29.03.2000

Demonstrate, occupy, nationalise

The clarion call by the AEEU and the TGWU for a mass demonstration on April 1 in Birmingham must be answered by the entire working class movement.

BMW's decision to offload Rover to the venture capitalists Alchemy Partners is going to be a disaster. Longbridge is expected to see the 8,500-strong workforce slashed by three-quarters. Other Rover plants will also be hard hit. Cowley is to lose 500 jobs, Swindon 1,500 and the Gaydon research centre 500. The eventual total will be far greater. The whole raw materials and components sector is bracing itself for a savage wave of closures and lay-offs. Economists calculate that 50,000 jobs are in danger.

We should not only be protesting against BMW and the Alchemy asset strippers. Anger must be focused squarely on the government and the UK state. The Rover crisis highlights New Labour's obscene worship of the market and the inhuman values of capital. As reported in The Guardian, for Tony Blair, BMW's plan to dismember Rover and hand the bulk of it to Alchemy is purely "a commercial matter" (March 25). His government is committed not to intervene.

Alchemy makes no pretence that it is attempting to rescue Rover as a high-volume producer. Jon Moulton, Alchemy boss, is to lay out no more than £50 million before, after three or four years, moving on with what he hopes will be a fat profit. To that end Land Rover is to be sold and Rover reduced to a niche maker of MG and other sports cars. Instead of turning out 180,000 cars, annual production is expected to be no more than 40,000. Marketing is to be confined to Britain and Europe. Besides that, tracts of Longbridge land are to be swiftly decommissioned and made ready for housing and light industry. To all intents and purposes Rover is to be thrown onto the scrapheap.

Trade and industry secretary Stephen Byers indignantly claims he was deliberately misled by BMW. The minister, the CBI and local Labour politicians also warn that the west Midlands faces an economic catastrophe. Unemployment in parts of the region is already twice the national average. Finding equivalent jobs will prove impossible for many. Some might never work again. Nevertheless the government refuses to lift a finger. With Gordon Brown's extension of the government's 'welfare to work' for the over-25s, that holds out the distinct possibility of former carworkers being compelled to accept any employment offered, no matter how badly paid, or suffer the loss of all benefits. That is what the much vaunted New Deal means.

Blair's government is afraid of jeopardising Britain's reputation - won through Thatcher's assault on trade union rights and power - that this country is dedicated to the accumulation of profit. Nowadays what passes for political debate between Labour and the Tories - and for that matter every establishment party - primarily concerns itself with how to create the best conditions for the generation of profits. Not surprisingly the gap between the mega-rich and the rest of us continues to widen. According to the Sunday Times Britain's thousand richest people increased their wealth last year by £31 billion - 27% up on last year (March 19).

Of course, New Labour did not hide its pro-big business agenda prior to winning a parliamentary landslide in May 1997. On the contrary Blair made his intentions abundantly clear. In the full blaze of publicity, the "enterprise of the market" and the "rigour of competition" were constitutionally enshrined as the Labour Party's new clause four in 1995. The old Fabian state socialism, circa 1918, was ditched. During the general election campaign Blair boasted that he would maintain the Tories' anti-trade union laws. Labour "flexibility" was another famous Blairite nostrum; ie, a code word for promoting the growth of dead labour at the expense of living labour.

Those such as Socialist Worker who now pun about Tory Blair, and Tony Blair turning blue, pretend that New Labour broke its promises to the electorate. The comrades are not only being disingenuous. They are guiltily trying to obscure their own past. Instead of fighting for a working class alternative on May 1 1997 they urged a vote for Blair's party. And how the victory of the New Labour butchers over the Tory butchers was celebrated.

Thankfully, as the false expectations invested in New Labour went into meltdown, the SWP began to break from auto-Labourism. Today the SWP, along with the CPGB, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, Workers Power, the International Socialist Group and other leftwing organisations and individuals are standing a full slate in the forthcoming Greater London Authority elections as the London Socialist Alliance - we critically support Ken Livingstone for mayor.

Prominent trade unionists have made their way to Munich in order to make the economic case to Joachim Milberg, BMW chair, that Rover operations be continued at the present level. Concurrently they have sought to persuade another car maker to buy Rover instead of Alchemy. Such strategies are misguided and hopeless. Capitalists have a far better grasp of market realities than union officials ... and for capital the bottom line is always profit. That is why BMW is washing its hands of Rover and why no car company wants it.

The Guardian's chief business correspondent, Nicholas Bannister, quotes an industry "expert" saying that another car manufacturer "needs Rover like a hole in the head" (March 25). Rover is a big employer in Britain, but relative to the major world players it is small fry. As a result Rover is undercapitalised and unable to match the economies of scale achieved by US, German, French, Japanese and Italian transnationals. Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Renault, Honda and Fiat not only sell, but increasingly produce on a global scale. Moreover the car industry is experiencing chronic overproduction: there is "25% overcapacity" (The Guardian March 18). So there is no commercial solution for the workers.

