Cash Limits Throw the Rails

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As the Tories cut back, BR is reduced to advertising in the press public . transport: their unions."

Socialist Organiser Alliance SOCIALIST Organiser fights to act as a real DIRE predictions of imminent financial collapse of British Rail were made this week as part of a media campaign to force ASLEF leaders into a sell-out on their pay-and-conditions BR management insisted that the Board has now broken through its cash limit by more than £50 million: this would increase to £90 million if the strikes continue throughout And they claimed that the dispute had brought permanent loss of business to BR estimated at "between £50 and £150 million a year"

Provoked They were making too much of their case. After all a loss of £50 million is the equivalent of paying every single member of ASLEF a further £35 per week. For £150 million BR could almost afford to hire an additional 27,000 drivers!

Such huge losses far exceed the possible cash benefits to BR even if they were to win their demand for flexible rostering of ASLEF. In other words, there is a double bluff involved: there is more at stake in the dispute than management have admitted - and the cash crisis of British Rail, provoked by Tory policies, was in any case leading rapidly towards further cutbacks.

The war on ASLEF's hard-won 8-hour day is of course only one component in a grand strategic offensive on jobs throughout the rail industry.

BR's five-year plan centres on the axeing of 38,000 jobs by 1975. They are already running ahead of schedule, thanks to the collaboration of union leaders - and 12,000 jobs have gone in the last two years.

Plight To go further and faster, the imposition of flexible rostering is necessary both for station staff and for train drivers. And in this onslaught on the conditions of 200,000 NUR members, it is important to eliminate ASLEF as a likely pole of opposition.

But in any event the huge Buckton cost of fighting the current dispute can be viewed in a different way. Tory cash limits had even before the dispute left British Rail in a dire financial plight, with borrowing limits some £300 million lower than required to implement its Corporate Withdrawal Chancellor •Geoffrey Howe has not only blocked plans for the much-delayed electrification programme, but insisted that BR can borrow no more than £950 million in the year 1982-3. This is an increase of £30 million on 1981-2, and makes no allowance for preserving existing services in the face of inflation.

Long before the strikes, BR had warned of the consequences of these cuts -including more withdrawals of antiquated diesel, trains without replacement, and more restrictions on the use of track and signalling.

Handcuffs

At the end of last year, BR management was stressing that 'productivity alone cannot bridge the financial gap created by vital equipment, maintenance and renewal needs. Without additional financial support, the choice falls between higher fares OI deterioration of service' The Tory government response was to brush aside these complaints and insist that:

"we cannot solve the problems simply by expecting the taxpayer to provide yet more support for them"

Instead the Tories have used the pistol of cash limits, together with the handcuffs of the 1981 Transport Bill, to forcemarch the BR Board into selling off their most profitable operations - hotels, ferries and Seaspeed hovercraft - to private enterprise, in order to raise the cash for survival.

Hiving off The naked self-interest of such moves from the standpoint of the Tories and their big business friends was revealed when it emerged that the chairman of European Ferries Ltd, the first big bidder for Sealink, is Keith Wickenden - Tory MP for Dorking!

In the event Wickenden's move to clean up on Thatcher's hiving-off venture ran into the unpredictable obstacle of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission who spotted the likelihood that it would lead to increased ferry priceds, fewer services, and possible squeezing out of European Ferries' competitors.

Meanwhile some of British Transport' s prime hotels and other BR property holdings have been sold in a bid to balance the books.

Such a policy is at best a short-term delay in the fullUnit......n scale cutbacks in the rail of this service is part and service and the rail network parcel of the Tory war on itself that are implied in the whole of public sector present Tory cash limits. transport provision, incluThe losses incurred by ding national buses and of BR in the present dispute course London Transport with ASLEF may have and other local networks. brought forward the cash crunch in the industry - all strategy for or interest in but have in no way created the crisis. strategy centres on reducThe Board of course has tion of all forms of social VUR general secretary Sid Weighe pending in order to maxirise the profits of private ndustry..

Hother go loing • KH anagement in a delude earch for 'viability' under npossible conditions apitalist crisis, union leadrs should be spelling out › the labour movement the possibility of providing affordable and usable ransport system without he kind of government ubsidies that prevail in very other advanced ountry bar the USA.

They should be pointing › the need not to collabrate in more cutbacks, losures and fare increases, ut to mobilise workers proughout the state ectors of the transport idustry in the struggle to efend and expand services › meet social need.

Buckton should be taking re lead in invoking the ear-forgotten terms of the riple Alliance of rail'orkers, miners and steel'orkers for the defence of nese industries, and callig upon the TUC to cordinate action against this overnment, which offers orkers nothing but speedp and redundancies.

The electrification and e-equipment of British ail would in themselves rovide a framework of seful public works to reate thousands of new ›bs. The extension of the ansport system as a whole buld produce thousands lore. The resources for uch a programme can ame from the nationalistion without compensation The Tories have no over- f the banks and major dustries, together with re renationalisation of the tolen assets of BR and ther 'hived off' industries. FOR some time Reg Race and Les Huckfield have been getting up at PLP meetings and demanding that the Shadow Cabinet makes a statement of support for the ASLEF strike.

It seems certain that a major factor in Foot's silence is the intensive lobbying by Sid Weighell. He has made no secret of his desire to smash the struggle by ASLEF against the same sellout that he has imposed on NUR members-and thus ease the path to still further collaboration with British Rail management and the Thatcher government.

Indeed Weighell would shed few tears were ASLEF to be defeated and its industrial backbone broken by BR -clearing the way for the absorption of train drivers into the NUR and thus silencing a vocal left-wing element in the labour bureaucracy.

John Boyd of the AUEW and EETPU boss Chapple have poked in their nosescalling for an end to the strike! -and a similar stance is clear in the Labour Party Weighell is plainly not the only right winger to have made such calculations. The vast majority of the PLP has refused to side with ASLEF in its struggle against BR and Thatcher.

A letter to Michael Foo demanding he follow th lead of the Party's Execu tive and support the trai drivers has attracted only 2 signatures from MPs.

Reg Race told us:

"We have been pressing the Shadow Cabinet to takr action and support ASLEF as we believe that MP. should stand up and suppor workers who are struggling against their employer Unless pressure is put or quickly then it is likely tha the BRB will succeed in isol ating ASLEF from the other

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Keeping silent