cies created by rationalisation. the workers isn't right. trade union area of the Clyde.
UCS work-in. class response to the Tories' attacks. The strike and occupation of the tools warehouse by engineering workers at Balfour Darwin in Sheffield is now in its eighth week.
The strike committee has now started to organise speaking tours of local factories and engineering union branches. Derek Simpson, convenor of Balfour Darwin, has continually stressed that their struggle must be seen as part of the fight going on mousnout me •rere a abour movement it defence of the right to work and against redundanThis is why the strike committee has now taken the important step of calling a mass demonstration against unemployment in Sheffield and in support of the militants who are sitting-in. It is now up to the District Committee of the Amalgmated Union of Engineering Workers to set a firm date for this and launch a campaign to build the demonstration.
At a rally called outside Balfour Darwin on 24 October, all speakers emphasised the role the occupyIng workers could play in ourding te unemployment lobby on 26 November. However, the Communist Party-dominated District Committee of the AUEW - the strongest union in Sheffield - has refused to call for a stoppage on the 26th. District president albert Amgat claus tat me mood o BAD JOKE With unemployment soaring towards 1% millior and the working class being attacked on all fronts by the Wilson Government, - and with the Balfour Darwin workers giving a lead in the fight back to workers throughout the country - it is hard to see when Bro. Knight thinks the mood of the shop floor will be right. Perhaps it will be when Wilson's policies have lead to the return of another Tory The District Committee has decided to rely on the 'well organised factories' to turn out for the ing, a firm building oil rigs for the North Sea, took over the fourth yard and the work-in was finally terminated. However, again under pressure from the Labour and trade union bureaucracy, the shop stewards conceded a non-strike agreement and increased flexibility in manning which if they cannot be reversed will undermine traditional trade union controls within the yards - the most important single There were two major achievements of the The first was the way in which it fired the imagination of the working class and youth, bringing about a change in consciousness that would in future be quite ready to accept the occupation and/or work-in as an acceptable tactic in industrial disputes. Secondly, it forced the Tories to abandon their amic. "lame duck' policy of allowing ailing and failing capitalist enterprises to go the wall.
But the CP led shop stewards committee One of the many mass meetings at UCS in 1971. The struggle here became the focus for a general working lobby, leaving it to the Trades Council to organise omer sections of ine working class, but as many militants inside the Sheffield labour movement already know, the Trades Council and its executive are rapidly becoming a bad music hall joke.
After passing a statement of intent on unemployment, the Trades Council executive have done noth ing to organise a campaign in the broad labour move ment. For the lobby they have simply circulated affiliated bodies and ordered the coaches!
No special transport for the unemployed has been arranged - they will be expected to cough up £1.60 for the coach like everyone else. The International Marxist Group has decided to leaflet the. main employment exchanges so that the unemployed are at least mobilised for the demonstration.
OTHER CUTS Other sections of the Sheffield labour movement are also suffering from Wilson's cuts. The Trades Council should be coordinating the activity of teachers, hospital workers and women workers - inevit ably the first to be sacked - into a common fight against Wilson's Tory policies The role of local notable Labour lefts' has been no better than that of the Trades Council. Neither Martin Flannery nor Joan Maynard, both promineht "left' MPs, have publicly stated their support for the Balfour Darwin struggle or become actively involved in the struggle and the local right to work campaign.
The 26 November lobby must not be seen as an end in itself. In Sheffield and other areas common jobs policies must be thrashed out to safeguard the living standards of working people. In Sheffield itself one central demand must be for the nationalisation of the private steels industry, of which Balfour Darwin Is a part, and which is the most protitable section of the Sheffield steel industry. The mobilisation for 26 November must see the launching of a real fight for the right to work in Sheffield, not be a substitute for the campaign.
was committed to rescuing as many jobs as possible through a policy of demonstrating the 'efficiency and 'responsibility of the UCS workers in capitalist economic and' social terms. Thus the UCS experience, where the shop stewards ended up negotiating redundancies and worse working conditions, was nothing less than a disaster as an exercise in workers' control.
The jobs that were saved at CS - and in purely trade union terms this was no mean achievement - were saved because of the depth and extent of the support UCS obtained from the mass of workers in Britain. Through UCS they found a focus for their opposition to their traditional enemies the Tories, and the stand taken in the yards had its own political dynThe great failure of the CP leadership was their complete inability to present a course of action that would assist this development. JOHN ROBERTS