British Leyland: the background to Edwardes' run-down
Socialist Press1970sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
British Leyland represents a very large slice of the engineering industry in Britain. It accounts for 50% of vehicle production in the UK and currently employs 165,000 workers, with a further 750,000 geared to it in the component industry.
The policies of successive Labour and Tory governments towards BL have differed only by degree. Both have approached BL not from the standpoint of protecting the interests of workers or preserving jobs, but from the requirements of an increasingly crisis-ridden British capitalism.
Reformist servant
The outcome of such an approach has varied to the extent that the Tories are the party of the capitalist master, while the Labour leaders are simply his reformist servant.
It is more difficult for a Labour government to close down major sections of industry than it is for the Tories.
Reformists not only cling to the illusion that by shrewd management capitalism can be expanded to provide concessions and reforms for the working class, but also base themselves very much on a close political relationship with the trade union bureaucracy — a relationship which is made more difficult in the face of a wholesale destruction of jobs and hard-won living standards.
Contraction
But of course what predominates in the actions of the Labour leaders is their commitment to seeking reforms within the capitalist system.
As a result, in the last instance, they, like the Tories, have found themselves set on a course of contraction in British Leyland — a course that must lead to its eventual liquidation.
The reason for this is the particular impact on the British economy of the world wide crisis of capitalism. The growing recession has produced intensified competition for markets, which in turn has brought an overcapacity in the motor industry on a world scale.
The waves of mergers and bankruptcies that have taken place in recent years — the most recent being the sale of Chrysler UK to Peugeot and the acute financial crisis of Chrysler in the USA — are clear symptoms of the process whereby the anarchy of the capitalist market forces "rationalisation" and restricts the growth of the productive forces.
British capitalism, creaming off profits and reluctant to reinvest, has lagged behind other capitalist economies in technical innovation — ensuring that its products, particularly cars, are increasingly overpriced and outdated on the world market.
The employers are attempting to tackle this by changing the economic and industrial structure in Britain.
Though British wages have plummeted in value compared to those in other industrialised countries, the rate of exploitation of workers in Europe and Japan is much higher.
In a move to rectify this, and to find ways of cashing in on more profitable production overseas, the capitalist class has decided that basic manufacturing industry in Britain — cars, shipbuilding and steel production — should be run down, and capital invested in production elsewhere.
Profit
The recent Tory decision to lift all exchange controls to allow the unimpeded export of capital is designed to further facilitate this process.
For the employer the prime criterion is not national borders, but the extraction of profit. If this can be more effectively done by owning a share of Italian, Japanese or other "foreign" industries than by owning factories in Britain, then this will be done.
Meanwhile of course the capitalists and their allies in the Labour and trade union movement continue to demand that workers sacrifice jobs, social services and living standards "in the national interest".
Continuous attack
The rundown of BL began in earnest in 1972, four years after the British Leyland Motor Corporation was formed. Management decided to close two of BLMC's heavy transmission plants — Thorneycrofts in Basingstoke and Maudsley Motors in Birmingham.
But wages and conditions in the corporation have been under continuous attack since BLMC was formed in 1968.
Having made the piece-work system of payment work to their advantage, BLMC workers had achieved wages at least double those earned by Ford and Vauxhall workers, who were tied to a flat rate payment.
BLMC wages were also far in excess of those in the public services or the bulk of the engineering industry.
But the Labour government of Harold Wilson saw the high wages and militancy of BLMC workers as a driving force for the wages movement elsewhere, and gave enthusiastic support to the BLMC board in its attacks on the piece work system.
Thus the ten years or so of BL have been ten years of determination by successive managements to achieve a rigid flat rate uniform wages structure controlled and negotiated centrally by a Joint Negotiating Committee.
The eventual aim has been to move along American lines to pay talks at industry level.
The problem which BL workers had from the outset in resisting these attacks was their leadership. The leadership of the Combine Committee, which had played an important role in the previous period, was firmly in the hands of the Communist Party.
They accepted the general line of BL policy.
Dick Etheridge, then CP convenor of the vast Longbridge complex, told workers there was nothing to fear from the company's proposed flat-rate Measured Day Work payment system.
No resistance
He likened it to payment systems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe — perhaps forgetting that BLMC is a capitalist firm in an anarchic capitalist economy!
This meant that when BL forced in MDW in 1970 there was no resistance from the plants with Communist Party leadership.
Only Jaguars (with a right wing leadership) and the Cowley Assembly plant with a Trotskyist leadership struck in opposition to the scheme.
Both the strikes were beaten by isolation and the determined intervention of the officials.
The introduction of Measured Day Work coincided with the wage freeze policies of Heath's Tory government, and had a dramatic impact on BL wages over the subsequent four years.
But this erosion of real wages was nowhere near enough for management. Indeed in order to minimise shop floor resistance to MDW the company had agreed to a work effort which fell far short of their requirements — particularly in plants which had resisted the scheme.
BL really needed piece-work effort on MDW wages.
