BECAUSE BECAUSE vard BECAUSE 20 per cent.
BECAUSE BECAUSE British troops are only in Ireland to protect British imperialist in terests. This is the source of all Ireland's problems. The Six County statelet was artificially established to protect these interests. in pursuit of these interests, British troops have for the past six years terorised and brutalised the nationalist minority in the Six Counties. Hundreds have been interned in concentration camps, thousands put behind bars, and still others shot down. peace that the troops can bring to Ireland is the peace of the gravethe troops prop up a sectarian system which keeps Catholic workers as secona class citızens. Protestant workers are won to the sectarian system by caste privileges granted through Loyalist control of the sectarian statelet in jobs, houses and welfare benefits. employment amongst Catholics in Derry and parts of Belfast is over the propping up of the artificial Six County statelet by the troops only serves to reinforce the idea that Loyalist Protestant workers can best resolve their problems at the expense of the Catholic workers. The troops give confidence to the oyalist workers that the most backward demands of the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) for the restoration of all their privileges can be won. The presence of the troops perpetuates the divisions of the Irish working class. in pursuit of their reactionary attempts to subdue the Catholic working class, the British army gives cover to the Loyalist terror gangs who openly boast of murdering Catholics. The British army does its best to smash up the attempts by the Catholics to defend them TROOPS OUT NO BECAUSE The only BECAUSE The rate of unBECAUSE selves, leaving Catholic workers prey to sectarian attacks. workers based on the experience gained in Ireland. the ground for future defets.
of the working class in this contry. standards in this country are inextricsl.ly intertwined. Ireland is a laboratory for the development of repressive techniques (counter-insurgency methods, torture, 'rit' control, rubber bullets, gas, joint army-police actions). These techniques are being developed for use against the British working class itself. Joint army-police manoeuvres at Heathrow, the invasion of small towns by the army practising , and the intervention ot troops in the Glasgow dustcar drivers' strike are small indications of what is in store for British the toleration of this situation in the Six Counties by British workers makes them vulnerable to the attacks of the ruling class in this country. The Prevention of Terorism Action introduced by Jenkins last year shows how police state laws can be introduced in this coun ury tor later use against britisn workers. As ine strenoin or tne tradı unions prevents them from defeating the working class at the level of the economic struggle, the capitalist class will turn more and more to using issues like Ireland to split the labour movement and prepare a victory for the army will be a massive boost for the worst enemies The success of the struggle of the nationalist population so far in the Six Counties has divided the ruling class and prevented them from single-mindedly concentrating their attention on defeting British workers. The defeat for the crunng class which the removal or britisn troops trom ireland woulc Signity wouid be d pig boost tor workers struggies in this country The nationalist struggle in Ireland and the struggle to defend living
2 Steel dustry last week.
closure of old and inefficient plants!
When the bosses demand total surrender, they usually expect to finish up with a partial surrender. And this is what the leadership of the steel workers is prepared to egotiate right now. The BSC has ween forced, as a result of 'unofficial" strikes and occupations of steel plants in Corby, Port Talbot and elsewhere, to back-off on the weekly wage agreement - if the leadership of the Iron & Steel Trades Confederation will give away everything else. The question which steel workers must consider carefully is: what are the real plans of the British Steel Corporation? Temporary' The ISTC leadership likes to create the impression that the problem with BSC is merely a cash crisis and high imports of foreign steel. Of course, if you're trying to tell your membership that the 'temporary' closure of old steel plants is no cause for alarm, you've got to create some pretty big illusions!
A cash crisis does exist in BSC, and British steel is being undercut by imports. But these are only symptoms, not the disease. The crisis in the steel industry is a structural one. Notice of this was first given in 1967 with the Benson Report, and warnings since then have included one by the IMG in its 1972 pamphlet, Steel, The Coming Redundancies and How to Fight Them.
The IMG pamphlet was based on • BSC internal document which fell into the hands of rank and file steel workers. The conclusion which emenged from this was that: 'Of the 30 or so major steelmaking plants in England and Scotland, the British Steel Corporation intends to concentrate production on five."
Integrated The big five - Scunthorpe, Lackenby/Redcar (Teesside), Ravenscraig (Glasgow), Port Talbot (Swansea) and Llanwern (Newport) are fully integrated steelmaking and steel-rolling plants, built adjacent to modern iron-ore ports, and using the modern oxygen' rather than the outdated coal-burning 'open hearth' methods of producing steel from ME WOL in Steel It isn't often that the bosses demand that their workers sacrifice everything in one go. But that's what happened in the steel inThe British Steel Corporation demanded that the steel unions give up weekend working, give up their guaranworking), pledge to accept 44,000 redundancies in two years, pledge to end unofficial strikes, and agree to the temporary *These big five will account for some 27 or 28 million tons of common steel by 1977, with the closure of the last big open hearth plants at Corby and Shotton................ By this date it is intended that virtually all other steelmaking plants will cease production.' also calculated that between 1972 and 1977, the closures (e.g. Ebbw Vale, West Hartlepool, Clydeside, Clydebridge, Dalzell, Glengarnock, Shotton and Corby) and associated cutbacks could involve the loss of as many as 80,000 jobs.
