Sir Monty Finniston's announcement of 22,000 redundancies in the steel industry over the next few months has met with howls of protest from steel union leaders and the Labour left-but no concrete plan to fight them. In fact, Finniston's reply to Benn's 'open letter' shows that the British Steel Corporation has not budged an inch from its original plans.
General steels and strip mills would bear the brunt of this policy. Up to 10,000 jobs will go in general steels, and another 9,000 to 10,000 in the strip mills. A further 2,000 jobs in the special steels and tubes divisions will be axed. Scotland and Wales, which already have very high unemployment rates, will face the loss of another 7,000-10,000 and 6,000-9,000 jobs respectively. Places like Ebbw Vale will be reduced to ghost towns if BSC's plans are implemented.
But Benn's answer is simply to plead with the steel unions not to go ahead with their present pay claim; and the union leaders have no alternative to these plans. Capitalism is only interested in producing steel in the cheapest and most efficient way possible. Instead of using investment programmes and technological innovation to lighten workloads and shorten the working week, BSC plans massive redundancies and plant closures in order to survive in the anarchy of a capitalist economy.
Any plans (including Benn's) for making BSC viable in capitalist terms will mean redundancies and massive speed-up. What confronts steel wor kers throughout Britain is who shall pay for the capitalist crisis. The Labour Government is committed to saving British capitalism-not jobs. The steel unions are riddled with craft divisions and have one of the most reactionary leaderships going.
The threatened plants will only be kept open and jobs saved by a national policy of 'no closures-no redun-