Socialist Party Save Our Shipyard bulletin

August 2019

Socialist Party Bullitan 1

VICTORY TO THE SHIPYARD WORKERS!

Workers at Harland & Wolff have shown real determination to save jobs and skills by occupying the shipyard and demanding it is brought into public ownership. They have been prepared to take their fight to Boris Johnson, protesting outside Stormont House during his visit. The recent announcement that the company was facing bankruptcy after its owners failed to reach a deal with their creditors created huge concern, not just among the workforce itself but across the wider community. The loss of more jobs and skills would be a serious blow. Belfast has had a shipbuilding industry for over four hundred years, with one of the best deep-water ports in the world.

Shipyard workers have received support and solidarity from workers and trade unionists across the public and private sector in Northern Ireland, as well as from Britain, the South of Ireland and even South Africa (see back).

All working-class people must rally behind them in support. Their fight for to secure jobs and a future is our fight.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions should immediately call a major demonstration in support of the Harland & Wolff workers’

demand, but also in support of civil servants, health workers and leisure centre staff fighting against low pay and attacks on terms and conditions, linking together all these struggles.

No to loss of skills

If a buyer cannot be found, the logic of the capitalist market is that these highly skilled and unionised jobs will be lost. Northern Ireland has been trumpeted all around the world as the best place to invest in the UK because of our low-wage economy. The loss of skilled jobs in the shipyard will be felt by the current workers immediately and for generations to come.

Capitalism has no solution to manufacturing crisis

The shipyard has been in crisis for the last few years, seeing a drop in profitability. Turnover slid from from £67 million in 2015 to £8 million in 2016. The workforce has been continually cut. The shipyard has turned from building ships to repairing them, and also building offshore wind turbines and projects connected to offshore oil and gas drilling.

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The threat to the shipyard is, unfortunately, not the first of its kind in recent years. We have seen the closure of the JTI Gallaghers and Michelin plants, which dealt a devastating blow to working-class communities in Ballymena. Local politicians have been ineffectual in any attempts to preserve jobs.

They base themselves upon a low-wage, neoliberal outlook, looking to court foreign direct investment. As such, they offer no strategy for retaining skilled work here. They accept the logic of the capitalist market and therefore have no solution when confronted with its limitations.

Unite the Union has correctly demanded nationalisation from the outset of this threat.

Nationalisation should not be a sticking plaster to tide things over until a new buyer is found. To safeguard skills and also to develop an economy that is geared towards the needs of the majority, it is necessary for the shipyard to be nationalised and brought under democratic control permanently, not returned to the hands of private companies whose only concern is their profit margins. The bosses are driven by short-term, immediate profitability, they are unable to plan and develop industry in any sustainable way.

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socialistpartyni

August 2019

Socialist Party Bullitan 1

Fight for Green Jobs We need a socialist industrial strategy Boris Johnson has sent his sympathies to Harland & Wolff workers over the threat to the shipyard but has said that ultimately its future rests upon a “commercial decision”. With mealy-mouthed words, he says he wants to develop industry, but he and other capitalist ideologues cannot – or dare not – conceive of an economic model which is driven by anything other than profits for a tiny elite.

That doesn't mean the capitalist class are opposed to nationalisation under any circumstances. When the financial crash hit, the banks were effectively nationalised, at a cost of £500 billion. Even Thatcher nationalised Rolls Royce. But these moves were aimed solely at rescuing the bankers and bosses, funnelling public money into the companies until they could be stabilised and handed back over to the same capitalists who had created the crisis in the first place.

Socialists reject the premise that private ownership and profit must be the basis of our economy. We believe there is a more rational, efficient and sustainable alternative. We want the wealth created by the labour of working people to be used in the interests of society as a whole.

We stand for the nationalisation, not just of struggling companies, but of the major corporations which dominate our economy and all the key sectors which are vital for its functioning. We stand for democratic control over these industries by the workers within them and the wider working class, not top-down control by bureaucrats with no understanding of how they function on the ground.

standard of living for the vast majority.

Skilled workers like those at Harland & Wolff, Bombardier and so on wouldn't be thrown on the scrap heap. Through a socialist industrial strategy, these skills would safeguarded and developed in the interests of society, with the training of new generations of apprentices, giving young people a decent future.

One obvious use to which the skills of workers like those at Harland & Wolff could be directed would be in tackling the imminent threat of climate change, building wind turbines and other projects which could help us rapidly shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and avert catastrophe. This requires an urgent and co-ordinated plan of action and investment which capitalism simply will not deliver. We cannot wait for 'the market' to learn that there are no profits on a dead planet.

