De Lorean Fiasco the Guli Winged and the Gull Ble

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"I say, I say, I say, my boss has no nasal membranes left, after sniffing cacaine!"

'How does he smell?"

''Terrible!"

All along there has been a fishy smell about John De Lorean and his crazy plan for a car plant in the Catholic ghettoes of Belfast turning out $27,000 sports cars for a dwindling market on America's West Coast.

De Lorean's financial and personal history made 'Dallas' seem like "The Archers' in comparison.

Having clambered his way up the management ladder in the US car industry he was drawn in to the Hollywood jet-setting social scene, and was swiftly linked with leaks of confidential information from General Motors, where he reached the position of vice-president at $700,000 a year.

De Lorean stalled off company investigations into his activities by agreeing to leave with a $1 million dealership in Florida.

Between 1974 and his 1978 arrival at the door of Roy Mason's Northern Ireland Office, De Lorean was involved in a succession of dubious deals and legal scrapes, including a busiagains him alley, la trauto and a conflict over patent rights of a new radiator De Lorean was to market.

Crooks De Lorean's business partners included known crooks, and • his highflying lifestyle was already locked in to the cocaine and caviare set.

None of this troubled Labour minister Roy "Butcher" Mason as he listened enraptured to De Lorean's scheme to produce the car that costs a king's ransom in the jobless wastelands of Belfast.

Having never subscribed to anything approaching a socialist answer to unemployment which requires the mnhilisatinn of working LAUN class action to expropriaté the major industries and banks, to lay the basis for a planned programme of useful public works Mason opted for about the most ludicrous capitalist answer on offer.

Huge sums of government money were to be handed to a private firm to produce something not only socially useless but in many respects actually useless and unsaleable.

Almost as if invigorated by a sniff of cocaine himself, Mason embarked on a frenzied process of bulldozing and corner-cutting which concluded 45 days lator with a rainceal 4f? Mason - was he led by the nose?

millinn nackade nf anhaidies to stake De Lorean's dream of building the new car - of which no workable plans yet existed.

The deal finally signed and sealed by the British Labour government gave De Lorean three times more than he had been offered in previous attempts to secure Irish government support, and far more generous and open-ended than a previous proposal from the government of Puerto Rico.

Indeed by the time De Lorean signed up in Belfast the Irish government, querying his costings for the car and the likely escalation of capital costs had withdrarm ira nfior De Lorean invested no money of his own. He still retains all rights to the car. Yet by the time his Belfast adventure finally collapsed in disgrace last week he had succeeded in raising no less than $217 million in loans and credits - of which the British government had stumped up no less than $167 million.

In addition De Lorean's separate American company, which has the exclusive dealership of the car on the US market, owes the British taxpayer a further £26 million, including £4 million loaned from the British firm and £12 million for 800 unsold cars shinned to the lISA. COCAINE, known in high society as the "champagne drug" in reality spans the huge gulf between the world's most oppressed and exploited workers on the one hand and the most plutocratic and parasitic exploiters on the other.

It is manufactured from the coca leaf - traditionally chewed by Bolivian tin miners to stave off acute hunger and fatigue as they toil in appalling conditions for starvation wages.

The leaves also numb the mouth - which drew the drug to the attention of the medical profession. it was used for a while as a local anaesthetic, until its addictive qualities led to it being replaced.

If he had not been nabbed on the cocaine bust, De Lorean would soon have faced stiff questioning from Inland Revenue officials in Britain and the USA over his links with the Swissbased Grand Prix Drivers Co.

And it turns out that much of the money provided by the British government was funnelled into new cranky projects of his US company - such as vehicles for ski slopes, a new bus and an experimental engine.

So, with the benefit of hindsight, does Roy Mason regret his headlong rush to back De Lorean's project? Far from it! Last Wednesday he was resoundingly defending his original decision - and castigating the Tories for allowing the firm to fail.

To create jobs in Northern Ireland, he insisted, it is necessary to ignore "old fashioned, orthodox criteria" • De Lorean certainly did that!

