screams thatif is the workers who are to blame.
likes to pretend is a hugesubsidy to the wage bill.
industrial relations record' for the crisis.
workers of low workers with the dole queue. work.
The National Enterprise Board argues that they are doing Leyland workers a favour even keeping British Leyland alive. They mention the £200 million subsidy granted to Leyland when the Government bailed the company out, and the extra £100 million offered last year.
The original £200 million was алосаес tor mves mens and me to million of the latest £100 million when nas so rar oeen used nas audin been earmarked for investment uses.
investment?
Reason one is that for years British Leyland have been using old outdated Even now used to build the Mini 1000 is that which wds used to produce the original Mini in the 1950s. Once more carworkers have become the chief scape-goats of the ruling class, the Labour Government and the trade union leaders. British Leyland is in crisis. Fleet Street * The Labour Government threatens to withdraw what it productivity and threatens 100,000 * Hugh Scanlon, leader of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, said that he 'fully supported the demands of the toolroom operatives and other skilled grades foradequate and acceptable differentials and that his executive would support them at the appropriate time'. Meanwhile he orders the toolroom workers back to Reason two lies in the history of Brusn Leyland and way Ine coverlment felt it necessary to money for investment management in the first place.
Report, published in 1975, explained: An examination of past macing TESUIL throughout the period since British Leyland was formed in 1968 nearly all the profits dividends instead of being retained to finance new capital investment'.
So even Ryder was forced to admit that the money allocated to Leyland Was needed not as strike-crazy, money-grabbing workbeing ers, but because those who owned and controlled Leyland preferred to line their own pockets rather than invest in new machinery and equipment.
3 10 MPH allocate Levland underlying the crisis in Leyland, the But 1l inis is ine mam reason SHOWS that history of the company since Ryder also contradicts the NEB fairy tale. distributed as he posses accuse me WOrKCIS DIEWE major sins; low strikes. But Productivity increased by 11 percent, nearly four result times the UK average for car output.
This year the trend has continued According to the Financial Times of 9 Februarv, January 1977 'saw a further sharp increase in output British Leyland'.
SPEEO LIMIT Leylanu COmOnIC decline Leyland workers, productivity and at Leyland last year Toolmakers picket the Leyland plant at Castle Bromwich.
Strikes fell by half in 1976 compared to the previous year, throughout the This was despite spending as with workers elsewhere, suffered under Phase 2 of Despite the rise in productivity in 1976, British Leyland's share of the the dole queue. Un marker dropped trom su.y pe cent in 1975 to 27.4 percent. Its share or ine western european market IcH from 6.4 per cent to 5.6 percent.
Whatever the reasons behind this fall: the factory floor workers at Longbridge, Cowley and elsewhere are not to blame; they delivered the goods, despite suffering wages cuts. They have done more than enough.
Shamelessly covering up the true acts ortne Leviana situation, yare and the National Enterprise Board now threaten Leyland workers with They talk of the way the taxpayer "subsidises' Leyland a subsidy needed because of the failures of Leyland's former bosses to invest. Yet the "nation' makes £600 million a year in the form of export payments from the cars and lorries the Leyland workers produce Add to that the cost or socia security and dole payments if they did close Leyland, and the surrendering of a substantial section of the home market to "foreign competition, and it becomes obvious that the Govern mentwone be commune econom lunacy if they closed Leyland Thev would have on v one reason to do so; to try and inflict a massive defeat not just on car workers. bu the entire trade union movement
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* The National Enterprise Board blames the disastrous * Eric Varley, Labour's Industry Minister, accuses the