The creation of a new right wing leadership: Marcos-style elections come to Cowley
Socialist Viewpoint1980sScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
By BILL PETERS THE swing to the right which has taken place since the defeat of the miners' strike has atfected most parts of the labour movement. The TUC has dropped its opposition to the anti-union laws and shrunk from disciplining the EETPU over its role in Wapping. Many of the individual unions have swung to the right and in the Labour Party Kinnockism has grown and strengthened and witch-hunt against Militant is in full swing.
Although the willingness to light is still present amongst rank and file workers, and strikes are still taking place, this situation is having an elfect at shop floor level, particularly amongst local leaderships where the argument that "strike action always fails" — a line handed down from top levels in almost every union - has had an effect.
This process has expressed itself in a particularly virulent way in the Austin Rover Assembly Plant in Cowley, which has for decades been a bastion of militant trade unionism and political struggle.
Two years ago there was an important change in the leadership of the TGWU in the plant. Bob Fryer, who had been the convenor for almost 25 years, was defeated by Ivor Braggins - a militant left wing shop steward. Fryer had been seen by most of the left as running out of steam. He in any case had only three years to retizement and the matter of an adequate replacement had to be confronted.
Ivor Braggins had been a shop steward on the assembly tracks for almost 20 years, had an excellent Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 pl0
Moreover it was possible for a challenger to defeat the existing convenor since a tradition had been established in the plant of meticulously conducted democratic ballot procedures. This was in marked contrast to the usual situation in the unions where those who control the balloting procedures almost always win.
Braggins' election was seen as a victory for the left. Not because Bob Fryer had been right wing, far from it, but because the result continued the traditions of militancy which had been established in the plant in the late 1950s and the early 1960s.
Two years later, Ivor Braggins has
gone completely over to the right wing. The results have been dramatic. Last year was hailed by management as the first strike-free year in the Cowley Assembly Plant for 30 years. Braggins has gone to the local media to tell workers that management attitudes were improving, and that they are now "talking to us and not at us.
Nor has it stopped there. As soon as opposition emerged to his new line of collaboration, Braggins launched a witch-hunt on the left. Two militant left wingers, Alan Thornett and Bob Cullen, both victimised and sacked by management over the past three years, are being driven out of the TGWU branch for daring to call a right winger a