Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials, 17 April 2007

The closure of the Ford's foundry at Leamington will mean that 387 more permanent jobs are to be lost in the Midlands by July this year.

The T&G's Dave Osborne blamed the workers - saying they were "being effectively bribed with enhanced payments to accept the closure of a plant". And even if he added that the T&G did not accept the closure as "inevitable or non-negotiable" workers know what his "negotiations" entail: the alternative of "changes in working practices", like longer shifts. Rightly, this "choice" was turned down 2 years ago at Leamington. And if the plant is closing today, it is only because Ford thinks it can get away with it, without losing anything.

Of course, the Leamington jobs are just the latest car industry jobs to disappear. On top of 900 jobs at Ellesmere Port, 260 jobs at TVR, 2,000 jobs at Peugeot Ryton, 6,000 at MG Rover, 1,150 at Jaguar, etc - it is a very long list. And it does not include the jobs lost at suppliers. Leamington's closure affects 175 workers at Visteon Swansea, which seems to be the only plant where workers have been organised, but at plant level, to say "no".

But not even once have the bosses been faced with a fight against any of this multitude of closures and cuts! When such a fight could have made it far too costly for them to go ahead with their plans!

In fact the union leaders talk as if their hands are tied, as if these job cuts are the result of some kind of iron economic law, against which nobody can do anything.

But since capitalism began, the only "law" which has ruled, is the greed for profits and yet more profits! This what all workers have always faced - and sometimes fought successfully, through strength of numbers and their determination.

Bosses will always seek to lower production costs, whether here, by increasing work intensity and using temporary labour, or by transferring jobs "eastwards". And in this, they are helped by the pro-business attitude of politicians, who do not wish to do anything against the bosses' profit drive.

On the other hand, however, workers are faced with the utter spinelessness of union leaders, who do not want to damage their good relations with the bosses, and do everything to avoid a confrontation.

Yet workers would have the means to stop the bosses in their tracks if they chose to do so. For the simple reason that, after all, they are the ones who produce the bosses' profits.

Des Browne said he now regrets the decision to allow the British sailors who had been held in Iran, to sell their stories to the media. It was a "mistake", he said, to allow them to be paraded on British TV and in the tabloids. Funny how he hadn't realised that beforehand, when it was obvious to most of the public and also many in the defence force...

Apparently it occurred neither to Blair nor Browne, that having condemned the "parading" of the sailors on Iranian TV, that allowing them to do what amounts to the same thing here, was only likely to expose even further the government's lies and lack of concern for those it sends to fight its criminal war in the Gulf.

But then, what does it really care about the mental disarray of the men and women who were ordered to turn their weapons against the Iraqi people they were supposed to "free"? Or the ordeal experienced by wounded soldiers returning from Iraq, which may still be shrouded in secrecy, but is, nonetheless, nothing short of a scandal. And moreover, what does it care about those who lose their lives, just to tighten the stranglehold of a handful of big City players over the Middle-East?

If this government had any concern for the fate of these 15 sailors, the MoD's huge budget would be more than enough to grant them more dignified compensation, including a decent job away from the bloody chaos of Iraq. But in fact, the whole point of this is elsewhere. For the past 4 years, Blair and Brown have been waging a criminal war against the Iraqi people. But, at the same time, they have been waging a propaganda war against the rest of us.

This media business is part of this propaganda war - to give credit to the idea that the Iranians are the "bad guys" and British commanders the "good guys". The trouble is, that whatever ministers may say or get the soldiers to claim, no-one will ever believe that they were closer to Britain's territorial waters than to Iran's!

The point is that British troops have nothing to do, not anywhere in the Middle East, and they should all be withdrawn now!