T&G Section
July 2007
UNITY!
Communist Party Conference Special
A tale of two conferences ... The BDC can do some good work this week, picking up where Amicus left off a fortnight ago. The Amicus conference was very positive, reflecting the rebirth of grass-roots democracy in that union after the petty tyranny of the Jackson years. Delegates passed left and progressive motions on corporate manslaughter, Royal Mail privatisation, the right to strike and repealing the anti-union laws, the water industry, pensions, the EU Services Directive, Remploy, council housing, rights for agency and temporary workers, migrant workers and asylum seekers, action to save manufacturing, the NHS and lesbian and gay rights. International solidarity shone out from the debates on Cuba, Venezuela and Palestine, with guest speakers including South African transport workers leader Randall Howard. Our own Tony Woodley pulled no punches in his attack on New Labour's right-wing and proimperialist policies, including the Iraq disaster. One weakness, however, was on the issue of replacing Trident. A motion opposing a new generation of weapons of mass destruction for Britain was defeated in favour of a statement from the Amicus executive. This strongly put the case against Trident and any replacement – but reserved the right to support them unless or until alternative jobs were found. In reality, though, the money saved by scrapping British nuclear weapons would re-employ every redundant armaments worker a thousand times over. Our BDC can carry the progressive and left agenda further, in the interests of our members and all working people and their families. On manufacturing and the economy, we have motions which
Cont. on p2
T
he decision by Ford to call in banks and investment giants to investigate the prospects for selling Jaguar and Land Rover will have dire consequences for the 19,000 direct and many more indirect workers producing these top cars. This comes only three months after selling Aston Martin. The trade unions were not even consulted. The danger of a sale to private equity asset-strippers and pension-fund raiders are obvious. Naturally, unions are angry and are talking about exerting pressure to find good buyers etc. But now is the time for Unite, with the majority of members in
the Midlands plants, to consider the lessons of British Leyland. Then, promises by Japanese companies and others came to nothing, and after a long drawn out period many BL workers are still on the dole or filling in with temporary jobs. Should we not go down a different road this time? Put pressure on the government to bid for these enterprises - both of which are viable - to take them over and guarantee that work will continue. The question will be asked: where would the money come from? For a start, it is better than paying out years of unemployment and other
social benefits. But the government can find the money for industry. British Nuclear Fuels sold off its US plant for £3 billion, and British Energy received a British government loan of £650 million to prepare the nuclear power industry for full privatisation. Both sections of Unite backed Gordon Brown to take over from Blair. It was claimed that this would ensure he would talk to us on friendly terms. The time to talk has already arrived. Our union should tell him we want financial assistance to stop the rot in manufacturing. There is no other way.