RIGHT TO WORK employment. The Lucas workers ze a plan for alternative production Ethe of social need. astruction unions are demanding inkers be taken off the dole to do eful public work, such as house ilding. All these schemes should be t together to make a national rkers plan, for оту.
This would be a real asset to the minal class ons ould expose te tinal Irresponsibilly terprise in Britain. It would show lions of people that unemploynt is not natural or inevitable. It uld show that it can be cured. And would lay the basis for a real socialist government.
Second.
The Labour Party should adopt fighting policies and make a serious bid for the eadership of the Labour Party. heavy responsibility shoulders of Tony Benn Labour . Left, whom people see as representing socialism.
Finally, revolutionary socialist party that can lead the British revolution to success. Plivalk will be a vital part of building a mass movement to drive this government out of office and begin the socialist revolution.
the ett wing of the rests on the millions of need to build a The fight against unemployment DEFEND THE RIGHT WORK In the by the co-operative good example. Villiers The trade foundered company assets.
to but COHO government. aside Labour the lose become battles the Heath administration, some workers tried to set up co-operatives. Is this a gooc examnle to follow in the future It is easy to see how the idea of co-operatives caught on. It always seems a great pity to have to hand a factory back to the employer at the end of the day, even if jobs • are restored. The return of the employer threatens the treedom that Is wor during the course of the occupation.
Marx was very enthusiastic about the time of the First The great merit of a co-op he said, is 'to practically show that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superceded republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.
He recognised, of course, that the system could never transform capitalist society. To do this, the workers would have to take power and reorganise industry as a whole But the co-oos could set an example and inspire other workers with socialist ideas.
It isn't always the case that the capitalist market rules out a workers' co-operative. The Meriden co-op is a In 1973, NortonTriumoh tried to close Meriden works in Coventry. All 1,750 workers faced the sack.
The workers did not accept that there was no market for the BSA bike. Since then, the co-op has been selling its bikes in the USA. The workers thought that part of the reason why NVT wanted to close Meriden was land speculation that produced the Scottish Daily News in Scotland in 1975 might have survived if it had been able to produce a different kind of product to the one produced by Beaverbrook. However, none of the union bureaucrats were interested in a workers newspaper and the paper folded However, other co-ops have on the TOCkS capitalist market. The Kirkby co-op is a case in point. This demonstrates yet again that there are very few opportunities of profitable production that private capitalists overlook.
The biggest problem the co-ops face is finance. A co-op means the workers have to buy the enterprise from its owners. No retailer accept products made with 'stolen stock'. No bank will supply credit to operating "stolen The workers at Meriden and the Scottish Daily News contributed their life savings. But the millions needed out the employer's debts, only come the When Meriden applied to Heath for capital, the Tories played for time.
NVT was hoping to seize the factory with the aid of the police when the workers' backs were turned.
The 1974 Labour Government set up to £10 million co-operative experiments. Yet while handed out millions pounds to private enterprise, the co-ops received loans.
Labour never considered expro.
priating the private owners. Instead, workers were crushing financial burdens.
It is by refusing to waive the interest payments on the Meriden loan that the Thatcher government is seeking to close down Meriden now.
A real socialist government would assist co-ops. But more than that. It would nationalise • private enteroris as a whole. The co-ops would then their private character and part of an economy democratically run by the working Socialist Challenge 2 august 1979 pagel
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Persona DEMAND THE RIGHT TO WORK