Robinson had been unfairly dismissed - but at the same time attacked him for 'irresponsibility' as a convenor and alleged breaches of union rules.

These findings were seized upon in a renewed offensive by the company and by the Tory press. The official strike called in his support was put off in the teeth of a media witchtaramat Meramtrialio hen weeks later, the strike call was voted down at & mass.

A savage blow had been struck at the BL shop stewards' movement, and the aggressive tactics of the Edwardes regime had been given new teeth.

The reign of terror against shop stewards which was to begin, however, did not break the militancy of the shop floor. A February ballot on strike action against the unresolved 5% pay offer and the 92-page document produced a shock two-to-one vote for an all-out stoppage.

But this was not the result union officials -particularly Duffy's AUEW gangsters - had wanted.

In March they piled pressure upon a national meeting of BL convenors to secure a four-to-one vote against an immediate strike call, which could have brought out BL workers aiongside the steel strike.

Seizing upon this weakness and the frustration and demoralisation following the ballot and the robinson victimisation, Edwardes declared his intention to impose the five per cent together with the strings, over the heads of Anyone clocking in on April 8 would be regarded as having 'accepted' the offer: anyone failing to do so or 'causing disruption' would be 'subjected to disciplinary action' - in other words, sacked.

The Joint Negotiating Committee met and decided to defy the threat - calling an all-out strike from April 8. But Terry Duffy denounced the decision, called for separate votes by AUEW members, and then 'assessed' them to be against action.

Faced with this sabotage, other unions offered no lead, with the TGWU simply saying it would support any workers who went on th de or WI di ee tic wl of to le - BI

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