The Communist Party keeps Thatcher in office
Socialist Press1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Margaret Thatcher's crisis ridden and reactionary regime has been kept in power by the conscious and deliberate intervention of the Communist Party.
This startling statement is the only serious conclusion which can be drawn from a close examination of the recent sell-out of the wages struggle inside BL.
With Tory policy in disarray and Thatcher facing divisions within the Tory Party itself, BL workers were poised to spearhead an emerging struggle which could have brought the Tories down.
Yet under these conditions Jack Adams, a leading member of the Communist Party, mounted the rostrum at the decisive mass meeting at the Longbridge plant and put the recommendation for acceptance of the 6.8% offer.
There is no doubt that Adams was putting official Communist Party policy. Despite massive cover by the media of the Longbridge meeting the Morning Star the following day failed to even mention that it had taken place.
Once again the Tories have been protected by the trade union bureaucrats, just as they were during the steel strike.
Now because of the actions of the Communist Party, BL workers, far from spearheading a fight against the Tories, have been used as the lever to bring in Thatcher's 6% incomes policy.
Interesting
The importance of this betrayal, linked as it is to the staggering determination of the trade union leadership as a whole not to confront Thatcher, makes a detailed examination of the course of events both interesting and necessary.
BL workers were sold-out last year as well. Then they voted for strike action by a 2-1 majority in a postal ballot jointly conducted by the trade unions.
Then Duffy put the boot in. This lover of postal ballots suddenly decided not to accept the result. He conducted his own "straw poll" within the AUEW, and then instructed his members to keep working.
This year it was different. The national officers and General Secretaries played their inevitable role; but it was the convenors who played the decisive part and hence the crucial importance of the Communist Party.
The question of democracy is very central indeed within BL and can never for a moment be separated from the struggle for wages or the struggle to defend jobs or conditions.
Participation
Hanging over leadership problems in BL is the three-years of "worker participation" under the Ryder plan at the time of the Labour government.
This was class collaboration to perfection and the Communist Party from the outset was its most consistent supporter, describing it as "a step towards workers' control".
When BL moved towards the corporate bargaining system (strongly opposed by Socialist Press and the Workers Socialist League) the same collaborators became the negotiators; and even after participation formally ended, early in 1978, it continued to flourish in the heads of the convenors and in particular in the ranks of the Communist Party.
[Photograph: Longbridge workers on the march against the Social Contract, carrying placards reading "SMASH THE SOCIAL CONTRACT" and "SOCIAL CONTRACT SOCIAL CONFLICT". Caption: Longbridge workers on the march against the Social Contract: now their Stalinist leaders are selling out to the Tories]
This meant that they all supported the Confed when it set up a completely unrepresentative corporate negotiating structure over which BL workers could have no control whatsoever.
The JNC has 27 members. Seven of them are national officials, and the majority of the 20 convenors represent small numbers of workers, mostly with craft interests.
The vast majority of BL workers are represented by a small minority on the committee.
The JNC reports to (but is not accountable to) a conference of nearly 200 convenors which is even less democratic.
They each have one vote—despite the fact that a tiny handful of mostly TGWU convenors represent the vast majority of workers and the rest speak only for tiny minority interests.
This system was accepted by the Communist Party and others because they were on it, and because they knew it would be an effective block to strike action.
The 1980 claim of £17.21/20% across the board) was in fact originated not by the JNC but by the Combine Committee at one of the sparsely attended meetings it has held on rare occasions since it was destroyed by participation.
"Single item"
There, Jack Adams proposed that a "single item" claim of 20% be adopted which would be "clear to the members".
In moving it, Adams stressed that the important thing was to reject any attempt by the management to "turn the negotiations towards bonus payment"—as had been the case last year.
Everyone, he said, must be very firm on this point.
The JNC later endorsed the Combine Committee policy and presented it to BL management who responded with an offer of 6.2%.
Even at that stage the seeds of the sell-out were there.
The JNC decided against rejecting the offer and adjourned for three weeks to consider it!
Confed claim
Most BL workers would have considered three minutes as too long to consider it, but the JNC had a motive.
They reported back to the shop stewards in the various plants that the decision was "tactical". Within three weeks they said, the Confed would have an offer from the employers for the engineering industry which they anticipated would be more than 6.2%. They could then press for the same.
