Clyde: class struggle or collaboration?

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IT is now over a month since Britoil cancelled its contract for an oil-rig with the Scott Lithgow shipyards on the lower Clyde, thereby placing in jeopardy the jobs of the 4,500 workers at the yards, plus another 4,000 jobs in the "knock During that time the leadership of both the Scottish TUC and also of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU) have singularly failed to take the lead in campaigning for militant and all-out opposition to this latest threat The ex-Scott Lithgow shop steward victimised last year for doing the Financial Times crossword puzzle has coined the term which sums up the new "strategy" for defending jobs: more mudly than it justitiably had been completed, and the could have done - the short- statement of support had been comings of union support for the signed by two MPs, seventeen dispute. The TGWU has been councillors and 38 office-bearers was i Jobilising support for in the labour movement.

THE Merseyside Trade Union and Labour Campaign Committee has launched a national appeal for a fund to pay the fines of those arrested at the Warrington Sponsors include Moss Evans, Alan Sapper, ¡Parry. Allan Roberts and Eddie Loyden.

Please send donations c/o Paul Davies, TGWU, Transport House, Islington, Liverpool 3.

on" effect.

to jobs in the West of Scotland.

"ecclesiastical Yosserism"

This involves making pious appeals for the government to intervene, and wheeling out the local church dignitaries to try to give the affair the appropriate moral standing.

The main forces rallying round the banner of ecclesiastical Yosserism are: the Scottish TUC and the Communist Party (united by a bureaucratic fear of independent working class direct action); the Scottish National Party (which subordinates class contradictions to a notional "national struggle" against "English" rule); the Labour Party right wing (for ever opposed to anything that smacks of class struggle and militancy); and Tory wets (who fear job losses but fear workers fighting back against them even more).

ransport and G Workers Unic 7/200 Commercial TransportBrai TEA and sympathy - quite literally, that was all that the IGWU Scottish Regional Committee on January 24-25 had to offer the Carousel strikers.

These ten young workers have been on strike for over six months in Glasgow's East End. They want union recognition, re-instatement and better working conditions.

As early as the beginning of January, rumours began to circulate that TGWU officials were getting ready to ditch the dispute, with the Scottish Regional Committee to be the scene of the crime.

The East End Support Committee (EESC - the local committee set up by wabour Party and trade union members to support the strikers) reacted by doing a broadsheet on the dispute and seeking signatures for a statement of support.

The broadsheet criticised •1 31-- 11. •1 180 11 picket line.

Propelled from different directions and by different motives, these forces now cluster together in a ramshackle alliance, incapable of movement for fear that it would collapse if anything more serious than making another cliche-ridden speech were to be suggested.

The Scottish TUC is to the fore in promoting this holy alliance. Finally granted a meeting with the Prime Minister this week, its delegation will include the Moderator of the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow.

And the Clyde CSEU is not far behind. Its chairperson, Joe Bishop (appropriately named) has called for a joint campaign of MPs, political parties (i.e. including Tories), the picket lines and on organising a boycott of supplies to the factory.

''This document", it stated, however, 'is intended to be constructive; our movement can only benefit from identifying mistakes and weaknesses in our work" • "Only with the full support of the TGWU, its capacity, its resources, and organisation can this dispute be resolved.

When they heard about the document and the statement of support, TGWU full-timers suddenly appeared on the picket lines for the first time in months. They were there once a day for a whole week and visited the strikers at their homes.

Their purpose was not to strengthen the picketing but to try to get the strikers to dissociate from what one union official described as an "anti-union petition"

They met with no success by the time of the Regional Committee, the four page broadsheet Ray Bill Bob churches and the media to save the yard from closure.

But probably the most enthusiastic of all is the Communist Party. They see a class collaborationist campaign to save Scott Lithgow as the big chance to realise their dream of a Scottish 'broad democratic alliance", , uniting variety of conflicting class forces on the basis of emotional condemnation of the evils of amandamention of tha naila of unemployment.

Within Scott Lithgow itself, the emphasis is still upon "respectable opposition' to the threatened closure. The "work-on" tactic begun a week last Monday (23 January) involves workers declared to be laid off continuing to turn up at the yard and being given work by he foremen.

"We will not have these men sitting idle," declared convenor Duncan McNeill, 'if this doesn't show that we are just honest hard-working people who want the right to work, then I don't know what will."