Although the timing may change, there is no reason to assume that the strategy has changed. Eleven thousand jobs went last year alone, and now Bob Scholey, BSC chief executive, is insisting on a further 40,000 redundancies in the next two years 'for starters'.
The strategy of concentrating production on the big five was advised by Benson ten years ago, and it was with this in mind that Wilson nationalised the steel industry in 190/. Ine all was to prepare a big productivity offensive - while the average American steel plant produced 210 tons per man year in 1967, and the average Japanese plant 250 tons p.m.y, the average British plant produced only a measly 90 tons p.m.y.
Astonishing
The reason for this astonishing discrepancy had nothing to do with British workers "working less hard" or unofficial strikes. It lay in the fact that the British steel industry failed to adopt the oxygen steel-making methods after the last War.
Instead the private owners clung to the outdated open hearth. To change would have cost them as much as £4,000 million. collapsing profits, only the State could spend this kind of money. So this is the step the BSC was born to take.
When BSC demand a redundancy target based on 'an annual output per man of the Corporation's most modern plants' (Financial Times, 9 January), that is 500 tons per man year; and when they speak of using the current economies only to close down the old plants "temporarily put sections of them 'in mothballs' Port Talbot steel works closed at 2 p.m. last Saturday laying off 9,000 workers. In a series of mass meetings ISTC members overwhelmingly rejected appeals to return to work from the local executive, backed up by area officials and national executive members.
The strike involves 1,200 workers, 500 staff members of the Abbey Mill branch and 700 from Abbey No. 4 branch. They are fighting against BSC S attempts to cut Sunday premium time working and chop the guaranteed work ing week. These two measures would involve big wage cuts for steel workers.
Bill Sirs has now been given two The pamphlet weeks off from negotiations with BSC to regain control of the situation in South Wales and the rest of the country. The two week break follows a statement from Sirs saying, 'BSC have come a considerable way to meeting our position. no such illusions. 'We have withdrawn nothing on the question of redundancies We have simply restated our objectives in different terms.
And with Red Weekly 15 January 1976 cause for alarm. al strength.
Work-sharing Wage earnings.
But BSC chief executive Scholey has Producuon ar a giant using une modern oxygen menor BSC boss Sir Monty Finniston lays down the line..... to union "leader' Bill Sirs and so on, steel workers have every The current offensive by BSC is designed to lay the basis for a massive attack on steel workers. For the same reason, the present struggles must lay the basis for a fight back which will allow steel workers to weather the storm of technical change without loss of earnings, conditions and organisationThe IMG pamphlet argues that there is an effective way of doing this: "This is that when the workload contracts (whether by recession or technical change), the contracted workload should be shared by the same number of men with no loss of pay - resulting of course in a shorter working week. The most effective way to present this idea is the demand for a sliding scale of hours with no loss of pay.
In other words, the work should be shared without any loss of averA fight for this demand would unite all steelworkers, overcome sectional conflicts, and avoid tying up the struggle in secondary wrangles about whether this or that plant closes down Of course, the IMG has put forward this policy in almost every section of industry facing wideThe IMG pamphlet - written unree years ago, is a propr etic warning or plans to clost down dozens of steel plants.
Contains ne contiaential Report' - an internal docu ment of the British Steel Corporation. Available price 23p (inc. p&p) from Red Books, 97 Caledonian Road, Londor spread lay-offs. In steel, however, workers have already partly established the basic principle of work-sharing without loss of pay. This is embodied in the guaranteed working week agreement precisely the agreement that the BSC wants to scrap in order to make run-downs of plants easier.
No redundancies Although this agreement only covers half the workers, and gives only 80 percent protection to earnings, nonetheless it is a step towards the idea that when produc tion falls the workers should not suffer, because it is not they who are to blame for the crisis in the steel industry. This agreement must be defended tooth and nail against attacks by BSC. But instead of defending it at the price of tying the workers' hands behind their backs, it must be combined with a fight to extend this agreement into a means of protecting all steel work ers against redundancy Such a fight would not only be an alternative to redundancies in steel, it would be an example to all other workers who are faced with similar problems right across the grim landscape of the decaying and crumbling shells of British industry STEEL:
The Coming Redundancies and How to Fight Them
Red Weekly 15 January 1976 Steel/In Focus 3
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teed weekly wage agreement (which gives half of the 220,000 steel workers 80 per cent of earnings when there is short-time