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Strike Back at Jobs threat

WITHIN WEEKS of Rover’s break up and massive job losses, thousands of workers at Ford’s Dagenham may now also face the axe. The combined job losses at Ford and Rover could amount to 150,000!

Tony Blair has met with Ford’s European boss Jac Nasser to discuss the giant company’s ‘restructuring plans’, clearly the writing is on the wall for Dagenham’s assembly plant unless industrial action is organised.

Shipyard workers in the North East, Scotland and Northern Ireland are also facing the dole. 40,000 textile jobs were lost last year and 25,000 more are expected to go this year. Whole swathes of manufacturing are in deep crisis.

Ford complains of falling profits but it spent £1.8 billion buying profitable Land Rover off BMW and its got a $23.8 billion cash mountain.

Once again corporate capitalism wants to ruthlessly throw workers onto the scrap heap to satisfy the interests of a tiny number of rich shareholders.

Tony Woodley, the TGWU union’s chief negotiator in the car industry, has warned of all-out strike action to prevent closure saying that Ford has reneged on its previous commitment to continue production at Dagenham. Mass meetings are also being held at Longbridge to discuss strike action.

Car workers have to pressurise the union leaders into delivering on this threat. This action needs to be linked to action throughout the car industry.

Despite thousands of job losses and major productivity concessions by the workforce over the last few years, not one penny of new investment in Dagenham has appeared.

Clearly, it’s not the workers who are to blame but the profit system of capitalism. Worldwide, the car bosses are closing plants and taking each other over because of massive global overcapacity and overproduction. That is why a ‘white knight’ rescue takeover of Rover isn’t a serious option - why produce more unsold cars?

Instead of New Labour subsidising the bosses profits; instead of spending millions on the social costs of dealing with mass redundancies, the car industry should be nationalised and run by the workers to produce the goods that society needs.

Tony Blair and trade secretary Stephen Byers say they ‘can’t interfere with the market’ to stop workplace closures. They’re the bosses’ friend. Workers cannot rely on New Labour to rescue them. Only by taking industrial action like the NUT teachers union have voted for, can jobs, industry and decent services be defended.

* All-out strike action at Ford to stop closure.

* For a one-day strike of the car industry.

* Link up Ford workers throughout Europe.

* No transfer of work without prior agreement of Ford workers.

* Nationalise the car industry under democratic workers’ control and management.

* For a plan of socially useful production.

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Greewich says:

Save Our Schools

IAN PAGE, a Lewisham Socialist Party councillor and the Socialist Alliance Greater London Assembly candidate for Greenwich and Lewisham, is backing the 'Save Our Schools' campaign against Greenwich Labour council’s proposals which would lead to school closures and privatisation. The campaign has been set up by parents and school workers in Greenwich. They, like many others throughout Britain, are angry at Labour attacks on education.

Onay Kasab

The council also want to forcibly integrate children with special needs into mainstream schools without first providing mainstream schools with the resources to cope.

The campaign is standing a candidate on a 'Save Our Schools' ticket in a local by-election. The candidate, local Socialist Party member Richard Newton, told The Socialist:

"Greenwich council are implementing cut after cut while going through the pretence of a consultation exercise. People won’t stand by and watch their schools close.

"It's time for us to act and for the council to listen. Parents, trade unions and the Socialist Party will fight school closures. We’re not fighting just for the sake of it, we’re determined that we can win."

The campaign has agreed a demonstration for 13 May, which will draw support from parents borough-wide.

The council's proposals would close Briset and Ruxley Manor primary schools. Both these schools passed their OFSTED inspections; their children achieve good results.

The closure of special schools such as Nine Acres, Maze Hill, Churchfield and Brantridge makes parents and teaching professionals angry. They fear that children with special needs won’t be adequately catered for in the mainstream.

The council are using a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to relocate John Roan School. PFI will mean private companies profiting from children's education, cuts in the classroom, lack of community and out-of-hours use of the school building.

Bradley Thomas, a parent from Ruxley Manor school who is campaigning to halt the proposals, told The Socialist: "At first I was shocked and disgusted. I know the school well, the staff are good and my boy enjoys going to the school. We’ve got a good chance of keeping the school open especially by using the local elections.

"This campaign will show the council what we’re capable of and that we will not be dictated to. The Socialist Party’s involvement in the campaign has been a great help - we couldn’t have got this far otherwise.

“My message to everybody is if you're fighting cuts, fight them all the way, it’s our environment, it’s our community, they're our schools!”

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The Fighting Origins of May Day

WORKERS HAD long struggled for shorter hours. In England women and children were granted the ten-hour day in 1847. French workers won the 12-hour day after the February 1848 revolution.