Any car industry purchase of Rover can only be at the expense of jobs and working conditions. Fundamentally it would be no different to Alchemy. Communists agree with those Longbridge workers who oppose behind-the-scenes moves by top union officials to trade off terms and conditions for a marginal reduction in sackings. We say, no sackings, no selling of conditions.

The AEEU, TGWU and GMB bureaucracies are tied hand and foot to New Labour. Experience of nearly two decades out in the cold under the Tories means they do their utmost to avoid any direct confrontation with Blair. Sir Ken Jackson and Bill Morris have therefore sought to limit their demands on the government to negotiating retraining and regional aid packages. They raise not a squeak against the anti-trade union laws ... let alone defy them. The boldest calls upon government have been to bring Britain into line with European legislation on "consultation". "It is a disgrace that British workers get less protection from mass redundancy than their European counterparts," moans MSF's Roger Lyons (The Times March 20). Consultation would, of course, see the trade unions and the bosses having meetings as a statutory duty ... but would hardly protect jobs or conditions.

Afraid to challenge the government and intellectually accepting the parameters of capital, the trade union bureaucracy and a baying pack of Labour MPs have resorted to patriotism. Sir Ken Jackson, AEEU general secretary, the TGWU's Bill Morris and the GMB's John Edmonds have invoked the "Battle for Britain" and urge a boycott of BMW cars. Frankly this is little more than crude chauvinism. Such a campaign appeals to all classes in Britain as a nation and simultaneously puts the blame on all classes in Germany.

Our principle should be class, not nation. We do not want to see BMW workers in Germany suffer - soon they too could, after all, face mass sackings. Compared with the dominant car companies, BMW is only a medium-sized predator. Through acquiring Rover it had hoped to achieve the necessary economies of scale that would allow it to stand up against the emerging transnational supergroups. Now Rover has failed and BMW is itself under threat. A hostile bid from Volkswagen is expected by industry insiders.

For Rover workers the main weapon is class solidarity. That is what will bring workers from throughout Britain flooding into Birmingham on April 1 - London Socialist Alliance comrades have taken a lead in providing coaches. Nationalism - like regionalism, sexism and racism - pits worker against worker. No matter how it is dressed up in leftwing or trade union language, nationalism is poisonous for our cause. It divides, not unites our forces and ought to be combated at every opportunity. German workers, above all those in BMW, should be the closest allies of Longbridge and other carworkers in Britain. Why, given the takeover of Rover, did the trade unions in Britain not fight for industrial unions uniting all BMW workers? That is what communists argued for, crucially at a rank and file level. The CPGB has pointed out again and again that workers need to organise into a European Union trade union centre and European-wide industrial unions. This parallels our perspective for a fully democratic federal EU and a Communist Party of the EU.

A few trade union officials have wildly spoken of all-out strike action. But in today's circumstances that would trigger immediate mass sackings and save, not cost, the bosses money. Rover has huge stocks of unsold cars worth £500 million. Protest strikes can, of course, be used to galvanise and make propaganda. But the most effective tactic at this moment in time must be to occupy Longbridge and other Rover plants and offices. That way workers instantly gain leverage over both BMW and Alchemy. Buying or selling what you cannot physically possess or use is bad business.

There is another major advantage - the workforce is not whittled away by lay-offs and redundancy deals, but is maintained together and can therefore act as one. In occupation of the plants frequent mass meetings must be organised and democratic control instituted. An army of rank and file agitators can thereby be trained and sent not only throughout Britain - including to Ford Dagenham, Harland and Wolff, Llanwern and other places in danger of closure - but to Germany and its BMW workers.

However, to win, the campaign to save the jobs of Rover workers has to be raised to the level of the state. That is absolutely vital. There might be no commercial solution for Rover, but there can be a political one. The government must be forced to immediately nationalise Rover without compensation. We must also insist upon workers' control. The occupation of Rover plants, solidarity strikes by workers in supply industries and other workplaces can make the Blair government pay the price on behalf of collective capital despite its craven pro-market ideology. The state must be compelled by mass action to take responsibility for the inability of BMW or any other capitalist company to keep Rover fully running.

As we have repeatedly stressed, such a demand for nationalisation has nothing whatsoever to do with taking a step towards some state socialist utopia. That is the failed programme of left social democracy, Scargillism and 'official communism'. Those who equate nationalisation - ie, a property form - with socialism are nowadays no more than fools. Socialism, as Marx long ago insisted, is not universal nationalisation, but universal human liberation. Socialism therefore comes not from on high, from a benign state, but from below, through the political struggle of the working class. That is our vision of socialism, the only socialism worth fighting for.

Rover plc definitively shows us the failings of capitalism. Rover and other workers can through their defiance, their steadfast resistance, their solidarity and their internationalism show us a future worthy of humanity.