British Leyland, The Beginning of The End? by Counter-Information Services, 60p.
In the first five years of its existence the British Leyland group has managed to drop from sixth to ninth place in the world car company league, despite the fact that it enjoys the fastest expanding home market after Japan. This fact is just one of the many assembled in a comprelensive report on British Leyland published by Counter Information Services. The report highlights the backwardness of British capitalism, even in those industries enjoying high levels of capital investment and undertaking large scale production.
Britain's total output of cars remained static between 1964 and 1971. As a result its share of wotid production declined from over 125 to Yet, as the report points out: Aller the end of World War Two, with the European industries prostrate and the world shortage of dollars, the British industry was the only major supplier in a position to cater for the post-war demand". But starting from scratch, the industries of Germany, Japan and Italy were able in a very short time to achieve much greater integration of production and much higher levels of productivity than the British, whose industry continued to operate along pre-war lines. Thus Fiat, one of the most efficient car producers in Europe 'has its own steel-making com plex which ranges from blast furnaces and strip mills through to founderies and forges. But at Austin and Morris, companies which merged in 1952 and are now part of BLMC cars assembled partly in one company's plants and partly in the other's were sold from one company to the other, and sometianes back again, and a large proportion of components and materials were brought in from scattered private supplers.
MERGER It was against this background that the BEMC merger took place in 1968. The new company set out, under Lord Stokes, to cut away many of its fragmented operations and rationalise its production. But Stokes decided 'not to declare large redundancies and factory closures on the Weinstock model, largely through fear of provoking a large scale strike'. Instead he concentrated for five years on preparing the way for future rationalisation by abolishing the piecework system under which the workins were able to push up their earnings each time a job was changed. The introduction of measured day work gave the management gruater-power to introduce mobility of labour and regulate the work through strict measurement of tasks. The report predicts that in 1974 the growth of world demand for cars will slow down sufficiently for BLMC to risk a serious showdown with its workers. At exactly the same. time, however, the weaknesses of BLMC are likely to become more and more exposed". British Leyland is planning to spend 1400 million over the next 5 years. But Volks wagen is expected to invest E1,300 milbion, while Ford, General Motors and Toyota each spend as much in a year as BLMC will over the next five. 'BLMC now has no more chance of achieving a costipetitive level of capital investment than it had at the lime of the merger?
Anotber disadvantage for the British car boss es is that they employ a highly unionised and often highly skilled labour force. The Euroworkers who can be deported if they lose their jobs because they are granted labour permits for a limited period of time. This inhabits union orgrnisation and enables the coinpany to step up its exploitation. in the intense competitive conditions of Europe, the car industry can tolerate no disruption in output. This is why the car industry has been to the fore in investing in fascist countries where strikes are illegal and in depressed areas where strong trade unions have been destroyed, and has encouraged the development of reactionary racist legislation. Despite BLMC* attempts to move in this direction, the Report concludes that Stokes will still be forced to sell out to foreign capital or offer his com pany for nationalisation, And whichever way BLMC jumps, the Britiah Leyland worker is going to suffer, SOCIAL NEEDS This report is of value not just to workers in British Leyland It also highlights the sharp contradiction between the unrestrained growth of the private car and social needs. It documents the destructive elfect of the motor car on publie transport systems, on the cost of building land, on the provision of houses and living space, and on the health of the urban working cliss It poses very sharply the problems which the working class still have to solve in this area.
Unfortunately, although the Report concludes by pointing up the need for social ownership of the car and its integration into a rational transport system within a socialist cconomy, its analysis of the future of industry under capitalism is less than scientific. It proposes the thesis that there are absolute environmental and social constraints on the development of car production: depletion of oil resources, escalating social costs of the car, the saturation of markets, etc. All these UCATT BUREAUCRACY forces working together are likely to ensure that car production will continue until envi ronmental constraints bring it to a halt - with the maximum possible impact of a head-on collision producing perhaps reparable damage.
But this assumes that the capitalists will remain blind to these forces until the last co ment. The Report makes altogether too much of the shortsightedness of manage ment, for the capitalists are good strategists. 'They are already attempting to develop alternative fuels, and trying to exploit new social markets (smaller cars, etc.). They will continue to try to push up the rate of exploitation of the work force and to light against those who struggle to defend their Living conditions. Whether or not they will suc ced depends above all on the claas struggle itseil. DAVE BAILEY