Hugh Scanion's speech in Glasgow last week amounts to the most treacherous stab in the back for all those fighting the cuts. At the same time it appears to put the left' leadership of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers full square behind the policies of the Labour Government.
Speaking after a tour of oil plants in Scotland, Scanlon asserted with regard to the White Paper on the cuts that, 'there can be no doubt that for the Government's general strategy of recognising that Britain's economic ills can only be overcome by a viable and expanding manufacturing industry, there will have to be a reduction in some of the service and supply industries.. Obviously representatives of workers in these industries who will be affected have the duty of trying to protect their own members. I make no comment on that. That is their He concluded: We support the whole of the working class doesn't Government completely and absolu- bother him - the public sector tely in its general strategy. unions must go it alone.
Sitting on the fence is an unSeanlon is now beating the same comfortable position. His Glasgow drum as his right-wing colleague speech means that Scanlon has John Boyd, General Secretary of the decided to join Jack Jones in fightAUEW, who has argued for years ing for the Government's prothat the public sector should be cut capitalist policies against the interback to fuel a recovery in industry. ests of the whole trade union He fails to mention that the money movemenu "saved' by the cuts is not for the most part going into investment in industry, but will be devoted to meeting the rocketing interest on dominated Broad Left grouping in the national debt. the AUEW must immediately dissociate themselves from Scanlon's Disunity is the second theme of speech by condemning it at all what Scanlon had to say. The public levels of the union. All the major sector unions, according to him, are leaders of the TUC have now put morally obliged to oppose the cuts themselves 100 per cent behind because it is their members' interests the Government's Chequers policy that are directly at stake The fact "profit first, social need last'. The that decent schools, housing, hospitals and transport and the maintenence of full employment are in the the Murrays, Joneses, and Scanions interests of his membership and the of this world to account! HUGH SCANLON