Meet closure moves with Occupation!

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AT THE Longbridge mass meeting, many workers could be heard saying that they would rather be on the dole than have to accept the 3.8 per cent rise and further attacks on shopfloor rights.

Longbridge convenor Jack Adams' assessment of the mood of most BL workers is certainly accurate: "They don't know whether Edwardes' closure threat is a bluff or not. And frankly they don't seem too bothered one way or the other either"

SHOVE

YOUR 3 0 WERE OUT This is a healthy response to Edwardes blackmailing tactics, and will provide a strong basis for the strike. But what will happen if (or more likely when) Edwardes does sack the strikers and declare the plants closed?

Bluffing Even then, Edwardes will probably be bluffing. A full closure or carving-up of BL could only go through after the unions had been crushingly defeated: as long as the strike remains in the balance, all threats are still just threats.

But the only way to make sure the threats remain empty is to prepare to counter Edwardes' attacks with escalation from the workers' side.

Since Edwardes took over at BL, 68,000 jobs have been slashed. This month another 2,850 redundancies have been announced (due to the planned closure of Coventry Engines, Speke, and a plant in Hemel Hempstead). On top of that, another 1,500 jobs are due to go from Longbridge when Allegro production comes to an end next year.

BL workers have no illusions that low wage settlements save jobs! But up to now the union leaders' craven capitulation on wages, working practices, and victimisations, has sapped the rank and file's confidence when it comes to resisting closures and redundancies.

The recent acceptance of closure at the Rover SD1 Solihull plant is instructive. When the closure was first announced in May, there was a strong reaction on the shop floor, and stewards had no difficulty winning a resolution to 'resist' the closure at a mass meeting.

Occupation But although most SD1 stewards realised that an occupation of the plant would be necessary if the closure was to be defeated, they decided against that putting that to the workforce immediately, and concentrated instead on building up a Save the SD1' campaign through letters to the local press, shopfloor propaganda, and a big march and rally.

Accepted These tactics did not work. The delay in fighting for a firm commitment to occupy gave management time to spread their propaganda, allowed the closure to grow into an accepted fact, and finally resulted in a two-to-one vote to accept the closure in July.

That's why in the present much sharper confrontation over pay, BL militants must immediately fight for a policy of occupying the plants as soon as the first plant closure is announced.

Remember, Edwardes has said he will close down not only any plant that goes on strike, but also any plant 'unable to work as a result of the strike. Logically, that means the whole of the Cars Division, since Longbridge and Cowley between them can paralyse all BL Cars production.

So we need to fight for occupation of all BL plants as soon as any one factory is fingered.

The aim, must FOR38 L 0C HE not be to set about any utopian workers' cooperative' schemes, but to hola machinery and stocks to ransom, and to use the factories as organising centres for flying pickets, delegations to other groups of '+ 20157 workers, production of pu icity material, and so forth Occupying the pla: would also help to encouri rank and file involveme maintain solidarity, a make scabbing impossit It would make us mu stronger to negotiate ‹ terms and conditions for eventual return to wo (raising the possibility even reversing closures I SD1) - regardless of a changes of management p sonnel or even governme that may have taken place the meantime.

Victory Occupying the plants itself will not be enough guarantee victory. It must combined with organi picketing of depots : docks, plus vigorous effe to. draw other groups workers into the act alongside BL.

JIM DENI

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 22nd October,/ Page 4' A history of