In the Cowley Assembly Plant the shop stewards decided that the mass of the members must be involved at every stage if the claim was to be seriously proposed.
A mass meeting was called which unanimously voted for rejection of the 6.2% offer and to pursue the full claim.
In mid-October Duffy settled for 8.2% on the minimum rates for the Confed claim.
Promptly the BL JNC met management, expecting a similar offer.
Then their problems began. Edwardes only offered 6.8%. This, he said, was the final offer.
Caught by Edwardes decision, the JNC called a convenors conference on 20 October "to sound out their views".
The meeting decided to go back and consult the shop stewards in the plants.
When the stewards met in the Cowley Assembly Plant they already had a mass meeting decision behind them.
The stewards mandated the convenor Bob Fryer to press at the JNC for a simultaneous series of mass meetings throughout BL, to be held on the same day and at the same time, to vote on a recommendation for strike action.
This policy was put onto a leaflet and circulated in the factory.
It was also circulated to the JNC and the convenors when they reassembled on October 27.
On that day the JNC met an hour before the convenors meeting. It adopted the policy advocated by Fryer. The convenors met and took a similar decision.
This was a very crucial tactical decision, because the key to mobilising BL workers was unity.
Sold out
BL workers had been sold-out three times over the past year when plants had been isolated by the officials and were seeing unity as the key factor in fighting Edwardes.
When the mass meetings were held on Thursday 30 October, the convenors, the officials and Edwardes got a shock.
Despite previous betrayals and vacillation since the claim started, there were massive votes for strike action.
All directions
In Cowley and Longbridge the majorities were overwhelming and in BL cars as a whole only 21,000 voted against strike action compared to 42,000 in favour.
When the JNC met on the following Monday to assess the support of the members they ran in all directions.
A motion to call an all-out strike moved by Bob Fryer and Arthur Harper was defeated by a majority of one.
A motion from Grenville Hawley to call a two-day token strike was defeated by a majority of one, and a motion by the EETPU to accept the 6.8% was also defeated.
The JNC, the "leadership", had no policy. Once again they were miles behind the membership.
They went into the convenors conference an hour later with three motions but no policy.
After a battle, the motion to call an all-out strike on the basis of the mandate of the members was carried by 99 votes to 74 with 14 abstentions.
Seven days' notice of an all-out strike was given to Edwardes.
Workers became stronger after the decision. In some plants that had voted against the strike, such as Rover, where the effects of last April's sell-out were still strong, it became clear that workers would be out once the strike started.
Management acted quickly. They knew where to go and what to play on—bonus.
Top managers in each plant called in convenors to tell them that the 6.8% would not be improved, but money could be earned through bonus payments.
Intimidation was thrown in for good measure. Bob Fryer was told that management knew what he had said inside the JNC meeting and they took a serious view of it. They told him his "card would be marked" if he continued to support strike action.
The pressures were effective. On Wednesday an emergency JNC meeting was called and they promptly agreed to talk about bonus. They had no mandate to talk about bonus from the members or the stewards and they were in complete violation of the original combine committee decision.
But it was even worse. They then decided to put forward their own proposals for a bonus scheme sell-out!
Bonus
They proposed that five bonus points (£1.25) be guaranteed on top of the 6.8% offer. (A proposal which if conceded would amount to (surprise, surprise!) 8.2%—equal to the Confed settlement).
Unfortunately for them, management was prepared to agree, but only for an eight week period.
14 hours of negotiations succeeded in "improving" this miserable deal to 12 weeks—providing the whole claim was settled there and then. This was impossible and the talks broke down.
[Photographs: General Secretaries with no members involved in claim: Jenkins and Grantham. Duffy (right) chats with NUM leader Gormley: Gormley did not attend talks with Edwardes!]
On Thursday a further meeting took place at the request of Terry Duffy, this time with Edwardes and the General Secretaries of various unions.
This included not only people like Duffy but leaders of the staff unions, who have nothing to do with the claim! Roy Grantham of APEX was there. Clive Jenkins was there—whose foremen members had been intimidating manual workers into accepting the 6.8%.
David Basnett was there from the GMWU: this union had a total of 25 members in BL—all of whom are at MGs Abingdon and shortly to get the sack as the plant closes.
Alex Kitson attended for the TGWU in the absence of Moss Evans who was on holiday.
