preparation of a new model, the C42, to replace the Avenger at Linwood. But this will only go ahead if all aspects of the plan till then are fulfilled" (Red Weekly. 8 January).
So much was clear from Varley's statement in Parliament on 16 December: "The whole future of this operation depends on ne tunest co-oreration or unt work-force in accepting redundancies ano tne movement or work Derween plants and in collaborating to improve productivity Eddie McCluskey knew what the enrysier dea was a about out ne rer used to break with the 'moderate' majority on his stewards committee and the scab role of CP-backed AUEW official Bob Wright. That is why he now protests his surprise as a cover for the role which he and the Communist Party played in the Chrysler fiasco. of opinion of pipe dreams and Sunday speeches. promitNearly 40,000 livelihoods destroyed in one year. Twenty thousand of those in British Leyland alone - and that is only the thin end of the Ryder Plan wedge cobbled up by the Labour Government and Wilson's henchman at the NEB, Lord (E4 million-a-minute land-dealer) Ryder. But the massacre of jobs in the car industry will not stop when the long-awaited sians of an end to the economic recession and stump in sales and production finally arrive on the horizon.
Last November. the Financial Times wrote: The consensus in the British industry is that if 1975 has been a bad year, 1976 will be even worse." While this remains the story for profit and investment, the story for car workers will continue to be sackings and speed-up — as long as a programme of socialist measures to stop the rot remains at the level This dour prospect was confirmed on 14 January with the publication of a Government White Paper on the British Motor Vehicle Industry. The report demanded more blood, to the tune of between 55,000 and 275,000 further redundancies by 1985, to put the industry back on an even capitalist keel.
Behind this prospect lies the Government tnink tank re port, which saw no future in the British industry for Vauxhall and Chryster, leaving only Ford and British Leyland in business by the mid-1980s. In the meantime, the Labour Government, union leaders and the employers have closed ranks to impose sackings and speed-up, while refusing to nationalise the industry and plan it rationally according to social needs instead of Apart from the disgusting human cost in jobs and falling the storm of the present slump in production.
dore queue dancy acnieved is now reacning saturation pont uality agreements to achieve flexibility of labo employment. eria now look pretty sick. £1,000 million is to be pumped into British Levland and neariv £200 million into Chrysler to save their skins for capitalism. But such a plan can only work if both companies compete successfully against each other by attacking jobs and living standards still further, and weathering There is no guarantee that BL and Chrysler can do either. So all these Government nand-outs remain straws in the wind and promise nothing for car workers except misery and the The employers are well aware of this, and are now using the lack of a fight-back in the last year, the Ryder Report, and the defeat suffered by Chrysler workers to step up their ottensive on productivity. In some plants the level of voluntary redunFor over a year now, the bosses have preferred to cut jobs through cash bribes to individual workers, rather than risk con frontation and occupations from a workforce united against compulsory redundancy. Despite the tact that tney managed to push through the latter in Chrysler, they are in general rely. ing more and more on jacking up line speeds and breaking mutIt's a bleak future for car workers. The ai rchy of capitalism means that workers are producing commodities for a glut ted market, and being forced to pay for the profitability prob lems of the bosses by sacrificing themselves 'for the nation's good' on the altar of the Labour Government's policies of un
Red Weekly 29 January 1970 Aborton sur tress