Introduction The Red Mole is pleased to publish the following articles on the present situation on Clydeside. These have been written by the members of the Glasgow branch of the International Marxist Group, British section of the Fourth International.
The third article is an interview with a representative of the Shop Stewards Committee at the Govan yard of UCS. We publish it because it reflects the level of consciousness of the Clydeside working class and their full intention to occupy the yards as soon as the first redundancies are announced. However, it also reflects a lack of understanding of the technical and political implications of the proposed occupation which is lamentably current, both among the sector of the working class directly engaged in the struggle and among the left in general.
It is vital that the Clydeside working class realises that British capitalism has no future whatsoever for the Clydeside shipbuilding industry. This is argued very cogently below.
It is false to assert that the British economy needs the British shipbuilding industry. The Chamber of Shipping have announced that British shipping lines are in no way dependent on an indigenous shipbuilding industry. The Tory government have deliberately closed the yards. It should be remembered that the £6 million needed to keep UCS running could have been obtained easily if the Tories had given instructions to the banks to make a loan. As it stands now, the Tories are paying up to £5 million to keep the yards turning over while the liquidator makes the plans for closure.
That is, the Tories are no longer following the path that the Labour Party took of investing and hoping- they are paying £5 million to close it. British capitalism no longer has the gift of time that it had during the years when Labour hap pened to be in power. It has to rationalise very rapidly and shed whole sectors of its industry which act as a drag on investment in the remaining profitable sectors.
As our Scottish comrades argue below, the closure of UCS will mean a blow for the whole economy of the West of Scotland and for the whole Scottish working class. The willingness of the Clydeside workers to occupy the yards springs directly from the fact that the unions have no room left for defensive demands (work-sharing, productivity concessions, etc.), and from the incredibly high rate of unemployment already prevailing on Clydeside (10%). It demonstrates most dramatically that the spirit of "Red Clydeside " is still very much alive. But more than thut, the whole working class in the West of Scotland recognises that shipe willing has been, and still it, the lynchpin in the economy of the repion ancies that will follone in ind *g the yardr with materials has been estimated at around 20,000, Moreover, the rate of rationa insation and redundancy that is proceeding apace in light engineering, textiles and electronics, means that none of this redundancy can be absorbed in the other industries of West Scotland. The effect of massive unemployment on the wages and conditions of workers still retaining jobs needs no stressing. Clearly, the closure of a section of Rolls Royce is in no way comparable to a closure of UCS. With the future of UCS goes the whole future of the economy of West Scotland and the whole future of the Scottish working class.
As far as can be judged, an occupation seems almost certain. But what does an occupation involve? An occupation of the yards is, de facto, workers' control. To keep the yards running, moreover, necessitates the workers in the surrounding supply industries forcing their bosses to continue supplying materials to the workers in the yards. This raises directly the question of workers' control in these surrounding industries. Furthermore it requires that the workers in electricity and gas supply continue to supply the yards with power in direct defiance of Government orders to cut it off. It also necessitates the river workers refusing to tow unfinished ships away (Glasgow tugmen have already agreed to this. Again, because no wages would be paid for work done in occupation, enormous financial support has to be prepared all over the country.
If such preparation is made, a situation of de facto workers control emerges. The continued working of the yards under workers' control would transform the demand for keeping the yards open into a demand for nationalisation under workers control. The Tories would not at first confront this demand. They would probably attempt two lines of negotiation. Firstly they would try to negotiate high redundancy payments. If the union leaders refused to accept this-and the pressure of the rank and file would force them to refuse-then the Tories would announce that they are "reconsidering" the economic implications of keeping one or two of the yards open. Since this would still involve redundancy, and since the unions have already over the past two years given every possible concession (redundancy, productivity measures, etc.) this line of approach is unlikely to disarm the workers. These two lines of approach would buy the Tories time. The longer they can create the impression that they are willing to "reconsider", the more chance they have of seeing the occupation cave in. Sooner or later, however, they would be forced to confront the demand for nationalisation under workers' control.
In the meantime, Wedgwood-Benn, in order to increase his own power base inside the Parliamentary Labour Party, would probably press for an emergency debate on his Nationalisation Bill. However, it should be pointed out that 1) contrary to what our interviewee imagines, the Parliamentary Labour Party is not only not under the control of even 1 = m Bevan stated that the notion that Annual Conference could control the PLP was not only ridiculous but unconstitutional. 2) Even should the force of occupation push the PLP to agree to Wedgwood-Benn's lead and then in turn try to force an emergency debate in the Commons, the PLP would itself be split over the question. The Labour Party have always regarded nationalisation only as a measure to service British capitalism and never as a solution to unemployment.