He arrived late and announced he had been at a meeting of the TGWU Executive who had decided to make the impending strike official.
This cut very little ice with the General Secretaries who quickly decided after a meeting with Edwardes to call for the strike call to be dropped on no other basis than their "commitment" to BL and a few more fruitless negotiations on bonus which would take place on Monday and Tuesday of the following week.
This was agreed unanimously, including Kitson—despite his "official support".
They then approached the JNC who had been assembled in a basement waiting for the call.
They agreed unanimously to back the sell-out.
The following day an emergency meeting of convenors was called which also backed the sell-out with a 2-1 majority. Instructions were sent out calling off the strike.
On Monday morning there was a joint meeting of shop stewards in the Cowley Assembly Plant.
The convenors reported the events of the previous week and it became clear that Bob Fryer had not fought the sell-out and had been a party to the negotiations on bonus.
There was a very sharp reaction from the meeting. The 200 plant stewards voted unanimously to condemn the JNC and the convenors' conference.
They called for a new, democratic structure based on a delegate conference, which they had been fighting for since the summer.
The bonus negotiations predictably produced nothing.
Fryer fought for a new strike decision on the basis of his mandate from the plant. The JNC however voted 14-12 in favour of recommending the "final" offer of 6.8% plus £1.25 per week bonus for twelve weeks to the convenors the next day.
Silenced
At the convenors conference Fryer was silenced. Hawley ruled that no JNC member be allowed to speak!
The vote by convenors that the offer be accepted was overwhelming—but they argued that it would be recommended to a further series of mass meetings—this time over the span of a few days.
Again they got a shock.
Although some of the right wing—who could guarantee anti-strike votes—held meetings quickly in order to influence the decisions, when Cowley met the vote for a strike was even stronger.
At the Assembly Plant the stewards had recommended both a strike vote and the call for a new democratic negotiating structure. They got massive backing.
Even at the right wing-led Cowley Body Plant where convenor Bill Roche struggled to demoralise the workforce into acceptance, the vote was a solid 10-1 for strike action.
As mass meetings took place many plants followed their previous pattern of voting with something of a swing against strike action.
Longbridge vote
By Friday it was clear that everything hung on the Longbridge vote, which had been held back until Tuesday morning.
If Longbridge repeated its previous big majority for strike action—then the vote throughout BL would go that way.
Everything therefore hung on convenor Adams and the Communist Party.
The sell-out came when the CP-led Longbridge works committee decided to accept the 6.8%.
This was taken to a full stewards meeting. There Adams' sell-out proposal was decisively lost.
The stewards voted 180-140 for strike action.
But this was not allowed to stand in the way of Adams' determined moves to knife a strike.
At the mass meeting Adams refused to put the decision of the stewards and instead pushed the convenors conference recommendation for acceptance.
Even after he had done his best to secure a no-strike decision the vote at the meeting has been hotly disputed. Many workers who watched TV film of the meeting were convinced that the vote went in favour of strike action—with thousands of workers brushing aside Adams pleas that they would be "isolated" and defeated if they went on strike.
Adams' treachery tipped the scales in BL as a whole—producing a result claimed to be 2-1 against strike action.
This was a majority big enough to make action by an individual plant extremely difficult.
In the Cowley Assembly Plant a final mass meeting was held at which workers voted to step up the struggle for democracy in BL and to meet again if their proposals for reform of the bargaining procedures are not accepted.
Humiliating
Once again Edwardes has used the apparatus of the trade union bureaucracy to railroad through a humiliating sell-out on wages.
But this year, more openly than ever before, the union officials have had to lean for support upon the involvement of convenors—and, key to their whole success, upon "Communist" Jack Adams.
Thousands of Longbridge workers saw and voted against Adams' treacherous line at the final mass meeting: millions witnessed his betrayal on their TV screens.
The fight for new leadership in BL—so crucial if further sell-outs are to be avoided—means a fight not only against General Secretaries, national officials and the right wing: it means a fight against the Communist Party and its conscious opposition to mass struggle to bring down Thatcher.
The CP's "peaceful road" to socialism means in BL full-scale collaboration with Edwardes and his Tory paymasters.
Only a revolutionary road, based on defence of workers' independent interests, can offer a way forward for BL workers.
Building such a leadership is the task undertaken by the Workers Socialist League.