astoun's yard is to close by the end of the year, and debank by next March. The Tories are making an open eat: the 2,500 workers left at Govan will have to show their willingness to accept shift-working, take wage-cuts, that it is worthwhile for investors. This is clearly going be used as a big ideological weapon to make workers ieve that they can influence the Tories into granting consions. Another weapon much in evidence is the "1,000 is" at Scott-Lithgows. The recent completion of a new million berth at this yard on the Lower Clyde was timed her neatly, and the jobs announced quite suddenly adesmen looking for work there recently have been told: vacancies).
CLYDESIDE
A CHALLENGE TO ALL THE WORKING CLASS ILITICAL ANALYSIS-AN URGENT NEED cause of the fact that the Tories have announced their ins and set redundancies in motion before the majority of "S workers have returned from their holidays, the shop wards committee have gone ahead with their action. ien the mass of the workers return on the 9th, the whole ategy and the demands that this strategy is designed to n will have to be discussed at mass meetings. The first ek's occupation at Clydebank has to be assessed, the plans It have been made by other forces, the Labour Party, the de unions, the Tory Party, the Liquidator, etc. all have to taken into account. This demands a very clear political Ilysis of the whole situation. The developments taking ce within these other forces hold enormous dangers and ry have to be assessed.
E CHIMES OF WEDGWOOD BENN e support that the workers action has received from dgwood Benn must be treated critically. Benn, of course s the creator of UCS. Benn's actions are motivated by his ire to vindicate his own past and that of the Labour Party us it is essential to counter any illusion that it represents hift in the attitude of the Labour Party to "workers' ¡trol", industrial democracy, and the interests of the rking class. Benn would not support mass occupation but would support a work-in. This is a crucial distinction. at engages his attention is that a work-in gives Benn's = against the Tories some backing-by working the men expressing their confidence in the future viability of the ds, which he shares. At the same time, even if the yards se, they close after the ships have been completed. Hence n if he loses the battle, he can save some financial face inst the Tory charges that UCS should never have been ated by showing a sound profit on the existing ships. The Labour Party gives him their tacit support -but only ause they believe that "after a week or so the take-over ild be called off and the workers' protests then be chanled into more orthodox ways of demonstration. " (Finan! Times, 2 Aug. 1971). The Labour Party can use the rkers' struggle in their attempts to present an alternative the Industrial Relations Bill. This is something they 'en't been able to do so far with much force because of itle's In Place of Strife. Now they can talk much more cefully about "workers' participation" in management her than legislation against trade unions: an alternative igned, however, to produce the same results. At the te time, the Tory abandonment of their lame duck losophy in regard to International Computers Ltd. (ICL) i week gives the Labour Party an opening through which y can improve the quality of their Opposition (absolutely smal so far because their policies are not substantially ferent from the Government's) by attacking the Tories favouring only those firms which will do well in the mmon Market and leaving whole regions of Britain pressed backwaters (ICL is the protege for the European nputer market against U.S.-owned IBM).
The Labour Party protests over UCS are of course hypoical. It was the Labour Party who through the Industrial organisation Corporation helped Weinstock to merge glish Electric with GEC and create several thousand undancies, defeating in the process the only significant attempt at a workers' takeover in Britain. Weinstock was later knighted by the Labour Party, so little faith should be placed in their apparent concern for mass redundancy, when out of power.
Benn's qualified support for the UCS workers carries nationalisation proposals with it. Benn wants another inquiry by a "select committee" into UCS, and on the basis of this he wants to complete the nationalisation of UCS (including writing off its debts) with workers' consultation in its development. This would be the Labour Party's "constructive alternative" to the Tories' cold-blooded approach. In other words: nationalise with compensation to the private owners and hold out to them the prospect of a "share of the responsibility" in running UCS on the basis of a Labour report which will inevitably suggest reorganisation but with fewer redundancies than the Tories. Wilson's visit to the STUC was clearly designed to persuade the STUC to call off the protest in return for a pledge that the Labour Party will nationalise under "workers' control". The STUC couldn't call off the protest at this stage but it would bear Wilson's offer in mind. The "constructive alternatives" of the Labour Party should be regarded with the utmost suspicion, especially if the Labour Party "fights" for them in exchange for the workers channelling their protest into more "orthodox forms". This would be an ideal solution for everybody except the workers: the workers give up serious forms of struggle and become spectators of a mock parliamentary tournament over which they can exercise no control and in which the Labour Party would lose. "CONTROL" AND "OWNERSHIP"
A very acute danger inherent in the present situation is the lack of clarity which prevails over the meaning of words like "workers' control", "workers' management", etc. This confusion is compounded by the press looking round for words to express their shock at the takeover. But we should be clear about this. "Workers' control" is a concept that applies to a general situation in which the bosses can't act without being countered by the workers-where the workers have de facto control over hiring and firing, speed of production, etc. The action of the stewards in taking over the gates, in ensuring that no work is moved out of the yards, constitutes a limited form of workers' control in one enterprise (so far only a section of an enterprise). This is not the same as workers' management. Workers' management of an enterprise can mean two things: either the workers cooperating with the owners in their own exploitation (some variant of this would be the "workers' participation" that the Labour Party wishes to see) or else it implies a situation in which the workers have seized the plants, thereby physically expropriating the owners, and produce for workers, not the bourgeoisie. Clearly this implies a revolutionary situation, and this is obviously not what is being aimed at by the present work-in, since it involves direct and continual conflict with the bourgeois The suggestions that the shop stewards committee have. been making to date suggest that they wish to escalate workers' control into "workers' management". This is not