The Communist Party's Morning Star put a brave face on the work-on, reporting that "thousands of workers defied the heaviest blizzards - and their bosses — to report in for work." But the number who defied the lay-off instructions or Ganomsel The strikers turned up on the first day of the Regional Committee meeting to distribute the document and statement. They got a sympathetic response from delegates and cups of tea. Then they were shown the door, because the dispute was not on the agenda that day.

On the second day they again got sympathy and cups of tea.

Then they were shown the door again, because the dispute was on the agenda that day.

Having fought for six months to get the TGWU recognised, they were thus denied the right to address its Scottish Regional Committee in order to appeal for support from the union in whose interest they have been standing on a picket line for six months.

Inside the meeting the broadsheet was denounced as a pack of lies and a wholesale attack on the trade union.

The attacks did not go unchallenged. The chairperson of the meeting was one of the signatories to the document, so it was difficult for the full-timers to win a vote to withdraw support from the dispute.

But they did win a vote that the strikers should appear next month before the TGWU Finance and General Purposes Committee - a smaller and highly bureaucratised committee.

The strikers' fight now is as much against the officials of their own union as it is against Alessandro Saccomando, the owner of the Carousel factory. In order to win their fight, they have to achieve victory on both ironts.

The strikers themselves must call the West of Scotland shop stewards and labour movement ronferenre whinh tha TrIII/TT LULIL NuLu LIC LUWU still refuses to call. As well as appealing ior individual union and Labour Party branches to sponsor the conference, the strikers must also demand sponsorship from those who signed the statement of support.

The conference must address itself to the twin tasks of mounting enough pressure on the TGWU bureaucracy to stop it ditching the dispute, and organising the picketing, boycotts and financial support needed to defeat Saccomando.

was in fact not but less than 300.

Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that the government's strategy would appear not to be closure of the yard but privatisation of Scott Lithgow, and a drastically reduced workforce accepting new working conditions.

Jim Murray, chairperson of the Shipbuilding Negotiating Council, has already declared the unions' readiness, albeit "reluctant" , to accept privatisation; the CSEU has just agreed at national level to the introduction of new working conditions and therefore could hardly oppose further changes at Scott Lithgow; and the union leaderships will be quite prepared to cynically present some jobs being , retained at the yard as a "victory" as against the threat of complete closure.

Under the mantle of ecclesiastical Yosserism, the union leadership, both at local and, even more so, at national level is thus edging its way towards a "compromise solution"

Industrialists will be able to get their hands on Scott Lithgow. Union leaders will be able to duck out of being thrown to the fore of a real fight to save jobs. But Scott Lithgow workers will only end up with either the loss of their jobs, or jobs in intense working conditions.

The only means to avoid such an outcome is to ditch the notion of the "all-Scottish campaign" , and orient instead to an alliance with other workers in British Shipbuilders threatened by job losses, demand that the Clyde CSEU's pledge of strike action to prevent compulsory redundancies is put into action, and build a campaign of opposition on the shop floor instead of in the pulpit.

Time is running out for the workers at Scott Lithgow. Even so, it is still not too late to begin organising for a serious fightback to defend all jobs and prevent privatisation of the yard.

A WORKER at Scott Lithgow commented to Organiser on the current "work-on':

'There seems to have been a cut in the numbers involved in the work-on, because management has been giving them jobs. I think that some welders were due to be laid off this morning (27 January) but they were put on buffing instead.

''There's a lot of problems with the work-on. For instance, the police could arrest people for trespass, but that might provoke a strike situation. And you're not covered you're killed at work, it could cost the company thousands of pounds.

"A disciplinary committee has been set up, involving a shop steward and three shopfloor members. But it's a lot of nonsense. They're still impressing on people the need to write to Maggie, and to get their kids to do that as well.

'British Shipbuilders will get the redundancies announced this week for other shipyards. They could get 1,000 volunteers at Govan alone, and then transfer workers to Govan INDOSTRIAL action to safeguard 2,000 jobs at the threatened Ford Dagenham foundry received a setback at the weekend when union leaders representing all of Ford UK's 57,900 workforce decided to suspend the national 24 plant strike called for February 13.

The about-face by the union officials came in response to a digest

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Buckton. Arthur Scargill, Rodney Bickerstaffe, Keys. Eric Heffer, Terry Fields, Bob Wareing,

ord strike called off