18.01.2001

Vauxhall fightback

We should not only be protesting against General Motors on January 20. Anger must be focused squarely on the government and UK state. The Luton Vauxhall crisis highlights New Labour's obscene worship of the market and the inhuman values of capital. According to Tony Blair, issues such as the closure of Vauxhall are purely "commercial". His government is therefore committed not to intervene. 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.

We should not only be protesting against General Motors on January 20. Anger must be focused squarely on the government and UK state. The Luton Vauxhall crisis highlights New Labour's obscene worship of the market and the inhuman values of capital. According to Tony Blair, issues such as the closure of Vauxhall are purely "commercial". His government is therefore committed not to intervene.

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.

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.

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. Our allies 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.

Today thankfully the SWP, along with the CPGB, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, Workers Power, the International Socialist Group and other leftwing organisations and individuals united in the Socialist Alliance are standing candidates in the forthcoming general election - expected on May 3 - including in Luton. We say, Luton Vauxhall workers should unite with the Bedfordshire SA and sack the Blairite MP, Margaret Moran. Replace her in parliament with a class fighter.

Prominent trade unionists have gone cap in hand to GM in Zurich. But for capital the bottom line is always maximum profit. Luton is profitable, but not profitable enough. Hence, says GM boss Mike Burns, Luton must close. So there is no commercial solution.

The problem is that the AEEU, TGWU and GMB bureaucracies are tied hand and foot to New Labour and the organisation of capital at the level of the nation-state. The trade union bureaucracy have already resorted to patriotism and 'British jobs for British workers' and attacked GM for being American. Frankly this is little more than crude chauvinism. Our principle should be class, not nation. We do not want to see GM workers in Europe suffer - soon they too could, after all, face mass sackings.

For Luton Vauxhall workers the main weapon is class solidarity. GM workers in Germany, Spain and Portugal should be the closest allies of Luton Vauxhall and other carworkers in Britain. Given GM's historically established transnational operations, why did the trade unions in Britain not fight for industrial unions uniting all GM workers? That is what communists argue for, crucially at a rank and file level.

Some workers have wildly spoken of all-out strike action. But in today's circumstances that would trigger mass sackings and save, not cost, the bosses money. GM has huge stocks of unsold cars. Protest strikes by all Vauxhall workers in Britain led by those in Luton can, of course, be used to galvanise. But the most effective tactic at this time must be to occupy the Luton and other Vauxhall plants and offices. That way workers instantly gain leverage over GM.

There is another major advantage - the workforce is not whittled away by redeployment and redundancy deals, but is maintained together and can therefore act as one. 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, Rover, Harland and Wolff, Llanwern and other places in danger of closure - but also to the European mainland and its GM workers.

However, to win, the campaign to save the jobs of Vauxhall workers has to be raised to the level of the state. That is absolutely vital. There might be no commercial solution, but there can be a political one.

The government must be forced to immediately nationalise the Luton Vauxhall plant without compensation. We must also insist upon workers' control. The occupation of Luton and other plants, backed up by 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.

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 - i.e., a property form - with socialism are nowadays no more than fools.

Socialism, as Marx insisted, is not universal nationalisation, but universal human liberation. Socialism comes not from on high, from a benign state, but from below, through the political struggle of the working class.

Jack Conrad