The spread of the sit-ins

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of cuts in public expendi ture made by the Tor Government. So people' needs are not met.

'We need a planned pro gramme of investment ani production for use'.

The current legally imposed increases in fare and cuts in public transpor underline the point: drasti fare cuts, increased servic es, and corresponding in creases in bus productio should be part of a socialis transport policy.

The Leyland Works Com mittee at Preston are draw ing up their own 'alternat ive workers' plan' for thi industry, with the aid of thi Manchester Engineerin/ Research Group. Both thi Works Committee ant Les Huckfield have caller for a moratorium on redun dancies until the Manchest er Engineering Researcl Group publishes its repor - thus gaining time.

More importantly, how ever, the struggle to defens jobs in the present striki must break down the trad itional parochialism tha has isolated the truc plants from the more battli hardened BL car factories.

One stark fact has to br faced from the start - Ed wardes' corporate plan wa for BL as a whole and hi can only be defeated wit the support of all BL plants.

The experience of in dustrial struggle has beer very uneven between BI factories over the pas THE WAVE of sit-in strikes against closures and redundancies which began in the Nedw Year continued to grow this week with an occupation at a second Bathgate factory.

Following the sit-in at BL's truck plants, Plessey workers have taken up the same tactic.* At 6am on Monday morning, the 330 strong workforce embarked on militant action, locking management out of the plant, which is due to close in Like so many of the most tenacious struggles on jobs in the recent period, its mainstay is women - who comprise 90 per cent of the workforce.

The battles in Bathgate, together with the ongoing occupations of the 'Loveable Bra' factory in Cumbernauld and the British Aluminium smelter in Invergordon, make Scotland the focal point of the struggle against redundancies and closures.

Last week saw a firm rejection by the 890 workers at Invergordon of improved redundancy payments, and a vote to continue thẹ sit-in strike at the plant which began on January 6.

Escalated

The improved offer was presented to a mass meeting by officials of all four unions involved (AUEW, EETPU, ASTMS, and GMWU), who argued that it was a 16% improvement.

But workers at Invergordon know that they stand no chance of finding alternative jobs in the area once they let the smelter close, and threw out this attempt to buy them off and (literally!) sell them out.

Elsewhere two other sit-in strikes remained solid in the face of closure.

In the Dunlop Semtex plant in Brynmawr, South Wales, 600 occupiers Invergordon campaigners have been holding the plant since December. Their struggle against redundancies escalated into an all-out fight when Dunlop suddenly announced the closure of the plant. • And in the occupied Sealink ferry, Senlac, strategically moored in Newhaven, the 240 crew maintain their struggle against the sale of the terry, which threatens a total of nearly 500 sea and shore jobs.

The rapid growth of struggles against closure in 1982, after a number of etbacks in 1981, may well have its most immediate roots in the ending of Earnings Related unemployment benefit on January 1: but the wave of militant action offers new hope for other workers seeking a way to resist closures, redundancies, speed-up and public spending cuts.

The fight must be taken up throughout the unions on a national level 'for supporting strikes and blacking action to strengthen and spread the existing struggles.

The demand must be raised far and wide for the opening of the books of _ on a - employers who threaten redundancies to the inspection of elected trade union committees, to expose the real financial wheelings and dealings that lie behind the jobs massacre.

And throughout the labour movement socialists should raise the fighting slogan of 'no redundancies, work-sharing on full pay', as a demand to unify those fighting closure with those working elsewhere in the same industry.

The inactivity or downright treachery of the national and local officials of the trade union movement must be exposed and challenged: only the fight to mobilise working class action can halt the Tory offensive, and create conditions for the defeat of the Thatcher government.

New jobs for the unemployed and the protection of existing jobs can only come in the context of a socialist programme of nationalisation and public works.

The fight for this must not be left for the indefinite future: it must begin now, on the firm footing of the struggles now under way.

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bang on operator exactly what he BL Fighting back