No Compromise! No Sell-out!

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Tomorrow, talks with BL were forced to postpone their management resume, with appar- sacking threat from Tuesday to ently little chance of a settlement. Thursday, and now Thursday is Management are unlikely to com- hardly viable and they may have promise, and their terms are un- to shift again.

DISTRICT councils in the Oxford area have been asked what accommodation they could provide for workers being moved in to fill jobs. Although most of them appear to have shied away from the proposal, it shows that BL management are at least order tne AUEW members back break the strike, management to work, as he did in the 1981 BL have to try to do it themselves. strike, but that could fail this But it is not easy. time. They could carry out the sackManagement also have a big ing threat, open the gates, call problem. The plant has been at a on the police to enforce the Prior standstill for four weeks, paralys-. and Tebbit laws to let a few scabs Prepare to comber BL's sacking treat!

EACH MASS meeting of the 5,000 strikers at the BL Cowley Assembly Plant has grown stronger.

At today's meeting only a handful voted to accept BL's terms and return to work. As workers filed into the plant sports ground for the meeting, the mood

was obvious. This was a spectacular backlash against repeated management attacks and the treatment workers are receiving on the shop floor. Placards called for "all BL'to be called out and for 'no sellouts'. Others read: Duffy and Evans - don't wash your hands of this strike.

The backlash is not just at Cowley or BL. It represents a mood in the working class as a whole against Thatcherism -which is in essence what BL workers are facing on the shop floor.

The militant demonstration of shipyard workers on Tyneside on Monday shows it clearly. These conditions, however, do not make top trade union leaders any less determined to get the strikers back to work on any terms. The now-famous meeting between those leaders and BL bosses at a plush hotel near Gatwick on Monday arose from a secret get-together between Terry Duffy and management, held with no local negotiators present. The problem for Duffy and for Evans (who arrived in the same car as BL chief Harold Musgrove) was that BL management would have no compromise on the six minutes washing up time - or anything else. In fact they simply restated their original position with a different date: Audited Plant Status' would be introduced on May 16, and bell-to-bell running would then operate forth-That was a very nice offer. A four week strike to get a three week delay! And (though none of the so-called leaders have managed to grasp this the workers don't want Audited Plant Statu It means that they have to wor harder and lose jobs, with n guarantee of anything in return.

Yet even this they tried to se to the workforce. AUEW exec tive councillor Ken Cure an TGWU national automotive secr tary Grenville Hawley were di patched to Cowley to do the job Fortunately they failed. Tł le stewards stood firm.

The stewards have seen th the issue of the six minutes crucial to the strike. Although tr strike is really about the gener situation, management can on be beaten by workers winning c the specific issue of the six Japanese capitalists. minutes.

The decision that the stewards took at their previous meeting, that the six minutes are sacrosanct, is a big problem for Cure and Hawley. acceptable. Duffy could simply It is also becoming clearer to the workforce how far BL intend to go if they are not stopped. BL boss Geoff Armstrong has said that the efficiency measures already taken in BLare 'only the beginning'. BL wants a workforce 'equal to the best international speculating about it. standards in Japan, the continent If they went ahead, and the USA' As with Ford's AJ (After Jap- with massive picketing an) plan, Japan is the real target. plant.

In Japanese car plants independent unions were smashed many years ago, and replaced by yellow unions controlled completely by management. BL will need a non-union shop at Cowley if it is seriously to compete with the levels of exploitation achieved by the ing four crucial models. They Duffy in, get something started, and begin recruiting new labour. But politically it would not suit the If the union leaders can't Tories at the moment to have the pitched battle that would inevitably ensue.

Contingency plans have however been laid (see inset).

Although the strike is very strong, it has obvious leadership problems. TGWU district secretary Javid Buckle has emerged as it would undoubtedly be responded to the main local spokesman. He is La local magistrate, with a long and probably the occupation of the history of betraying struggles in the plant. Last November he refused to attend a mass meeting in my support after I was sacked by the same BL management he now so roundly denounces.

Rank and file control is crucial to the strike. The people running the strike should be the strike committee which has been elected from the shop stewards.

David Buckle's belated Continued page 2

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Socialist Organiser no.128 April 21 1983 Page 2 THE workers of Timex in Dundee deserve the support of the trade union movement. Like their brothers and sisters at Cowley they are fighting back. We applaud

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By Alan Thornett