UNCO-OPERATIVE The workers' co-operative is dead.... long live the workers' unco-operative"
-that could well have been the cynical cry after the resignation of Allister Mackie at the Scottish Daily News last week. Mackie, who led 500 former Beaverbrook workers in the founding of the new paper, resigned as chairman of the workers' council running the Scottish Daily News after a vote of no-confidence in him by 295 to 12 of the workers.
Tycoon Robert Maxwell has now assumed almost total control on the basis of promises of further cash for the ailing paper. In what was to have been one of Tony Benn's shining examples of industrial democracy, aided by £1.2 million mahon of government money, only Max well insists that a workers' co-operSING SELL CASES The shortcomings of workers' cooperatives have often been, spelt out in the pages of the Red Weekly. Wherea sube concern goes bust it is due no logic or me capitalisi market. The way jobs can be saved is by the won ol new markets, a massive inproductivity allowing the firm a la cusung markeis, or naalisation and state-backed financing The Scottish Daily News never had any of these. On only one condition ould it have become a viable news- by putting itself at the service of the Scottish working class and beming an instrument for the developsent and organisation of its struggles. From this position of strength the workets at SD could have forced the Labour Government to provide tne necessary minances to cover any losses.
The fight for jobs at the Glasgow paper could have put the SDV workers in the forefront of the struggles of the Scottish working class. A daily paper Fighting for the interests of the working class at the time of the mass strikes by Scottish lorry drivers, dustbinmen nd teachers against the Labour Government's social con-trick could have been of nestimable value.
Instead the SDN -hiring a former Express man as its editor _ - has tried to ape the style of its better equipped competitors in a cut-throat market in which mw materal prices are constanuy escalat ing, and the introduction of labour-saving conniques is tne key to capttatist survival. Maxwell's return to supreme power is the culmination of this process.
The tit-and-bum approach or the sun and Mirror may not be quite so blatant in the pages of the Scottish Daily News. but as a paper it has never tried to be anything better than a poor man's version of its slicker, bigger brothers. Just howfar it is Irom serving the interests of the working class can be seen from the headline un a major arucie in Monday s issue -'Abortions made me quit, says doctor'.
The Scottish Daily News has now become the pawn in a bitter capitalist dogfight between Maxwell-who for a mere £114,000 investment has achieved his long-held ambition to run a daily paper and rivals like former owner Beaverbrook who are trying to seize nearly £60,000 of the paper's funds. In the process, the workers have disappeared completely Irom the centre of the stage: in Satur day's issue, it was Maxwell (complete with large photo) who 'hit out' at Beaver For the moment the mistaken belief unat industrial democracy can be anvthing more than a con in capitalist society has taken a knock. Unfortunately, in the longer term, the workers at SDN will pay with their jobs for their mistaken vener in workers co-operatives as a soluaon to unemplovment The second largest union in the country, the Amalagamated Union of Engineering Workers, could fall under right-wing control in the near future. The election of John Boyd to the position of General Secretary - creating a vacancy in Scotland -and the contest for the Manchester/ Midlands No. 4 executive seat means that two posts on the Executive Council could fall under rightwing control. to change the balance of power betTween left and right.
next March.
That would be enough Scanlon speaking at the AUEW conference earlier this year The response of Scanlon and tne Communist Party dominated ocratic plotters. Broad Left has been to attempt to avert the danger by postponing the Manchester/ Midlands elections to This would exclude 2,000 members in the predominantly right-wing Banbury area who are due to be transferred into No. 5 executive division in January 1976.
Such manoeuvres, however, have only provided grist for the mill of doing this.
the capitalist press in its efforts to paint all left-wingers as anti-demBROAD LEFT In an act of open betrayal of the principles of free trade unionism, Duffy, the assistant Divisional Organiser for the AUEW in Wolverhampton and the right-wing candidate for the Manchester/Midlands seat, has threatened to use the law courts to reverse this decision. This opens the road for the state to intervene directly in all matters ințernal to the union. It is intolerable that a full-time official like Duffy i can remain in the ranks of a trade union when his actions strike at the very founding principles of the trade union movement.
The vacillations of the Broad Left over the fight againt the Industrial Relations Act, the abortive overtime ban in pursuit of the 1974 national pay claim, and more recently the bureaucratic handling of the & For this sorry state of are airs se postal balloting issue are responsible political lessons of the recent election defeats must be drawn. But the Broad Left shows little sign of Although it is Union policy to oppose the to limit and take industrial action to defend jobs, nowhere in his election address does Bob Wright - who is defending nis seat in the Manchester/Midlands election -put forward the policies which could actually enable the rank and file of so the Union to fight against cuts in their living standards. Yet this is the only way to defeat the propaganda campaign being carried out by the press on behalf of the Red Weekly will continue to ments, I can't afford to be' - to take away the food donated in solidarity by Liverpool workers, the miners rapidly disarm them and hold them captive.
From this position of strength, they proceed to wire up the pits with dyna mite, in an attempt to force the employer to agree to their demands. But tragedy follows. Lulled by the coal-owner's promises of justice and no victimisa. tions, the miners shake hands on the agreement and celebrate their victory with their families - only to be attacked in the night by the army and their key The film has other strong points deserving of mention: the continual references by Ben to his experiences in Ireland and the role of the army there (the same then as now; and the isolation of However the overall impression which comes across, despite the defeat, is optimism and hope - the hope dormant in the working masses standing together after weeks of inactivity and oppression, who suddenly start to live, to play an active, creative role when the situation arises. For some the feeling of being masters of their situation is further enhanced by the memory of previous de- We tried it in 93, but the other side matched us, had us eating grass. I had a wife die in '93' one old militant reflects, almost casually reminding us It is this vision of the richness, the unity and the courage of the organised workers' movement which makes Days of Hope worth a million other TV 'plays. The Sun can't stand 'extremist manipula tion in the unions-unless it does it itself of course The moderate candidate in former chairman of the Wolverhampton Labour Party, We salute his courage.
call for a vote for the Broad Left candidates against the bosses' stooges of the right wing. But such an election campaign will have to be carried out despite the policies and bureaucratic antics of the Broad Left. It is only through the adoption of policies which show a way forward in practice for the rank and file that the hold of the right wing will be broken. That must mean: * An all-out fight by the Union against the £6 wage limit - the submission of a £15 across-the-board claim protected by monthly thresh old payments in the next round of negotiations, and a mass campaign inside the Union to back it up. * Officially backed occupations of factories creating redundancies, and a Union-backed fight for their immediate nationalisation under work ers' control. * A national fight for the introduction of a 35-hour week and for work-sharing with no loss of pay to combat unemployment
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the election, pledged to end all the nonsense of the Communists and their allies, is Terry Duffy,