After 16 weeks' strike, 1,500 workers at Burroughs Machines Lid., In Cumbernauld, Dumburtoosbire, returned to work last Monday. What happened at Burroughs has important lessons for future industrial struggles generally, and for the town of Cumbernauld in particular. The Burroughs strike has shown most clearly that industrial struggles can no longer be confined to pure trade union action, but to successfully fight the employer even on economic demands requires both political action and understanding. 200 90c00 100590 THE HISTORY In 1968 the Shop Stewards Committee adopted a policy of not using strike action as a fint step in negodations with the management. This gave the company the longest strike-free period in its history. Profits zoomed during that time. In 1967 Burroughs declared a pre-tax profit of C2, In 1971 the profits had shot up to an astronomical E11.5 millions. During this time of incredible growth workers wages remained pitifully low-a lurge section of the workers had an average Cake-home pay of E14 a week. In one year alone 1,000 jobs were lost, 600 of these through redundancy. It was against this background that the Union tried to negotinte a new wages contract.
THE STRIKE After two months of haggling the company sent over its chief negollator from America. The management's offer was Do less than an insult consisting of a straight &l-a-week increase now, to be followed by a furtber El after nine months. The talks dragged on for two further months. Finally they broke down wen the management made their "final" offer of E1.87 for this year and the same amount for the following twelve months. Burroughs abso insisted that chese increases be offset against any nationel agreement reached between the Engineering Confederation and the Employers at the end of 1971.
SIXTEEN WEEKS OF GREAT SOLIDARITY As soon as the strike started the managoment went onto the offensive. Using their usual policy of divide and rule they attempted to introduce separate negotiations between the two faetories al Cumbernauld and Strachlesen.
Sortly afterwards 400 workers were made redundant at Cumbernauld, aimed to pit the interests of one worker against chase of another-the strike bad to end before the redundant workars could receive their dole and social security money. Moreover, not only were the redundancies selective it was not a coincidence that most of the militant works committee were sacked but the workers were not given the usual payment in lieu of redundancy. This has been awarded to those made redundant before the strike. and failure to do so in the case of the second 400 inflicted further hardship and reinforced the divide and rule polley.
The third attack was a letter sent to the strikers by the management threatening more redundancies und referring to the possible total closure of the factory.
These attacks were supplemented by the actions of the Cumbernauld Development Council which pursued a policy Despite these attacks, despite che genuine hardship experteneed by strikers and their families, solidarity remained high as was retlected in the atmosphere at the picket lines in the sixteenth week.
GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR VICTORY By their refusal to break ranks and by their determination to resist all the hardship and poverty that a sixteen weeks" strike entails, the workers laid the basis for a very conclusive victory. No firm can go through sixteen weeks of strike without a serious weakening of the management's position It also appears true that Burroughs had recently received some new orders which put them under pressure to get production underway again. Nixon's emergency economic measures also means that American firms will be doing all they can to combat the general lack of confidence expressed In them and this was another factor in the strikers" favour.
THE AGREEMENT Ostensibly the final settlernent represents a meal vietory. The workers have got an immediate increase of 53 plus nine weeks backdated increase with a further £1.50 to be paid next July. The offset clause has been abandoned entirely so the workers will automatically get the full national increase on top of the other awards.
But chere is another side to this picture. There are still 1,000 redundant workers and the unemployment rate in Cumbernauld is atready 10% of the working population. The prospects of these 1,000 men and women getting any job in the foreseeable future is almost nil. In a factory where in six months the labour force has been reduced from 2,500 to 1,500 the position about future redundancies still remains unsolved. All the management have done is promised that there will be no more redundancies, but that is a purely verbal promise, not one word of this appears in the new agreement.
That there was no insistence on a no redundancies clause appearing in the new agreement reflects on the polltical weakness of the official trade union leadership and the Communist Party dominated works committee.
