Defending Jobs at Rover - 1
If I has to choose a badge of honour from the past to wear on my lapel today it would be the claim by British Leyland chief executive Lord Stokes in 1973 that he was saddled with "antiquated plants which we cannot close for political reasons". The "political reasons" he was referring to were the confrontations with the shop stewards movement and a militant work force which would result. No doubt Longbridge and Cowley were uppermost in his mind at the time.
The shop steward's movement, certainly in Cowley, did not accept his reference to "antiquated plants". That was management spin. They did lack investment in many areas but it was not difficult to see who was responsible for that. The fact was that the trade union movement, particularly at shop floor level, was seen by both management and government as too strong to take on at that time. And Stokes's fears came from practical experience. The decision of BL management to sell off its Thorneycroft transmissions plant in Basingstoke to the Eaton Axle Corporation (seen as a move to eliminate a competitor) a year earlier, in 1972, had been met with a powerful occupation of the plant (which continued for 11 weeks) and an appeal to the BL shop stewards combine committee for support. The combine called a mass picket of the Basingstoke factory and appealed for solidarity action from the BL plants. I chaired a mass meeting of 5,000 workers in Cowley which voted for a 24 hour strike in support of the Thorneycroft occupation.
The Thorneycroft occupation failed to keep the plant open, but it helped to defend countless jobs in the process. It was another seven years before any further closure was attempted in BL. That was the Speke assembly plant in Liverpool which came after the shop stewards movement had been softened up by three years of worker participation and then faced with the Michael Edwardes onslaught - massively backed and bank-rolled by a Labour government under Jim Callaghan and the Tories under Margaret Thatcher.
I raise these snippets of history to give some context to the recent roller coaster events in Rover during March and April 2000 as BMW set out to get rid of Longbridge to anyone who would take it. Since then we have seen the sickening spectacle of the unions backing one venture capitalist asset stripper (Alchemy) against another venture capitalist asset stripper (Phoenix). It is a frightening indicator of the problems of the trade union movement today. The unions leaders have become so enmeshed in the ideas of social partnership and so immune to the idea of opposing the employers when it comes to the defence of jobs that hey end up campaigning in favour of asset strippers. It is social partnership gone mad. But it does not have to be that way.
But this was not the reaction of the shop stewards and the work force immediately after the emergence of the BMW-Alchemy deal. The meeting of all Rover shop stewards, which took place at Gaydon, called for opposition to the deal, the nationalisation of Rover, and for its retention as a volume car producer. And after the stewards meeting came the magnificent mass demonstration in Birmingham of over 80,000 people - the vast majority from the West Midlands. But the assembled trade union leaders on the platform at the rally afterwards had nothing to say once the rhetoric was over. And the shop stewards committee's call for nationalisation was totally absent. We are told that Tony Woodley, the TGWU car industry officer, who had supported the demand for nationalisation at the stewards meeting had been told by Bill Morris that he would be sacked if he mentioned it at the demonstration since it would embarrass the Labour Government. It is hard not to be sceptical about this since it is clear enough now that the platform at the rally was not considering any kind of trade union action or even asking anything of the government. What they were about was promoting the Phoenix deal which was that time being put together by John Towers - and Tony Woodley was right in the middle of it. In fact he was working behind the scenes to get the Phoenix deal together.
Yet the thousands of Longbridge workers and others at the mass were clearly looking for a far more radical solution than being placed in the tender hands of another venture capitalist. The reactions were clear enough when any mention of militant action was made. Ironically none of these came from the trade union leaders but from Karl Chinn - a local historian who had been an initiator of the demonstration along with the Birmingham Evening Mail. Although he went along with a lot of the nationalism which emerged at the rally he was the only one to propose any form of direct action in defence of the plant. He got the biggest response of the day when he called for the picketing of the plant to stop the Mini production line being moved out and again when he called for the next demonstration to be in London to put pressure on the government.
In other words if there had been a clear call at that rally from the trade union leaders for direct action including the occupation of the plant it would have got massive support. And it is not so surprising that that is was the case. Longbridge has a militant history and a big section of the existing work force were a part of that history. Serious defeats inflicted on the trade unions under the Tories, the introduction of the anti-union laws and the collapse of the unions into social partnership have taken a toll. But the main block on a militant response at that rally was the assembled trade union leaders who were completely opposed to a militant action and already locked into a venture capitalist solution.
Which deal, Alchemy or Phoenix, is the least worst option is a complicated business. But there is one thing which has become an over riding political factor - the time scale involved. The Phoenix deal may well create less redundancies in the short term but even more in the long term. And that relates to the timing of the next general election. There was massive political pressure on BMW to accept the Phoenix deal simply because it would get the government beyond the next election before the bulk of redundancies would take place. Alchemy, on the other hand, would be sacking large numbers of people prior to and at the time of the next election. For the government the issue was not jobs but votes.
But the current crisis in the car industry goes a long way beyond BMW or Rover. Ford is closing its assembly plant in Dagenham - a name like Cowley synonymous with car assembly for most of the 20th century. Nissan is discussing the future of its plant in Sunderland. The car component and the wider manufacturing industry is effected as well. And the collapse at Rover into the Phoenix deal will not encourage resistance in any of these places not least at Fords.
All this takes place in a certain political framework. New Labour is tied to the market and are not prepared to intervene into industry unless they are forced to. In any case any intervention is strictly limited by EU rules which would have to be defied. The employers are arguing that the strength of the pound against the Euro is responsible. Others want to be inside the Euro zone and are prepared to relocate into it if there is no tangible time scale for Britain's membership of it. At the same time there is a rationalisation of production and services across Europe as a part of the process of European integration.
The response of the unions to this situation has been predictable. Most, including unfortunately many on the left, are calling for the devaluation of the pound, others (including Ken Livingstone) are calling for an early move by Britain to join the Euro zone. We reject both of these approaches.