British Aerospace management. They follow workers at the Patricroft munitions factory near Manchester, and the armaments plant at Bishopston near Glasgow, who walked out on strike when BAe announced 2,000 redundancies to be introduced across two plants over the next two years.
There are now reports that this is just the start, and that BAe plans to close ten plants across the group with a land value of over £l billion and a loss of 30,000 jobs in what has been described as an 'orgy of asset stripping'. BAe has also announced the closure of two thirds of the Austin Rover complex in Cowley with a loss of over 6,000 jobs
BAe acquired the ordinance factories in April last year for just £190m, and this year bought up the Austin Rover Group for a mere £150m with £550m of debts written off. The Royal Ordnance purchase involved 16 sites with 7,000 acres of MOD land - valued as current use' for the purposes of the sale. Now it
emerges that once the plants are closed and the land released onto the specula-
tive market it will be worth multi-millions more.
Page 8
UPDAT Wanted: colleges already supporting the action. Socialist Organiser and their pressure group Socialist Students in NOLS (SSiN), proved by their poor turnout once again their inability to be anything more than an influential pressure group
The largest contingent on the demonstration was composed of students from Coventry Poly, where over 1000 students living in poly accomodation are currently on rent strike.
First year students arriving at the poly were forced to sign contracts and pay money for rooms that they had never seen before. Some students are paying as much as £36.50 per week for breakfast and tea (both inedible and a ten minute walk away!) and a very damp room. This can be compared to the government's estimate of BAe: the asset strippers
These acquisitions make BAe the biggest property company in the country. The Labour front bench has demanded a parliamentary inquiry into BAe asset-stripping as parliament resumes after the summer recess. They say that there is evidence that Royal Ordnance factories were undervalued by millions of pounds when they were privatised last year. The strikes demonstrate the importance of taking immediate action, since they have produced more results in a week than had been achieved at Austin Rover in the months since their closure announcement in August, and rightwing convenors have repeatedly blocked any action - even a clear rejection of the closures. As a result, the issue dropped out of the news and has rarely been mentioned by trade union or Labour leaders at national level. Shop stewards at Ordnance factories have pledged a nation-wide boycott of any work moved into their plants from the sites to be closed. They have established a campaign to defend the plants and are to lobby parliament on the issue this week: There is now a clear need for a joint campaign and joint action by workers in all the threatened plants right across the BAe asset-stripping empire.
E £14. 60 for rent contained in the grant.
Rooms had not been cleaned over the summer, there are asbestos doors, wiring is 30 years out of date; and launderettes have machines which last functioned over four years ago. People with children, including single parents, are in halls that are five miles from the Poly and therefore being isolated from student life.
At the same time the Poly has improved the customer side of the refectory, so that it now looks nice for conference lunches but the food for students remains tragically poor and the standards in the kitchen appallingly low.
The conference called by the left caucus at Manchester Polytechnic on November 26th gives an opportunity to build on PETER WRIGHT PETER WR i Former Assistant Direc Alan Thornett
the sort of anger developing in Coventry and else- where and to begin to construct an alternative leadership in the NUS. It is necessary to build a left that answers the day-to-day questions of grants and education cuts but which also fully supports the right of self-organisation for women, black people and lesbians and gay men and which opposes im- perialism in Ireland and Palestine. The Manchester conference must be the start of such a new and necessary challenge to the Kin- * Conference * 'For a New Left in NOLS and the NUS November 26th Manchester Poly Details: Trevor 061 231 5738 CATCHER SPYC Senior nompane Officer SPVC-- CATCHER The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer Spycatcher: Tory suppression overturned MI5 exposed SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 10 November 1988
Labour Party