WEEKLY 13 NOVEMBER 1975 No. 125 Chrysler workers voting to defend their jobs at a mass meeting in Coventry last Friday Chrysler UK is collapsing. The American multinational. which suffered world-wide losses of £125 million last year is demanding an equivalent ransom from the Labour Government to stay in Britain.
Even Harold Wilson is claiming that Chrysler president John Ricardo is 'pointing a gun at my head'. But it is over 25,000 Chrysler workers and 70,000 more in component firms who are standing in the line of fire. Rather than giving Chrysler management their marching orders, and taking over their assets lock, stock and barrel without a penny compensation, the Labour Government is desperately seeking a deal with the Chrysler bosses which will keep the firm in Britain — at the cost of mass redundancies.
This is just what is happening in British Leyland, where the Government is pumping in £1,000 million not to defend jobs but to create a 'viable' capitalist firm. Not content with 20,000 redundancies last year, Leyland's car-making division alone now intends cutting its workforce by another 30,000.
The debate between Wilson and Ricardo is not about how to save jobs, but about the best way to carry through mass redundancies without provoking a wave of factory occupations. Chrysler, which only bought out Rootes in the mid 1960s in order to gain a sales network in Britain, is not so concerned about this. But the Wilson/Healey clique view things differently. Chrysler may have one gun at their head, but the gun they are really terrified of PRICE 10p is that of Chrysler workers launching a massive fight for the right to work.
Already stewards representing the 6,000 workers at the Chrysler Linwood factory in Scotland have come out for nationalisation without compensation of the firm and for any redundancies to be met by occupation. A campaign for nationalisation without compensation based on plans drawn up by elected workers' committees opening Chrysler's books would sweep through the working class like wildfire, shattering the attempts of the Wilson Government to solve the economic crisis at the workers' expense through mass unemployment.
WORKERS' PLAN
It would prepare the way for a workers' plan for vehicle production in Britain. The bosses and the Wilson Government want to produce a smaller, more competitive car industry in Britain - intensifying the capitalist competition which already exists simply among British producers. At the same time public transport is falling apart for lack of spares and new vehicles. Car factories need to be re-equipped and re-tooled to meet these demands, rather than remaining engaged in wasteful competition with each other producing more new car models.
The threat to the jobs of 25,000 Chrysler workers is the most serious yet in the present wave of redundancies Sponsors include Labour MPs Bob Edwards, Jo Richardson, Syd Bidwell, Judith Hart, Audrey Wise and Joan Maynard; Alan Sapper (ACT); and London Student Organisatior Chrysler workers will not simply be fighting for their own jobs; they will be engaged in a major struggle for the right to work for all the working class. If the Government wins at Chrysler, the whole struggle for jobs will be put back. Every worker has a direct interest in supporting the Chrysler fightback.
That is why the announcement at last Friday's mass meeting at the Stoke, Coventry plant by AUEW senior steward Duncan Simpson, that the Chrysler combine com mittee will 'wholeheartedly support' the 26 November demonstration against unemployment. is to be welcomed. He urged every single Chrysler worker to attend and fight for the right to work.
Support for the lobby is still flooding in. The largest Birmingham East AUEW shop stewards quarterly in years voted by 407 to 3 to support the lobby. A hundred and fifty stewards at an emergency meeting called at two days notice by the No. 20 Division of the Confederation of Ship. building and Engineering Unions was unanimous in its sup port and will be organising a train from Birmingham. The AUEW-TASS Division No. 15 is circulating all members and factories in the Birmingham area.
Chrysler workers have now joined - with vastly more powerful forces - those occupying Balfour Darwin in Sheffield and the Personna razór blade factory in Glasgow in the front line of the fight for jobs. Solidarity with these struggles must now become the key-note of the 26 Novem ber demonstration.
social service cuts red weekly 13 november 1975
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THE SPANISH DEMONSTRATION - Saturday, 15th