The Real Record of the Communist Party at Cowley

Scan page 8

Alan Thornett reviews 'Politics of the Production Line — an autobiography of an Oxford Carworker", by Arthur Exell, published by History Workshop

THE FIRST part of this review, in the last issue of Socialist Organiser, covered Arthur Exell's account of his activity in the Radiators plant in North Oxford in the '30s and ' 40s.

As a member of the Communist Party, he pushed a policy of all-out class collaboration in the war to back British imperialism's military "The Communist Party factory group then made another outstanding offer to the management. We were prepared to form a shock brigade, which meant that the management could call on any one of us to do any job in the factory, The bosses were ungrateful. As soon as the war ended, they began sacking militants. Exell records: 'I wasn't touched just then... so I at The CP's role as a brake in Leyland struggles continues tod effort. For example:

in any place at any time".

once took the convenor's job'.

Two years later in the January of 1947, management moved again.

"Things went on improving until the fuel crisis. The country was still staggering from the aftermath of the war, no coal stocks, and transport still in chaos, and then this terrific snowstorm: 22 January 1947, that was the day everything closed down, right the way throughout Oxford, including the factory. On 23 January a car arrived at the house driven by the chauffeur from Radiators asking me to go to the factory for an interview with the general manager.

I went there as convenor and insisted that the chairman of the Stewards Committee should also be there, as I never believed in interviews on your own.

So Billy Brooks was sent for-a very sincere Salvation Army man. We sat and listened to what was going to happen.

We couldn't argue but we wanted to know about the restarting of the place, and how we would be informed.

They talked quite freely and it sounded common sense-little did I know that me.

Anyway they said the men would be sent for, starting with the boilermen, electricians, and maintenance men, and then start building up production and we all would return as time went on.

So back to the dole, where I was able to tell most of the men from Radiators what was planned. A fortnight went by and there was no change in the weather but Cowley had sent for a lot of their men.

Soon the maintenance men were sent for, and then I found they were recalling men from my own department with less service than I had.

I kept chasing the management and there was lots of correspondence and lots of excuses, saying that would be sent for as soon as they could fit me in.

I kept going to the AEU District Committee too, and reporting to them.

I was told to be patient, but that wasn't my idea ot a trade union-the convenor being outside and all the men inside. I said, 'Look, it's about time you had an interview with the management of Radiators, because I think they've got no intention of having me back!' And they used to poohpooh the idea, the union people did. But it was true. They never intended having me back. When we had ine final, the real, meeting with the management and Longworth, who was the divisional organiser, they said. Well. we have come to the conciusion, Mr Longworth, that he is a communist agitator, and we don't want that sort of thing in the factory. and that's when Longworth said. 'And I don't blame you either'. So that was it. That was the final blow. Out I went."

Having been sacked after years of collaboration with the management, Exell even opposed a strike in his defence!

"I remember there was a couple of party members who did get around, you know, and try to organise a strike. But I couldn't see a strike doing any good when the union was against me."

Arthur Exell's account of the war period is very interesting for whät it shows of the long history of class collaboration of the Oxford CP, but it shows an incredible ignorance on Exell's part Assembly Plant convenor l of the official CP line or of what was going on in the world as a whole.

He never attempts to deal in political terms with the CP. And none of the major world events-like Moscow Trials or the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact feature in his description of the prewar period. At the end of the war the CP's initial support for Churchill s national government goes by without a mention.

During the war it is all one long story of "keep your nose to the grindstone.

Yet Exell must have known that elsewhere in the country workers were striking for wages and conditions and that the CP was having to fight against militant resistance in order to persuade workers to back the imperialist war effort.

Surprisingly in May 1947 Arthur Exell got a start in Morris Motors. William Morris, now Lord Nuffield, now owned the Radiators plant and management used this to grant him continuity of service from when he started at Rads.

This, he explains, gave him more redundancy money when he finally took voluntary redundancy 1975.

He justifies selling his job by saying "I am always appreciative of anything the working class can get from their employers." Principles we can assume, don't come into it.

To say that his account of the 28 years in the Morris plant is highly selective would give it credibiilty it doesn't deserve.

He actually managed to reduce those 28 years to four pages of ha 76 pape book and unbcherably doesn't even mention Bub Irver who hit heen de TOWl conveno? and domanant personalst! • the plant since 1959 with & break from June 1974 do Decenber 1979).

Exell even tails to mention the major ALFW convenors outside his CP; Broad Left "everyday tale of country folk"

To achieve this distortion he concentrates almost exclusively on the period of the 1950s-where he was at least active in the shop stewards' movement although he managed to separate this from any kind of militant role within the plant.

He was active on-or at least attended meetings ofthe early AUEW-dominated Joint Shop Stewards Committee (the AUEW were by far the majority union at that time) and was a right wing body which had failed to organise the still largely non-union plant.