In 1886 in America, 350,000 workers in more than 11,000 establishments downed tools demanding an eight-hour day. The centre of that movement was in Chicago, the fastest growing city of its day. It had a huge, developing factory system where workers worked between ten and 18 hours a day.

In1868, after the Civil War, the US Congress passed an eight-hour law but it was enforced only twice. A Minnesota railway was fined just $25 in 1886 for making its workers work more than 18 hours a day.

Workers took matters into their own hands. In 1872 100,000 workers in New York struck and won the eight-hour day, mostly for building trades workers.

The Eight-Hour Movement launched by workers' organisations was given vigorous new life in 1884 when the new Federation of Organised Trades and Labour Unions of the United States and Canada resolved: "Eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after 1 May 1886.

"Unless employers institute eight-hour days, the union will stop work at those plants. Across the nation, if necessary."

In 1885, the Federation's convention reaffirmed its position: the eight-hour day was coming on 1 May 1886. In Chicago, the International Working People's Association (IWPA), led by Albert Parsons and August Spies, claimed thousands of  members and published five newspapers in three languages.

In 1885, one of the workers' leading union organisations, the Knights of Labour, planned rallies and demonstrations for the following May to enforce a law that the employers, especially the railway barons, treated with contempt. The slogan was, in the words of one of the songs of that movement: "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will."

THE UNIONS grew fast. In 1885 The Knights of Labour increased its membership seven-fold to 700,000. The capitalists were increasingly frightened at the prospect of widespread strikes.

The New York Herald wrote about Wall Street's worries: "Two hours, taken from the hours of labour, throughout the United States by the proposed eight-hour movement, would make a difference annually of hundreds of millions in values, both to the capital invested in industries and existing stocks."

On 1 May 1886, in the first national general strike in US history, 500,000 took part in demonstrations across the country.

As a direct consequence, tens of thousands saw their hours of work substantially reduced - often down to an eight-hour day with no loss in pay.

The employers lost no time preparing their revenge. On 1 May the Chicago Mail named two union leaders and wrote: "Mark them for today. Keep them in mind. Hold them personally responsible for any trouble that occurs. Make an example of them if that trouble occurs".

The New York Times demanded: "Indict for conspiracy every man who strikes, and summarily lock him up. This method would undoubtedly strike a wholesome terror into the hearts of the working classes… pick out the labour leaders, and make such examples of them as to scare the others into submission."

The New York Sun, advocated "a diet of lead for hungry strikers." That time was not long in coming.

Bosses started 'donating' money for weapons - gifts from the socially conscientious local business community. The Commercial Club spent $2,000 for a fancy new Gatling gun for the Illinois National Guard - to better 'control' workers.

Between 1880 and 1883, the Chicago police department expanded from 473 to 637 men. By 1886, it was over 1,000.

On 3 May, 500 police herded 300 scabs through a picket line at International Harvesters. When the pickets resisted, the police opened fire and several workers died.

A protest meeting the following evening in Haymarket Square protested at the police killings. Towards its end, with only a few hundred workers left, the police arrived to break it up.

The meeting was orderly. The Chicago mayor, present in the Square, later testified: "Nothing had occurred yet, or looked likely to occur to require interference."  He thought the speeches "tame"  and advised the police chief to send home the 180 police assembled on stand-by.

Suddenly a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. It was never established whether by an 'anarchist' or a police 'agent provocateur'.

AT THE subsequent trial of the union leaders, the prosecution said it was irrelevant and the judge agreed. Seven police officers were killed and 66 injured. The police turned their guns on the workers wounding 200 and killing several.

Police raids rounded up all known anarchists and socialists, arresting hundreds of union activists throughout the country. Meeting halls, printing offices, even private houses were broken into and searched. State Attorney Julius Grinnell said: "Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards".

Eight union leaders were put on trial. Seven of them weren't at the demonstration. The eighth was the speaker on the platform, so he couldn't have thrown the bomb.

Legality was never the aim, revenge was. The Chicago Tribune gave the game away with the headline: "Hang an organiser from every lamp-post."

The trial was absurd: the jury even included relatives of the dead policemen. Witnesses and jurors were bribed. A local businessman summed up the employers' view with the words: "I don't consider these people to have been guilty of any offence, but they must be hanged... the labour movement must be crushed.

"The Knights of Labour will never dare to create discontent again if these men are hanged."

International protests followed the inevitable verdict of this scandalous frame-up and judicial murder. Huge meetings were addressed in Britain by Eleanor Marx, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and William Morris.

The city council of Paris protested at the "political crime". And when four of the union leaders were executed, 200,000 people in Chicago lined the streets for their funeral.