Agreement
The re-election of a Labour government, headed by Wilson, in February 1974 therefore brought behind-the-scenes discussions as how best to wage the necessary attacks on the BL workforce.
It is clear that an agreement was reached with TGWU and AUEW leaders Jones and Scanlon in which they would ensure the acquiescence of the trade union leadership in the restructuring and rationalisation of BL and undertake the crushing of the power of sections of the shop stewards movement which resisted management policy.
The collaboration was shameless. Soon Scanlon and Jones were to appear side by side on the front page of BL's house journal Leyland Mirror, under the headline "KEEP WORKING!" They warned of "the enemy without" (the Tories) and "the enemy within" (the militants).
The Cowley Assembly plant, a high volume, high investment factory with good working conditions, was a prime target for speed-up. In April 1974 management forced stop watch studies on the tracks. A three week strike ensued.
The strike eventually crumbled under the threat of closure of the plant and the company victimised the leader of the strike, deputy convenor Alan Thornett.
A further three week strike by his section restored his shop steward's credentials but not his deputy convenor position.
Removed
But Jack Jones then intervened through Region 5 of the TGWU.
The plant leadership was removed from office and fresh convenors' elections were held under conditions of a huge national press and TV witch-hunt and for the first time, conducted through a secret ballot of the entire shop floor — a policy now central to Tory anti-union strategy. A right wing leadership was elected.
Although management then had some success in forcing some speed up at Cowley, the increased effort remained insufficient to meet the requirements of BL or the British capitalist class.
In 1975 a commission of inquiry into BLMC was set up under Lord Ryder. It produced a report which resulted in the National Enterprise Board acquiring a 95% stake in the company.
The Labour leaders proudly proclaimed this as a "rescue" operation in which BL workers should be grateful for the use of "taxpayers' money".
TUC leaders also continually referred to the Labour government's record in "saving" BL. But all this was far from the truth.
Ryder's proposed massive investment programme — designed to create conditions for more speed-up — could not be funded privately. And it was arranged in such a way as to hang a continuing threat over the heads of BL workers.
The cash would only be given in six-monthly tranches, and would be withheld if the required productivity targets were not met and if redundancies were not accepted.
And the money would be made available at commercial rates of interest — thus ensuring a return to the bankers from this "taxpayers' money".
"Participation"
The backbone of the plan was so-called "worker participation". This was designed to break down the once-strong shop stewards' movement in BL.
Stewards and convenors were to be sucked into joint committees which considered management problems and on which management had the final say.
Participation was successful in its main objectives. It wreaked havoc in the shop stewards' movement, not simply because of the class collaborationist content of the scheme, but because it was enthusiastically supported by Labour 'lefts' such as Wedgewood Benn and by the Communist Party.
These people described participation as a "step towards workers control". In reality it was a shrewd means of controlling the workers.
But still the galloping pace of the crisis in British industry outstripped even the successes scored by BL management in the two years of Ryder.
By 1977 BL's market share had shrivelled from 40% to 25%. It was selling fewer cars than in 1968!
Complete run-down
What was increasingly required was not half measures but a wholesale cutback in BL, and its eventual complete run-down.
A change of leadership was essential for the capitalist class.
The abrupt resignation of Sir Richard Dobson as chairman of the British Leyland board, following the public disclosure of racialist remarks made by him at a private dinner party, created the conditions for this change.
Michael Edwardes, a reactionary South African with a savage reputation for sitting out prolonged strikes at his previous firm, Chloride, was appointed as BL chairman and managing director.
From the start Edwardes was far more than another in a long line of BL chairmen. Far from seeking to expand the Corporation, he was an asset-stripper.
He had the full backing of the Labour government to run down BL, carve it up and hive it off.
And he was at once conscious of the greatest asset he could have in this task — the BL convenors.
Weakened by years of class collaborationist participation, and led by Communist Party members deeply committed to making BL "viable", the convenors were at once putty in Edwardes' hands.
As an added bonus, they also backed the abolition of plant level bargaining and its replacement by corporate-level negotiations.
Appalling
Their record over the preceding years had been appalling by any standards. Ryder had drawn them into an 'ad hoc' committee of convenors, and had worked through the Cars Council, the highest body in the participation set-up.
In the summer of 1977 they set up the Leyland Cars Joint Negotiating Committee to continue the same collaborationist traditions.
The convenors rapidly earned the reputation of being the world's worst negotiators. Time and again they were outmanoeuvred by management into accepting everything the company wanted — from a new "red book" containing stringent penalty clauses, to 'bonus schemes' designed to throw thousands out of work.
Edwardes could hardly wait to cash in on the legacy. Within weeks of his appointment he had called a joint conference of convenors and plant managers, to take a vote on his first 'Edwardes plan' in January 1978.
To this joint assembly — in which plant directors mingled with plant convenors — Edwardes declared that his plan was the only hope of survival for BL.
It amounted to restructuring the corporation into a number of separate limited companies, and cutting productive capacity. This would make individual sections easier to hive off.
