Shop stewards from the Tyneside plants of the major multinationals have come to the conclusion that something more than isolated shop stewards committees are needed to mount an effective challenge to a management which has multinational co-ordination and resources, is backed by government policy, and is protected by a passive and evasive trade union leadership. As a result of their experience in fighting such managements they have taken steps to promote the formaation of combine committees nationally and strengthen rank and file organisations locally.
With the support of the Institute for Workers Control and the recently formed Nickers Combine Committee they are contacting shop stewards in all the 180 stion that regional conterences be held as launching pads for national combine committees. This has already begun on Tyneside. For the last 18 months shop stewards from Swan Hunters, Churchills Industries, Vickers, Reyrolle Parsons, Richardson Wesgarth, and Rolls Royce UK have been meeting as the Tyneside Shop Stewards Conference to discuss the Industry Bill, nationalisation, and workers control. Fighting These regular meetings have led to the setting up of nationalisation committees in the shipyards, a combine committee in Churchills, the beginnings of a comome committee in horns. te strengthening of the Vickers combine, and various proposais on workers con trol. As a result of these experiences, stewards feel that combine committees are more likely to become sustained, fighting organisations.
The importance of a solid shop flool base for such initiatives is particularly committees of the sort that the Tyneside shop stewards have in mind are bound to come up against the rightwing edaersmip or me trade umons and Labour Party. The TUC and the AUEW execuuve make condescending cestures towards combine committees only so long as they remain merely a nice idea - an impotent get-together.
A small hint of the clash that is likely to come as combine committees take up the fight against Government policies came over the closure of the Vickers Crabtree plant at Water Lane, Leeds. Karlier this month, in a rather demoralised gesture of resistance, the workers at vickers craptree Dresented their MP Merlyn Rees with a petition demanding that the firm be kept open. Two weeks before this the Vickers Combine Committee had decided to launch a malor campaign against unemp loyment, realising that it could not be fought on a purely plant basis.
too late to prepare adequate opposition great at the present time, when combine Unfortunately the initiative came to the Water Lane closure. But by pointing to the general state or vickeis - au least four other plants are on shorttime working - as proof of the need for a common struggle tor a workers plan for production which defends jobs, the Combine Committee attempted to increase the workers' combativity Even this minimal solidarity and propaganda initiative was seen by si John Binns, the right-wing AUEW district secretary, as a threat to the smooth running of his little empire. He did all he could to diffuse and minimise the intervention of the Combine Committee Secretary in a mass meeting at Leeds.
Mass support The stress that Mike Cooley from the Lucas Aerospace Combine Committee put in a speech to shop stewards in Newcastle was on the need for the combine commuice to win mass support LorIs initiatives to explain its perspectives in detail (e.g. through a combine bulletn) and to create democratic forms of leadership. Another aspect of preparing the fight against the right-wing is the Lucas Aerospace Combine Committee's own plan for socially useful production the exploration of concrete projects mar can De rougar lor as arcanative plans to those of management. For exresearen done on me sorr or socially userul products tnat could be subsu tuted for armaments, regardless of management's wishes.
The Tyneside Shop Stewards Con ference see the move towards setting up combine committees as more than just a better way of taking on manage mcu amoun mat is where I must begin; they see it as a way of creating the sinews of a wider socialist movement, able to challenge the right wing at every level and on every issue. Those who are interested in taking this initia tive up in their area should contact the He or in Murray chairman vnesde Shop Stewards Conference, 12 St Albans Terrace, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear.
Denis Healey has laid his cards on belief at the lack of struggle against Red Weekly 19 February 1976 Healey measures/in Focus 3