Personna had a prime target in their massive redundancy programme - the militant women workers, who torn une md orty or te worktorce dna nde won a battle for equal pay earlier this year. The creat maiority or reoundancies nit the <-u om shift. Vice-Convenor Joan Brown explained why this was no coincidence:
"Three years ago, we started on the road for equal pay. We got one third in the first year, then Two miras in te second vear and mat reany num ped women's wages up. We had good wages, and once equal pay came in, it really made it an expensive shift for them to have, so it was the first shift they tried to get rid of.
The women of Personna are not only well organised, but understand from their own experience the need to fight all forms of restrictions on women's rights. A performance by the West London Theatre Workshop of their play in support of the National Abortion Campaign was enthusiastically watched by over forty Personna workers - the majority of them women - and was the subject of lively discussion in the canteen afterwards.
Most of the women wouldagree fully with shop steward Ruby Duncan, who said: 'Of course it's the right of any sensible person to choose to have an abortion. Ruby also knocked on the head the myth that 'women should be the first to go, they only work for pin money':
"There's quite a number of women in here who are on their own - the mainstays of their own homes. It makes them more militant, there being such a big percentage here. They need the work they're housholders on their own. They don't have anvone at meir back. mev ve not cor nusoanas They're not working for luxuries, they're working to live, they have to work.' Before being scuttled, the managers had been working out the 'options' open to them. Scrawled sheets headed 'Musts and Wants' (No. 1:
Be acceptable to AUEW and TASS; No. 2: Satisfy management objectives - save 1,600 man hours; etc) and 'Options' (*Work-sharing' with a cross against it; Close plant' ticked; etc.) made clear the management's real plans.
One rejected option prophetically concluded: Management would not be allowed to manage'. Too right! The Personna workers are saying that their jobs come first - and to hell with capitalism's problems. In doing so they are showing the way to the whole of the working class in the fight for the right to work.
through the shop stewards' committee, which "employed' those workers declared redundant. The monies to be paid as wages were raised by mass collections throughout the labour movement at home and abroad. Such was the response that over £500,000 was contributed to work-in funds. On 1 September the liquidators declared the first 160 workers redundant. However, most of them followed the decision of the mass meeting by refusing to accept the redundancy notices and reporting for work as normal the next day.
There was, however, an overlap in interest here between the workers and the liquidator, since the shop stewards committee in employing (at no expense to either the liquidator or the UCS) their redundant colleagues were ensuring the speediest possible completion of the ships under construction. In this sense, the more successful the work-in the faster the work force would be declared redundant!
Following a six month campaign in which the leaders of the work-in became among the best known and most popular of television personalities, formal endorsement of the workin was even gained from Harold Wilson when he visited the yards to declare: 'On behalf of the British labour movement I am here to assert the right of the shipbuilding workers of Upper Clyde - the right to work:' RETREAT In February 1972 the Tory Government was sent reeling by the miners' strike and classwide solidarity actions which were threatening to escalate out of the control of the reformist trade union leaders. The continued existence of the UCS work-in, however, was still a focus and example, Thus in February 1972 the Government announced a £35 million grant towards the reconstruction of three of the four yards, which would hecome operational on 1 July. Under pressure trom Dan McGarvey, the shop stewards committee accepted the splitting up of the yards. They thus retreated from the central demand of the work-in that all jobs be guaranteed.
On 10 October 1972 Marathon ManufacturWORK NOT ARWIN -FOUR JOBS JEL Balfour Darwin convenor Derek Simpson addressing a mass picket on 24 October in support of the occupation SEE EDGAR ALLEN SHEFF MANCHESTE