Bombardier

10,000 marched against job cuts at Bombardier on Saturday 23 July in the biggest demonstration in Derby for decades, backed by the RMT and other trade unions, photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge)

Derby Socialist Party is continuing to campaign for the nationalisation of Bombardier. We say that the government should take Britain's last remaining train manufacturer into democratic public ownership to save jobs.

Fearing rolling heads at the next election, local Tory MPs have begun to criticise the government's decision to award a £1.4 billion contract to build trains for Thameslink to German company Siemens. It looks likely that Derby city council, currently led by the Tories in coalition with the Liberals, will fund a legal challenge, launched by trade union Unite, against the government's decision.

We support the City Council's decision to back Unite's challenge. But we have no illusions that Cameron and Clegg's local dogsbodies are in any way concerned about saving jobs in Derby, having just made 500 council workers redundant. They are terrified by the prospect of Bombardier workers and local residents organising their own action, and this has forced them to get behind the campaign.

While the key to success in the Bombardier dispute lies in whatever action Bombardier workers themselves, organised in trade unions like RMT, Unite and GMB, decide to take, it is clear that organising a mass campaign of local residents in support of these workers is crucial.

The Socialist Party's campaign to nationalise Bombardier has been immensely popular, with our Saturday stall often swamped with members of the public who agree with us. Many people have expressed an interest in joining the Socialist Party - linking our demand with the need to more fundamentally transform society in the interests of workers, not bosses.

Jethro Waldron

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