Under pressure from the Midlands CP branches Exell was also active in the early combine committee set up throughout the Nuffield factories and later broadened to other car combines.

He still attended when I began to go to the meetings in the early 1960s.

In 1956 he wrongly dates it as 1953) he took part in an official strike against selective redundancy which was led by stewards from the minority TGWU.

The TGWU, under the local leadership • of people like Bob Fryer and Tony Bradley were fighting to bring a new, more multant, brand of trade unionism into the plant.

Management responded by sacking the TGWU convenor Frank Horsman. The AUEW opposed the strike but Exell claims to have supported it as an individual.

The strike was a catalyst for the development of the TGWU, who were soon to become the majority union.

Significantly, Arthur Exell never mentions a strike have been able to establish he never led anything in Immediately after the 1956 strike a meeting was called to begin a unionisation drive in the plant.

It was spearheaded_by the paintshop where Bob Fryer was the TGWU shop steward. Exell was an AUEW steward in the same shop.

A series of strikes dramatically improved pay-and 100% trade union membership was achieved along with the first £20 wage packet.

Arthur Exell was one of the few in the paint shop who consistently refused to support those strikes. He played no role in the struggle to unionise the rest of the plant (which was organised late by motor industry standards), which proceeded under very bitter conditions, up to its final achievement in 1966.

price £1.45

Ltyunu This culminated in the period of the infamous "Cowley Noose Trial"-used by the Tories as the basis of their 1966 election campaign.

The successful unionisation struggle resulted in a very militant period in the plant during the second half of the 1960s. There were over 1,000 strikes in the plant between 1965 and 1970.

Arthur Exell was not involved in a single one of them. During that whole turbulent period he was an irrelevance on the plant, rarely attending stewards meetings even in his own section.

But perhaps the clearest indication of what Arthur Exell really saw as the "politics of the production line" is contained in the penultimate paragraph of his book.

I was gratified, when 1 left, he says: "to see a fine, strong trade union movement had been left behind me. He is speaking of 1975. This was one year after the back of a very militant shop floor movement had been broken in the events following my victimisation as Deputy Convenor of the TGWU and the strike resulting from it in April/May 1974.

Although I was success. fully defended, Jack Jones, then General Secretary of the TGWU moved in and removed Bob Fryer from office.

Reg Parsons became the convenor and the ultra right were put in contrel.

Jack Jones was acting in line with the commitment

Journ

the TGWU had made with the Labour government to "clean up" the union and control the militant plants. BL placed massive financial resources at the disposal of local management to back the move.

FOr 3½ years they pursued their openly proclaimed policy of "smashing Trotskyism" and driving those who had organised the plant and built the union out of the union and out of the industry.

To achieve this they systematically smashed up everything which had been built.

They broke up the giant 5/55 TGWU branch of which I was chairman and the JSSC of which I was chairman.

They organised the victimisation of militantsdriving many of them to despair and then to redundancy.

Throughout this period the right wing were selecting CP members for appointed full time trade union positions in the plant know. ing that they could be relied upon to uncompromisingly fight the militants and sup. port the management.

Although Parsons was voted out in 1977 and the old leadership re-elected damage was done to the structure of the shopfloo! movement which has still by no means been repaired.

Arthur Exell reflects the CP in that period. CP mem bers were the most loya supporters of the right wing in every single move thes made.

When I was sentenced by the TGWU to expulsion from the union and thereby faced the prospect of CONTRACT being sacked from the plant as a non-unionist, and Bob Fryer sentenced to be barned from all oftice for life, the CP were the only stewards to vote against a motion from the TGWU stewards committee to resist these victimisations to the full.

Arthur Exell's book is not so much an "autobiography of an Oxford carworker" as a cover up of the CP in Cowley.

Ironically the publishing of Exell's book coincides with the ending of the role of the CP in the Cowley Assembly Plant-at least for the forseeable future.

All five of their active members have now followed Exell's lead and taken voluntary redundancy.

Ron Jones, Exell's fellow veteran in the paint shop went 2 years ago. Two more left the factory for the greener pastures of Ruskin College. And the remaining two-Mick Soanes and Tony Gallagher-both very leading CP members in the areawent VR last week.

Ironically enough, Gallagher had until that time been prominent on the committee organising the Peoples March for Jobs!

Those of us whom Arthur Exell did not have time to mention (or maybe he could not bring himself to pronounce our names) are still there. And unlike Exell and his ilk, it we can survive a few problems (like the current management offensive; the collapse of the car markets; the rundown of BL and periodic attacks from trade union bureaucrats) we will be there for a long time yet.

Scan page 9

Socialist Organiser July

----- pull-quotes -----

they were going to use the great upheaval to get rid of

he ever led, which is not surprising, since as far as I