FROM 1886 on, 1 May has grown to an international day of solidarity among working people. In 1889, over 400 delegates met in Paris on the French revolution's centenary at the Marxist International Socialist Congress - the founding meeting of what became known as the Second International.

The Congress passed a resolution calling for a "great international demonstration" for the eight-hour day on 1 May 1890, "in view of the fact that such a demonstration has already been resolved upon by the American Federation of Labour."

On 1 May, 1890, May Day demonstrations took place in the US and most European countries. Work stopped in 138 towns in France, 100,000 workers demonstrated in Barcelona, 120,000 in Stockholm.

Demonstrations were also held in Chile and Peru. In Havana, Cuba, workers marched in the world's first May Day demanding the eight-hour day, equal rights for blacks and whites, and working-class unity.

Frederick Engels, who joined the half-million workers in Hyde Park in London on 3 May reported: "As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is mobilised for the first time as one army, under one flag, and fighting for one immediate aim: an eight-hour working day."

As workers emerged from tyranny and repression in whatever country, they adopted that day as theirs. The true history of May Day will undoubtedly inspire a new generation, as it has done so often in the past.

Go to the Statement from the Committee for a Workers International on May Day on their web site:

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Zimbabwe:

A Desperate Regime

ON 18 April Zimbabwe marked 20 years of independence but most Zimbabweans had little to celebrate. The economy is in ruins, there is mass unemployment and poverty. But there is also a growing opposition to president Robert Mugabe’s increasingly repressive rule.

Dave Carr

Having suffered a humiliating defeat in last February’s constitutional referendum Mugabe faces defeat in the expected general election.

In a desperate bid to cling to power he adopted a populist posture, orchestrating the occupation of white-owned land by ‘war veterans’ of the liberation struggle. At the same time opposition activists have been targeted and five murdered in the last two weeks.

After years of collaborating with the white farmers in the capitalist Commercial Farmers’ Union, Mugabe has now denounced them as “enemies of Zimbabwe”.

Yet Mugabe, by implementing the International Monetary Fund’s austerity programme of cuts, shares responsibility with imperialism for the savage decline in Zimbabweans’ living standards.

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“We are yet to enjoy our liberation”

WHILE THE killings of two white farmers grabbed the headlines in Britain, little is said about the murders of leading black opposition activist Talent Mabika and his partner.

Mabika, a former Chemical Workers Union leader, was the driver for Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The MDC is challenging Robert Mugabe’s 20-year rule. “We fought for our liberation and the victory of 1980 has been stolen from us. We are yet to enjoy our liberation”, declared MDC vice-president Gibson Sibanda.

At its founding conference on 29 January, 3,200 delegates danced and sang: “Mugabe is a murderer. He has been killing our fathers and brothers. Mugabe is a thief. He has stolen the Treasury of Zimbabwe. Mugabe is a liar...”

In last February’s referendum, the MDC helped defeat (by 55% to 45%) Mugabe’s proposed constitutional changes which would have given his regime new sweeping repressive powers.

MDC emerged from the working-class struggles of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) including one-day general strikes in 1997 and 1998 against the desperate economic conditions (see box) and the costly sending of troops into the Congo.

Potentially it could have developed into a new mass workers party with a socialist programme but its leaders have moved to the right.

Its programme remains vague on key issues such as land ownership and creating jobs and doesn’t challenge capitalist interests in Zimbabwe nor that of foreign imperialism.

Nonetheless, if elections proceed, the MDC, by uniting opposition to the government and with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF split, could end Mugabe’s reign.

Who owns the land?

LAND OWNERSHIP has dominated Zimbabwe’s history, especially in the century since reactionary adventurer-capitalist Cecil Rhodes marched in and seized control of the country.

In 1960 settlers of European origin (around 5% of the population) controlled over 70% of the arable land. Today whites account for less than 1% of the 12 million population but still hold one-third of the land, including 75% of the best farm land which is owned by 4,500 white farmers.

After the 15-year liberation struggle to achieve independence from the colonial regime of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government failed to tackle land redistribution. Only 70,000 families were resettled, typically without title to the land and with no money to invest.

Most of the £44 million obtained from Britain - the former colonial power - appears to have benefited the 400 ZANU-PF supporters who in 1990 gained 400,000 hectares of land bought for the resettlement of poor black farmers.

A socialist government would confiscate land and redistribute it to the peasants but within the overall context of a comprehensive land reform programme.

That means nationalising big commercial farms, mines and major industry under the democratic control and management of the working class and rural workers. This would lay the basis for a socialist reorganisation of society under a workers’ government supported by the peasantry.

To succeed, this revolution would need to spread to the workers and peasants throughout southern Africa.

More on Zimbabwe in The Socialist

            More international news every week in The Socialist

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