Edwardes talked of 20,000 redundancies, but avoided saying how this was to be achieved — though by then he had the 'participation' report fingering the Triumph TR7 plant at Speke as a 'low productivity' factory ripe for closure, and had almost certainly planned the shutdown of the AEC truck plant in Southall.
As he finished outlining his plan the effects of years of participation became clear. Convenors and plant directors rose with one accord and gave his job-slashing scheme a prolonged standing ovation.
Howled down
The manager chairing the meeting then went to put Edwardes' plan to a vote.
When Bob Fryer, the newly re-elected convenor of the Cowley Assembly Plant objected to a joint vote being taken — particularly when it involved thousands of redundancies — he was howled down on all sides and ridiculed as a 'lunatic' by Longbridge convenor Derek Robinson and Canley convenor Eddie McGarry.
Fryer's election has brought an important new element into the struggle for leadership in BL.
He had been re-elected a month earlier when the previous left-wing leadership, removed in 1974, was returned to office (including Alan Thornett who was re-elected deputy convenor).
Fryer was quickly elected onto the LCJNC and became an important force.
No longer could the committee be sworn to secrecy as in the past and now management's voice was challenged for the first time.
The LCJNC successfully moved for the winding up of "participation".
The closure of the Speke plant was a key test for Edwardes in implementing his plan.
He knew that if he could get away with a closure in Liverpool, a militant and high unemployment area, he would stand a good chance elsewhere.
Prominent among those who made that closure possible were McGarry and Robinson who had so vocally attacked Fryer in January.
Robinson conducted Speke mass meetings at which any talk of occupation was carefully avoided and no action was taken: and McGarry knifed the struggle further by agreeing to accept that the work from the doomed Speke plant should be transferred to Canley.
Six weeks ago, Edwardes announced his latest package of closures and redundancies — including the closure of Canley. He did so with the experience of Speke firmly under his belt.
But his talk of a further 25,000 lost jobs received a different initial response from BL convenors, and particularly from the CP.
The Combine Committee in emergency session voted to oppose the plan, announcing that in this stand they had the full support of the TGWU and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions.
But the Confed was soon to change its tune. Even while leaflets convening a protest demonstration were being distributed and a Confed "emergency committee" was meeting, Confed leaders were in close talks with Edwardes.
"Amber light"
Two days before the demonstration, Edwardes, flanked by Confed General Secretary Alex Ferry and President Ken Baker, appeared on television to announce that he now had the "amber light" to proceed with the closures.
But the union bureaucracy held back on a formal statement. On the demonstration Confed speakers declared that anyone who thought the Confed has accepted the plan was "misinterpreting the situation".
Edwardes however put out a statement declaring himself puzzled as to why the march had been called, since he had agreement with the Confed!
Four days later at the convenors' conference the confusion was ended. While the TGWU secretary of the "emergency committee" stated that the committee still opposed the plan, Alex Ferry urged convenors to accept it, and declared that he was not prepared to fight the plan "over the dead bodies of our members".
When Ferry put the proposal to the vote he was overwhelmingly defeated. But, undeterred, the Confed has proceeded to give "strong support" to the plan to sack thousands of their members.
When Edwardes ordered a company-run ballot to be organised and a massive press campaign swung into action behind Edwardes, the Confed Executive used thousands of pounds of trade union money to place advertisements in the Mirror and the Sun urging a 'yes' vote.
The spectacle of major trade unions, not turning a blind eye as they are in many cases to the cuts in the public services, not simply acquiescing as they are in shipbuilding — but actively fighting for mass redundancies and plant closures, and using the full resources of the unions to do so, must be unprecedented.
Nothing could spell out the bankruptcy of reformist politics more clearly. Nothing could demonstrate in sharper relief the impossibility of opposing management attacks once you accept the capitalist argument that the company must at all costs be made "viable".
It is doubtful if BL could ever be viable in capitalist terms.
For every BL worker there are four workers in the private component industry.
The component suppliers are quite capable of ensuring that BL never makes a profit — at least not a profit that will ever show up in the balance sheet of BL.
The answer lies not in the scramble for capitalist 'viability' over the bodies of thousands of redundant workers, nor in lining up with the weakest sections of British capitalism, the Tribune group and the Communist Party in clamouring for import controls to keep out "foreign" competitors.
Occupations
Existing jobs must be defended through independent action by the working class — factory occupations demanding a policy of work-sharing on full pay be implemented under the control of trade union committees.
The only long term defence of jobs in BL and in the car industry in general lies in the struggle for the nationalisation of the entire car and component industry and the banks, without compensation to the present exploiters and under workers' management. Car manufacture must be integrated into a planned, socialist economy.
Only in this way can the potential benefits of expanding and improving the productive forces be achieved by the working class.
Such a perspective is not simply a pipe dream. The working class has the power to achieve it, provided a leadership is built that is prepared to mobilise massive action in defence of jobs, working conditions and living standards.
Such action must begin now with the decision to occupy threatened plants as a centrepiece of the mass struggles that are necessary to bring down the job-slashing Tory government and spearhead the fight for a government responsive not to the needs of capital but to the interests of the working class.