Defending Jobs at Rover - 4
A great demonstration -
but will it be the start of a fight back?
By Alan Thornett
(First published Labour Left Briefing May 2000)
It was a magnificent demonstration. Over 80,000 people demonstrated in Birmingham on Saturday April 1st against BMW's plan to sell-off and break up Rover and close most of Longbridge. It was the biggest trade union demonstration in Britain since the closure of most of the coal industry in 1992. And the tens of thousands of working class families on it - many of them Rover workers - were looking for a militant lead to defend the 50,000 West Midlands jobs at risk, with more at stake in Swindon and Cowley.
Unfortunately they got nothing from the trade union dignitaries on the platform: Bill Morris, John Edmonds, Sir Ken Jackson, Roger Lyons and Tony Woodley - the TGWU's chief negotiator for the car industry. Tony Woodley, told the rally: "There should be no false hopes of what we can and cannot achieve. There will be many thousands of job losses". He failed even to mention the demand for the nationalisation of Rover - which had come out of the meeting of Rover stewards a few days before.
The only speaker who called for direct action - to stop the Mini leaving the factory - got a huge response. He was not a trade union leader but a local historian who had been a prime mover of the demonstration. The others were booed by furious Rover workers who were demanding to know what they were going to do. There is now a real danger that the demonstration will be the end of resistance rather than the beginning of it.
Many on the demonstration were calling for the occupation of Longbridge, the only realistic alternative given the large stock of unsold cars. Occupation would stop the plan being implemented and give others threatened a focus to support. It would provide the basis for an appeal to the BMW unions internationally. After all if BMW can do this to Longbridge, why not Munich? Particularly since BMW is ripe for take over anyway. But it was not just that the trade union leaders have nothing to say. They have pushed social partnership in Rover and they pushed through the concession bargaining deal in Longbridge in October 98, also under the threat of closure. This gave productivity concessions and accepted unsociable shifts in return for guarantees for the future.
But the crisis is wider than Rover. Ford at Dagenham, which is being run down to a single model single shift plant, with the existing 10,000 jobs set to be cut by a third, is under serious threat. Last month, Ford announced a sweeping review of its European operations, aimed at cutting overall capacity. This will not be finalised until mid-April, but Ford of Europe chairman Nick Scheele said that "I can't guarantee the Dagenham plant won't shut". The precarious situation of Dagenham is obvious. And the future of Rolls-Royce in the balance. Goodyear tyres in Wolverhampton went on short time last week and management refused to give any assurances for its future. This follows cutbacks and redundancies at other tyre plants in the Midlands.
BMW is blaming the strength of the pound against the Euro for the situation, which clearly is a problem. But there is another agenda. Most of manufacturing industry - as opposed to finance capital - have been keen to get into the Eurozone as soon as possible. They thought this would happen soon after the next election, following a referendum. But the anti-Europe xenophobia whipped up mostly around asylum seekers, with the full support of the government itself, has increased reactionary opposition to the Euro - to a point where no one knows when Britain is likely to join.
Most manufacturing companies either want to concentrate their production outside of Europe altogether - taking advantage of the highest levels of productivity available globally - or they want to be inside the Euro zone and avoid currency fluctuations within their main market. The European Union has resulted in attacks on jobs and services and to the single currency which will deepen this process of rationalisation still further. But currently much of manufacturing industry within Britain sees itself as in the worst possible position - inside the EU but outside the Euro.
EU membership has consequences for nationalisation as well. It is permissible to nationalise but not for the government to put into these companies the money necessary to regenerate them after the ravages of the private sector. We have to demand, therefore, not only that the Government nationalises Rover but that they reject any restrictions placed on them by the EU. And nationalisation in the car industry should be linked to a plan for useful alternative work developed as a part of a comprehensive public transport policy.