Consequently a section of the PLP would either sabotage the debate or vote with the Tories. 3) Even assuming they agreed to fight a nationalisation campaign, Wedgwood Benn and the existing leadership of the PLP would never accept workers' control. 4) The Tories have a majority even if the PLP was united.
Meanwhile, workers' control on the Clydeside would be daily threatening to ignite the British working class. Already, the idea of occupations has caught its imagination. The steel workers of Sheffield are threatening occupation if a BSC hiving off operation goes ahead.
Under these circumstances, the Tories might take the initiative and nationalise UCS. But they cannot permit workers' control Firstly, continued workers' control would perpetuate a "detonator" effect on the English working class. The pressure of rising prices, the massive redundancies being announced and fought week after week, mean that the British working class is in constant struggle. The rising unemployment is not having the expected effect of cooling the wage militancy of the workers, perhaps, ironically, because the traditional sectionalism of the British working class insulates one section against the defeats of another. They cannot allow workers" control politically. Neither can they afford workers' control of UCS economically. British capital has as a priority the shedding of British shipbuilding. In order to make the Scottish yards profitable to British capitalists, millions of pounds would be required. If, under nationalisation, the government footed the bill, it would be seriously weakening its own ability to financially support other industries in which the capitalist class see a future, only in order to saddle itself with a financial embarrassment for many years to come. Neither Tory nor Labour will do this. The Tories would nationalise only in order to run it down over a longer period of time. And they would only nationalise in return for de-occupation, ie. the surrender of the very workers' control which alone could ensure that a newly nationalised shipbuilding industry survived for more than a few months.
What emerges from this discussion of probabilities is that even if the Tories nationalise UCS, it will not be under workers' control. Without that (even with a measure of itintegration of trade union bureaucracies into the management, etc.) the Scottish working class will find itself in exactly the same position in a few months time, if not immediately. And as we said earlier, the future of UCS is the future of the Scottish working class.
If the workers are to keep the yards open and avoid this catastrophic defeat, then they must keep control. The dangers of being disarmed and sold out by the existing leaderships is very great (their performance up to the present time is discussed below). The dangers of Tory nationalisation when the working class has already advanced to a situation of de facto workers' control (and the technical demands of occupation would quickly lead to the creation of elementary organs of dual power), across key industries throughout a region, are even greater.
If the working class are not defeated by surrendering their control for "nationalisation" or by the union bureaucrats through defensive demands, then clearly the Tories will be forced to send in the Army, firstly to intimidate the workers, then to clear the yards by force.
Thus the implication of the present situation is that only by pursuing the question of power in Scotland can the Scottish working class avoid catastrophic defeat. It is make or break. At the same time, this battle over the future of the lynchpin in the economy of Scotland raises the national question. The British bourgeoisie have no future for Scotland. At the same time they can't tolerate the loss of it. Its future must lie in the hands of the working class.
It is clear that preparations for the occupation cannot be purely technical. They demand education. They will involve the creation of an embryonic workers' militia, a high degree of political leadership which understands the revolutionary logic of the situation. John Maclean's view that Scotland was the weak link in British capitalism may be proved to still hold true. It is clear that the Communist Party with its present preoccupation with lobbies and chauvinistic objections to the Common Market, does not understand the logic of the situation; that its claim to be a Leninist party is grotesque. It holds a powerful position of leadership and will very probably reach some kind of compromise with the British bourgeoisie.
It is not the job of revolutionaries however to gear their horizons to what will probably be, given the existing leader ship, but to point out what the particular combination of objective and subjective factors makes possible and
The massive and militant demonstration in Glasgow on Wednesday 23rd June reflected the total hatred - felt amongst the organised working class of the West of Scotland for the Tory government. At least 30,000 trade unionists took part. The main slogans heard throughout the length of the march were "Heath Out" and "Tories Out" (with many more DEAD overall rate for Britain (3.6%) and more than for any other region with the exception of Northern Ireland. They are likely to be further inflated by the school leavers decanted onto the labour market at the end of June.
However even these disastrous overall figures do not reflect the gravity of the situation in the central industrial What of course makes the whole situation even more acute for the British capitalist class is the chronic backwardness of industry in a country which at one time headed the world league in industrial production and technique but has now fallen way behind its leading competitors. This situation which for a whole period was covered up by the profits from Britain's imperial investments has now come to a