Mason went on:

'For a mere financial pittance of £20 million this car company could have been financially restructurer. One year's unem. ployment benefits and tax revenues alone could • But its stimulating, euphoric effects on the central nervous system, and ease of use - which requires none of the lugubrious paraphernalia of needles and syringes linked with heroin - have made it traditionally popular as a "sociable" drug. And Bolivia's military establishment has not been slow to develop the world-wide traffic in the drug, which is a major component of the nation's economy.

Spoonful

The price of a "loving spoonful" on the British market is now £60, which will give around 20 doses.

have saved this beleagured district. Instead, the lethargy, haplessness of political deadbeats in the Northern Ireland Office let the area once more sink back into despair."

(Thursday October 21)

The same view has been echoed by Mason's successor as Shadow spokesperson on Northern Ireland, Don Concannon, who now claims that if anything:

•Not enough money was spent on what is now the multi-million pound business of launching a new car. We were trying to do it on the cheap."

But the fact is that the original scheme was a surefire loser from the outset. The car never had the qualities to produce anything like the target sale of 20,000 to 30,000 a year to an exclusive market described by De Lorean as:

•The well-paid, randy, West Coast bachelor rapidly approaching 30"

The stainless steel body work collected handprints which were as difficult to remove as the stars' footprints in the famous Hollywood concrete. its rear engine design left the car tail-heavy and difficult to handle. The "gull-wing" doors were dangerous -leaving no escape if the car turned over - and were prone to jam.

The electrics were dodgy, the whole production run was recalled last November because of cracks found in some suspension bolts, and the throttle cable froze solid in icy conditions. Sales of cocaine in Britain, mainly to high society -the Chelsea set, but also in show business, advertising and increasingly the 'respectable' rich from boardroom to Cabinet level - are now estimated at £150 million per year.

But this is dwarfed by the US cocaine trade, where an estimated 15 million people have used the drug and annual sales are thought to gross £20 billion — equivalent to seventh in the US league table of big business!

The cocaine deal offered to De Lorean by FBI spies was nothing to turn your nose up at - a profit of $60 million in exchange for a cash stake of only $1.8 To top it all, the tlashy car for the jet set was underpowered.. Its sales were disastrous. Out of 8,000 built between January and December 1981 only 3,000 were sold. Sales slumped further still last winter and in February ony 283 were sold, as the sports car market as a whole went into decline.

A Wall Street analyst gave this candid advice to anyone planning to invest in sports car production:

"I have frankly come to the conclusion that potential investors would be a great deal better off if they put their money into booze and broads because the return would be the same and they'd have more fun."

For Mason to suggest that a £20 million "restructuring" of the firm's finances would have enabled it to escape these harsh realities is symptomatic of the inability of Labour right -or often left - wingers in oppos 'ion to come to grips with ne realities of the capitalist crisis.

When in government, of course, and under direct pressure from bankers and employers, the story is generally very different and thousands of workers know to their cost the loyalty of the last Labour government to the capitalist principle of "viability"

The exceptional handling of the De Lorean episode indeed runs in sharp contrast to the Labour government's brutal disregard for the rights and living conditions of the Catholic minority in million, : exploiting th "street" price in Califor nia of $3,000 per ounce.

As Thatcher and Reaga cling to policies which ar demolishing whole section of basic industry it is littl surprise that sharp oper: tors like De Lorean -land others far sharpe than him) - having milke the British government f everything he could ge should look towards one ‹ the few sectors wher profits are quick an expanding, and markel certain.

Not many people wel prepared to buy even a ne sports car off this mal but they would have gor fur his "coke" - it's th real thing!

Nortnern Irelana, wil Mason as the key figure : taking a hard military lir against all forms of resi tance.

Of course it is true thi now the Belfast operatic has collapsed there will k knock-on effect suppliers elsewhere Britain axe thousands jobs.

Ten supplies firms ha reportedly already goi under, with another t in dire danger as banke - who had held off pen ing De Lorean's salvar attempts - close in for tl kill.

But the answer is not hand over yet another f: million to De Lorean ar his ilk to squander ‹ Concorde travel, real esta and adding to the immense personal fo tunes.

It is to fight tooth ar nail on every front for ti defeat and removal of th Tory government, tor tl withdrawal of Briti imperialism from the s counties, and for a pr gramme of socialist polici in Britain and Ireland that can seriously offer t/ hope of creating millio of new jobs for tho thrown onto the scra heap of capitalism.