A desert on Clydeside?

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PORT Glasgow, Gourock and Greenock are now threatened with devastation far exceeding that suffered by any other community in Scotland since the Tories came to power in 1979. The possible fate facing the 100,000 inhabitants of the three towns can be compared only to the blight of Corby after the steelworks there closed.

This bleak future is threatened by Britoil's decision to cancel its order with the Scott Lithgow shipyards for an £88 million drilling rig. If the work is withdrawn, then the yard would close, throwing 4,200 workers onto the dole.

Over 90% of the workforee at the yard, in Port Glasgow, lives within a four mile radius of it, embracing Greenock, Gourock and Port Glasgow itself. Registered male unemployment in that area is already 19%. If the yard closes, it would rise to 40%. Scott Lithgow provides 11% of the employment in the area, and there would be a knock-on eitect in addition to the direct job losses.

Within two years the Inverclyde region around the shipyard would become one of the Stan Crooke reports on the fight against closure at Scott Lithgow largest and most deprived unemployment blackspots in Western Europe.

But the widespread poverty and misery resulting from closure means nothing to Britoil, British Shipbuilders or, least of all, the Tories.

Britoil's only concern is that the oil rig it has on order from the yard is late. The decision to cancel the contract is designed to teach British Shipbuilders "a lesson it will not forget in a hurry"

While thousands of workers will lose their livelihoods as a result of Britoil's educational exercise, Britoil itself will lose next to nothing. It can reclaim the £40 millions downpayment it has already made, and, through the courts, can win an additional £6 million in compensation.

Nor will the management of the nationalised British Shipbuilders be losing any sleep as disaster threatens Inverclyde. In fact, they have not even bothered to take up Britoil's , suggestion of a possible renego¡tiation of the contract.

The Tories reacted to Britoil's announcement by launching into a fresh attack on the alleged record of the workers at Scott Lithgow (where there has not been a minute lost in strike action during the last nine ;months).

Thatcher claimed that the workers' record was "abysmal". Shipbuilding Minister Norman Lamont blamed the workforce for the delay in completion of the oilrig. And the well-named Industry Minister John Butcher described the yard's support for the national shipbuilding strike as "an act of mindless folly"

There is no prospect of saving jobs at the yard by fervent pleading with British Shipbuilders management or the Tories, though this is very much the approach of the labour movement bureaucracy in Scotland.

Nor is it safe to believe that Britoil's announcement is part of some elaborate bluff.

The only prospect of saving the yard and all jobs there lies in labour movement action and labour movement solidarity.