The failure of capitalism to deliver prosperity, security and a sustainable future for the vast majority of people on our planet is self-evident. A democratic, socialist economic plan is the rational alternative to the madness of this system. But it will require a profound struggle by the working class to wrest control of our economy and our future from the capitalists who are destroying both.

On this basis, the huge wealth which exists in society – currently hoarded by a parasitic elite – could be used in a planned and democratic way to invest in manufacturing, infrastructure and public services which society needs, creating secure jobs with living wages while improving the

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socialistpartyni

August 2019

Socialist Party Bullitan 1

Harland & Wolff: The hidden history of workers' struggle

R e b u i l d t h e a n t i - s e c t a r i a n l a b o u r t ra d i t i o n The history of Northern Ireland is often present as simply being of two traditions nationalism and unionism - in conflict with each other. Almost everything is painted as belonging to one or the other, including the shipyard. It is also true that most things do have a history tainted by sectarianism. But there is also another history, one which we see in the shipyards, across Belfast and across Northern Ireland - that is the labour tradition, where workingclass people have stood together to fight in their common interests.

One hundred years ago, workers in Harland & Wolff took part in a month-long engineering strike which brought Belfast to a halt. The strike began as result of people in the shipyard organising to fight for a 44hour week and many of the workers were leaders in the strike. The strike itself showed the potential to unite workingclass people across the sectarian divide and their power when they came together.

Fifty years ago, at the start of the Troubles, trade unionists at Harland & Wolff called a mass meeting of the workforce because Catholic workers had not come to work for fear of sectarian attack. At the meeting, senior shop steward Sandy Scott appealed: "If we act as workers, irrespective of our

religion, we can hope for an expansion in work opportunities and a better life". A resolution in opposition to sectarian violence was unanimously passed. The shop stewards then visited the homes of Catholic shipyard workers, successfully appealing to them to return. There are countless untold stories like this that happened during the start of the Troubles and throughout.

Today, the Socialist Party believes it is urgent to rebuild this tradition. That is why we, alongside others, launched Cross-

Community Labour Alternative, which won its first councillor in Enniskillen in the recent election. Common struggle of working people is needed to change our society for the better and the trade union movement, which unites 250,000 workers, has a key role to play in this. It is on this basis we can strive to find solutions to the issues that divide our communities. On the basis of the profit-driven system of capitalism, workers will be pitted against each other and, therefore, it is necessary to struggle for a different society - a socialist society.

Common History, Common Struggle Lessons from the 1960s – When Workers’ Unity & Socialism Challenged Unionism & Nationalism

By Peter Hadden More info: www.socialistpartyni.org info@socialistpartyni.org

“IT WAS the sectarian forces which came out on top after 1969 and it is their version of events which predominates

today. There was nothing inevitable about the rise of sectarianism after 1968. Quite the reverse.” – Peter Hadden

In Common History, Common Struggle Peter Hadden demonstrates that the Troubles were not inevitable. Fifty years of bloodshed and sectarian conflict could have been avoided.

Internationally the sixties was a decade of revolution and struggle for social and economic change. In Northern Ireland the conditions existed for a united movement of Protestant and Catholic working class people to challenge capitalism and sectarianism. A socialist future free from sectarian division and poverty was within reach.

Peter Hadden wrote this book for the new generation of young people who are preparing to challenge today’s Orange and Green sectarian politicians and to struggle for socialism.

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socialistpartyni

socialistpartyni

August 2019

Socialist Party Bullitan 1

Messages of solidarity to Harland & Wolff workers Solidarity and Socialist Party TDs Mick Barry, Ruth Coppinger & Paul Murphy: "We salute the occupation of the shipyard by Harland & Wolff workers. The action you have taken is crucial in order to save the jobs that are under threat. The fact that you have both engaged in such militant action, and raised the demand for nationalisation of the yard to safeguard its future will put real pressure on the British government. It will also serve as an inspiration to other workers who see their jobs threatened. Your unionised and united workforce is a vital reference point for all workers."

The South African Federation of Trade Unions has given its support to Harland & Wolff workers in Belfast, including organising pickets and protests. Members of Socialist Party's sister organisation in South Africa - part of the Committee for a Workers' International - were instrumental in delivering this solidarity:

“The only force that can save these jobs and skills is the working class of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Boris Johnson is nothing but a junior Donald Trump, representing an extreme right-wing agenda and the interests of the rich who also want to privatise the UK’s National Health Service.

"SAFTU is calling on our affiliates in the seaports and harbours to organise lunchtime pickets in solidarity with Harland & Wolff workers and also pickets outside the British embassy."

"Workers of the world, unite!”

Save Our Shipyard: Why we need re-nationalisation

Public Meeting

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Thursday, 8th Aug 7:30pm, Park Avenue Hotel socialistpartyni

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