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From International Socialism, No.73, December 1974, p.24.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
UNTIL MARCH of this year the Eastleigh factory of Strachans – a subsidiary of Maxwell Joseph’s conglomerate Grand Metropolitan Hotels-used to make van bodies for Fords. On Friday afternoon the 60-odd workers were told that the factory would be shut down in one and a half hours time and the work transferred elsewhere. It was a swift scalping operation, and the Strachans management expected no more opposition than they encountered in closing down the coach-building plant at nearby Hamble in 1973. This time they were wrong.
In the face of High Court injunctions, police raids, Special Branch spying, unsympathetic press coverage and a ruthless employer, the Strachans workers fought the closure for four solid months. And despite the odds against them they could have won, had it not been for the part played by their trade union officials.
Of the five unions involved in the dispute, the only help and encouragement came from the local AUEW and ASTMS organisers but their hands were tied by their executives. At every stage in the struggle the Strachans workers encountered opposition, indifference or sabotage from their own union leaderships. The AUEW and TGWU even refused to give official recognition to the dispute as they claimed that there was nothing in their rulebooks to cover unemployed workers in dispute. In other words in the eyes of the national officials there was no dispute at Strachans; the factory had been closed and there was nothing more to be done than bargain over the compensation terms.
But it was precisely this right of the employer to close the factory that was being challenged at Strachans, and the fact that it could happen in a non-militant area like Hampshire and in a factory with a new workforce that had been operating for less than a year, shows clearly the shift in confidence that has taken place in the working class over the issue of unemployment. The struggles at UCS, Fisher-Bendix and elsewhere have set an example of resistance which will be followed and extended, and the lesson has not been lost upon the ruling class. The Economist is not alone in seeing that a new wave of closures and redundancies, far from disciplining workers with the fear of the sack is liable to spark off a series of struggles which directly question the property rights of the employing class. At Strachans the workers occupied the factory and refused to allow the movement of any parts or machinery. When the police eventually removed them from the factory, the workers picketed the gates and attempted to extend the blacking, not only to the rest of the Maxwell Joseph chain but also to Fords itself. David took on Goliath.
The issue of blacking was crucial, and at first the response was not encouraging. The TGWU convenor at Fords, Southampton, even gave management permission to enter Strachans to take note of the chassis numbers of the vans held there, and was most indignant when the pickets refused them access. Once again the officials did nothing to organise blacking, and at a rally held in May the AUEW divisional organiser attributed the lack of any official blacking circulars to the fact that the Industrial Relations Act was still on the statute book.
The most effective circular on blacking was done by the Organising Committee of the Rank and File Movement. It had considerable impact; so much so that six weeks after the Strachans dispute had ended Grand Metropolitan Hotels were still asking union officials to lift the black on their products!
After 17 weeks the breakthrough came when the Southampton and Newhaven dockers agreed to black all Grand Met and Fords products, and an important factor in winning their support was their indignation at the attitude of the TGWU officials. The final straw appeared to be when they learned that Ernie Allen, the district secretary, was trying to charge the Strachans strike committee for the union stationery used in his office.
The prospect of an imminent hold-up of Fords exports brought a flurry of activity from the trade union leaders. Three days before the dockers’ ban was to come into operation, the national officials called a meeting of the Strachans workers. No indication was given of what the meeting was about, but most of the pickets naively assumed that it would be about how the unions proposed to extend the support and make the blacking more effective. Several of the leading members of the strike committee were away, on delegations raising financial support at the time. The meeting was addressed by George Guy, general secretary of the Sheet Metal Workers Union and a leading member of the Communist Party. He delivered an ultimatum – either accept the management’s offer of £1,136 per head compensation or the unions withdraw official support for the dispute. He allowed no discussion or questions from the floor and a vote was taken immediately. By a narrow majority the workers voted to call off the dispute.
There is no doubt that but for this intervention by the union leaders the pressure on Fords would have produced some guarantee of employment at Strachans; there was even talk at the time of Ford themselves taking over the factory. It was a classic sell-out.
At a meeting of the Eastleigh branch of the Sheet Metal Workers in October, the National President of the union, Reg Lofting added this postscript when the question of a delegation to the 2nd Rank and File Conference was raised. He stated that the intervention of the Rank and File Movement at Strachans was ineffective because the outcome – the transfer of jobs to the Midlands and compensation for the workers at Strachans – was what the union had been after all along.
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