Knives are out for Clyde yard

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Join the Labour Committee on Ireland. BM Box 5355, London WCIN 3XX WITH THE announcement of British Shipbuilders losing £117 millions in the last financial year, the knives are out for the Scott Lithgow shipyards on the Lower Clyde.

Over half the losses, £6t millions, were run up at Scot! Lithgow, an average of £12,50( per person employed there Since nationalisation in 1977 the total deficit of the yards amounts to £158 millions.

The publication of these figures was the signal for the un-leashing of a wild campaigr against the workers at the yard. In the Commons, Normar Lamont, the Tory minister for shipping, attacked the yard's 'very poor performance' and warned of the need for 'g very remarkable improvement' if the yard was to survive.

But this was tame stuff compared with the venemous attacks of Sir Robert Atkinson, chair of British Shipbuilders. The '5,000 deaf men' at the yards, he claimed, 'had let the corporation down, let the nation down, and let themselves down'.

Foul knaves indeed. But shis mas not the end of their exi mays. The Prime Minister had lent over backward i belp the yard. but the Its performance has let Mrs. Thatcher down'!

Off with their heads, I hear SO. readers cry in unison.

Unfortunately though, the Tories lost the attempt to re-introduce the death penalty. So British Shipbuilders are going to do the next best thing: sack the lot of them.

Even before the announcement of the latest losses, B$ had been calling for 2,000 voluntary redundancies in the yard. The wild attacks which have accompanied the announcements of the losses can only be a preface either to complete closure of trimming the yard's workforce down to the bone.

The response of STUC General Secretary Jimmy Milne to all this is no response at all. His 'solution' is that civilian yards like Scott Lithgow should be allowed to build warships: "They did it in wartime and there is no reason why they can't do it again' Presumably he would therefore regard another Falklands foray as a large-scale jobcreation scheme.

The response from the shop stewards committee within the yards has been no better. Judging by the attacks of convenor Duncan McNeil on unfair competition by the Japanese and Koreans, he seems to believe that it still is wartime!

Whils rightly condemning the anarchistic way in which he rands swisched from mer=se stippite to alrig proMelei has also set Me are Dox asking I be absid! Me want se profable Even the likes of Ted Heath ditched that idea rears ago.

• more positive response to management attacks displayed by the 200 plumbers and craftsmen who went on strike at the yards on the eve of the announcement of the losses. Within twenty-four hours though their own union officials had forced them to return to work.

But it is only through independent class action in the form of strikes and occupations, not making endless sacrifices for the benefit of the profit margins, that jobs at Scott Lithgow and throughout British Shipbuilders can be sacked.