It's a political witch-hunt

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The Socialist League has been the target of a most vicious witchhunt in the press over the last week. 14 of its alleged supporters have been sacked from BL's Cowley assembly plant. As an act of solidarity with the comrades we print excerpts from their BRITISH LEYLAND is a company with a long record of sacking workers for their political and trade union activities. The dismissal of Derek Robinson and Alan Thornett, senior and deputy senior stewards in the Longbridge and Cowley car plants are the most well known examples of such victimisation. No one believes that Robinson and Thornett were sacked for the technical charges made against them. They were victimised for their political and trade union views and activities. And there have been numerous other less publicised sackings.

BL is lying when it says it does not dismiss workers on political grounds, or that it would hire workers in spite of their union record or socialist beliefs. Methods of political victimisation and exclusion are systematic in BL and large British companies.

This can be proved simply. If BL does not sack or prevent people from gaining employment for reasons of their political views or trade union activities why does it, like most large companies, operate a system of blacklists? Why does it employ organisations to check the trade union and political backgrounds of its workers or those applying for jobs?

The use of such methods is known to all those involved - in trade unions and industrial relations, and the press; if BL denies this state of affairs it is merely falsifying its own, and other companies' practices.

Obvious

The facts are obvious. The Bl management has not one single complaint against the work record of the thirteen dismissed during the entire time they were at Cowley. Everyone knows that the company would be taking no action against the thirteen if they were not suspected of having strong socialist views.

'The real facts of the BL case were stated in the Financial Times on 13 August 1983, 'BL has been careful to stress officially the constitutionality of its procedure... In effect however its central concern was their susTWO SUNDAY Times reporters lounge against their car outside the terraced house in Bullingstatement on the witch-hunt.

pected revolutionary affiliations."

Accusations of 'left wing conspiracy' are merely stupid. If BL did not victimise people for their political and trade union views in the first place. no-one at all would bother to hide their views from the management. If BL states it would have taken on workers it knew were strongly in. •favour of trade unions and were. active socialists then it is merely Lying - as its entire past record Workers hundreds income anc will not sti shows.

The charge that anyone with socialist views can instigate workers to go on strike, or are "infiltrating' the trade unions is a conscious invention by the press.

Risk

going on strike lose of pounds of their risk their jobs. They ike unless propelled to do so by deep-seated and genuine grievances against the company. It is the activities of BL management, not any political group, which leads to workers strike in BL or any company.

The exclusion of the thirteen workers from Cowley should be opposed by the entire labour trade union and women's movement as an attempt by the company to enforce a political ban on recruitment and employment. If a policy of systematic exclusior from employment, and use victimisation, by companies 1.continued and strengthener there will be a further major erosion of democratic rights to add to the many already carried out by this government and the BL management.