The strike has had a number of important effects in Cumbernauld. Firstly it will be remembered by the men Inside Burroughs as an example of how organisation and solidarity can defeat the management. The workers have reached a higher stage of militancy and understanding than at any time in the last wo years. Already for instance a new factory bulletin, The Burroughs Worker, has made its first appearance. The management were undoubtedly surprised at the militancy of the men and will hesitate to take them on in future.
nauld Unemployed Action Committee which has attempled to take the struggle against unemployment and redundancy onto a new lesel. They organised two demonstrations in the town centre, arringed an occupation of the Social Security and Youth Employment Offices and have held publie meetings on the subject of unemployment. This demonstrates the need to widen the fight against unemployment from the factory to the political arena-ie. leading struggles against the social security, the rents policies of the local authorities und the Tory government. Secondly, there developed out of the strike the Cumber• BE murdered on the night of August 21st. Whatever the circumstances of his death, it was a murder. George Jackson was "an innocent", in his own phrase, killed by a racist system he was con stantly exposing and challenging. He was imprisoned in 1960 at the age of eighteen for an indefinite period, one year to life, after being convicted of a small theft. The sentence was ostensibly a "reformist" measure with the aim of "rehabilitation", Correctly interpreted this means crushing the victim to the point of com. plete submission to the system. George refused to submit to this humiliating process and as a result was consistently denied parole. Because of his resistance he suffered the harshest of conditions and spont seven years in solitary confinement. George Jackson's name became intemationally known last year. At the Soledad prison where he was held, three unarmed black prisoners were shot dead after a deliberately provoked racist incident. The guard's crime was designated "justifiable homicide and shortly afterwards another guard was found dead. George Jackson, along with Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette, two other black militants, was charged with his murder, a charge carrying a mandatory death sentence. Any possible wit nesses were hastily removed from Soledad to other prisons all over the country. The three "Soledad Brothers" as they came to be known, were denied constitutional rights. A daring attempt was made to gain their freedom in August last year by George's younger brother Jonathan, which ended in the death of Jonathan and two black prisoners. During the pretrial hearings, the vicious racism of the American legal system and its lackeys has been exposed time and time again. The trial was due to begin the day after George Jackson's death.
All his life George Jackson fought the racist system which succeeded finally in his murder. His experiences and the lessons he drew from them are set out in his collected letters from prison, Soledad Brother, published earlier this year. Out of his revolutionary consciousness a and through self-education while in prison, George reached a high lovel of political development:
*I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered prison, and they redeemed me, " he wrote Out of his own expe ce and study of Marxism he urged black pe aple to go beyond the initial struggle for identity and self-protec tion towards developed revolutionary analysis of their oppression. He explains in clear Marxist terms the new slavery of blacks in American society:
"Neo-slavery is an economic condition, a small knot of men exercising the property rights of their established economic order, organising and controlling the life style of the slave as if he were, in fact, property. Succinctly: an economic condition which manifests itself in the total loss or absence of self-determination. Only after this is understood and accepted can we go on to the dialectic that will help us in a remedy."
He understood that internationalism was essential to the destruction of capitalism:
"International coordination is the key to dafeating this thing that must expand to live."
As George developed politically all traces of male chauvinism disappeared and last year he wrote to Angela Davis:
*I understand exactly what the woman's role should be (in the revolutionary struggleod.]. the very same as the man's."
He totally rajected reformism, the bourgeois concept of family blood ties and individualism.
George realised that because he refused to be destroyed by the more covert methods of the system, he was in constant danger of physical destruction, In recent unpublished letters he includes vivid descriptions of the ever-increasing physical brutality he experienced during the pre-trial hearings.
In the last few weeks he was confident that, in spite of the odds, the political defence he and his lawyers were preparing would result in his freedom. But at the same time he was constantly aware that the system was out to destroy him and he frequently expressed the fear of being murdered.
Considering his confidence in the outcome of his trial it seems incredible that he would attempt a jailbreak the day before it began. It seems far more likely that the authorities decided to eliminate George Jackson before his trial could show up in the full glare of international publicity, the blatant racism and violent injustice of the American capitalist system, Revolutionaries everywhere, who supported George Jackson's struggle, must continue to