[goes ers. and workers in the ca "THE…]

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goes ers. and workers in the ca "THE feeling in the plants is absolutely solid. Quiet determination in the best way to sum it up. There's no sign of weakness and no second thoughts after the mass meeting vote.

"Barring a complete sell out from the officials, the strike is 100% certain to take place" , a leading BL shop steward told Socialist Organiser this week.

After years of betrayal and defeat, the day of reckoning seems to have arrived. BL workers find themselves at the forefront of the fight against the Tories and their four per cent limit.

The confrontation over the annual wage claim (the workers demanding £20, the company offering 3.8%), has been turned by Edwardes himself into a battle for the right to strike and for the survival of trade unionism in BL.

Edwardes, emboldened by four years of beating down grovelling union officials with his arrogant bluster, announced that any plant striking or 'prevented from working' by a strike will be 'liquidated' , and all those on strike will be sacked In the face of this blackmail, BL workers voted overwhelmingly for an all-out strike from November 1st. Indeed, it seems that the sacking threat strengthened the reaction of the workorce in many plants 'If we can't strike ove when can we strikew, has we sunke. , was the question the 58,000 BL Cars workers asked themselves when they received the threatening letter from Edwardes henchman Ray Horrocks.

BL workers are ready to fight. And their eyes are open - they know that they coola eat taking her ala lac know that Fdwardes means taking on the Thatcher government. They know this, and they are ready to face the consequences.

The union officials involved - especially the right wing leaders of the AUEW -also understand what is at stake at BL. But the vision of a militant confrontation with Edwardes and the Tories terrifies them. They know that a victory for the BL workforce would threaten them almost as much as it would the BL bosses and the government.

That's why AUEW chief negotiator Ken Cure has been desperately scratching around for any 'compromise going over the last few days.

The same motives lie behind similar moves by Roy Hattersley and nine other Midlands Labour MPs, Who went to see Edwardes in the hope of avoiding the 'catastrophe' of an all-out strike.

Cosmetic

But the room for manoeuvre is very limited - in fact, virtually non-existent. Edwardes won't put any more money on the table.

FR All he has suggested is taking £3.75 off the bonus payments and sticking it onto the basic rate. Cure knows he can't sell this cosmetic con-trick to the workforce.

So it looks as though, despite the best efforts of Roy Hattersley, Ken Cure, et al, the BL strike will go ahead on November 1st.

If Edwardes wins, then the very right to strike will be put at risk in Britain. Employers everywhere will be encouraged to sack strikers at will, just as a spate of victimisations followed the 1979.

But if the BL workers win, then the Government's four per cent limit will be in ruins, and the very survival of the government will be in question.

That is why the struggle must not be left to the Ken Cures, Grenville Hawleys, and their Labour Party co-thinkers. Strike committees must be elected from the shopfloor in every plant, and linked together into a national coordinating body to take control out of the hands of the existing JNC.

Links must be actively sought with other workers facing similar confrontations: the council manual workers (whose claim comes up on November 1st), the miners (whose November Ist deadline has been put back to November 16th by Joe Gormley), Vauxhall (whose review is already overdue), Ford (November 23rd), and the tanker drivers (November 16th).

Action should be brought forward to bring other groups out alongside BL. If Edwardes goes ahead with his sacking threat, then the T&GWU and AUEW should call on all their members to take strike action, and demands must go to the TUC for a general strike.

Labour Parties and trades councils must place their face striders, dia sales meetings or conferences to build support, and form support committees, which can develop into councils of action as the strike spreads.

Throughout the struggle, socialists must point out the central fact about BL - a fact that all the mainstream Labour and trade union leaders desperately want to avoid: BL is not 'viable' -there is no future for it under capitalism.

It has only survived as long as it has - at the cost of a massive increase in the rate of exploitation of the workforce - because closing it down would means hundreds of firms that supply BL going bust, and maybe another million on the dole.

Steel workers, BL workOK ers, and workers in the ci components industries, a face harsh attacks as capi alism spirals into slump.

The only secure. futur for them lies in seizing cor trol of these industries frot the capitalists and the capi alist State, and introducing AS WE go to press, th mood in the BL factories: angry and tense.

At Longbridge, on Tue day 27th, the managemer called in all the foreme and told them to go roun everyone telling them agai that if they didn't report a Monday, they would b considered to have "tern inated their contracts' All over the plan workers were angry. 1 the CAB area they walke out as soon as they. wer told. workers' plan of productio for need. And that presupl oses establishing a goven ment under the control ‹ the labour movement, base on the organisations of th labour movement, an answerable to the workin class.