STEWART MACLENNAN reports on the struggle against redundancies North of the border. workers' fight against redundancies.
Draped along the front of the massive platform of the Rosevale Hall was a huge banner saying 'Nationalise Chrysler'. But the message of the union officials and Labour dignitaries who packed the platform was not the clear demand of the Linwood workers for nationalisation without compensation, but plaintive pleas to Wilson and his cronies for import controls.
ORCHESTRATED Nobody, of course, actually opposed nationalisation; nobody omitted the call from their speech - and nobody had anything to say on how the fight for this demand could be organised. Even the speakers called from the carefully orchestrated floor show repeated the "left' rhetoric of Labour MP Norman Buchan and others for import controls. Such was the nature of the "discusits UK operations unless the Wilson Government bails it out in the next week or so, eight hundred shop stewards from factories throughout the Glasgow area met on 19 November to discuss support for the Chrysler sion' on the floor that twice a fraternal delegate from Coventry rose to complain about its completely artiticial nature.
Nobody even combatted the nonsense spouted by Buchan, who maintained that Chrysler workers *have large numbers of managers on your side. I was watching Gilbert Hunt as he sat beside Ricardo - these people too want a job.' On the contrary, the meeting was 'entertained by the hollow demagogy of figures such as Bill Niven, TASS official and member of the General Council of the Scottish Trades Union Council, who proclaimed that *nationalisation is only the first step to the total transformation of society. 'TRANSFORMER' Another grand 'transformer', this time Don MacQuarrie, chairman of the Scottish Daily News action committee - a leading Scottish Nationalist who joined SD just before it collapsed - suggested SDN workers could combat redundancies by 'dramatic action — a mass petition to Wilson.
inent local Labour 'left' and AUEW summing up time attacking Willie McFaul of UCATT for arguing that the source of the crisis at Chrysler wasn't a sinister Detriot conspiracy recession and crisis of profitability Dangerous stuff this, said Ferry: if it was true, the fight for import controls would be a meaningless diversion!
With time running short for Chrysler workers, it is only by complete rejection of all collaboration with bosses and nationalists - and nationalist arguments, British - that jobs will be saved. Occupation of all Chrysler plants can be the springboard from which compensation enforced by workers meeting failed to take anything as "subversive' as even a floor speaker redundancies at the Personna razor blade factory in Glasgow.
******** BISHOPTON Hundreds of Chryster workers headed 2,000-strong demo for jobs in Glasgow last Saturday To cap it off Alex Ferry, a promGlasgow Secretary spent most of his but part of the world-wide economic Scottish or demand nationalisation without 1824 ACTION Fight for Jobs 5 * FOR PEACE S.O.G.A.TN
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in With top Chrysler officials in Detroit predicting a lightning shutdown of
Red Weekly 27 November 1975 T.G.W.U