BUSINESS Secretary Mandelson declared yesterday morning, before he even reached the Luton GM plant, that there would be no nationalisation of GM Luton – ‘It’s not the government’s job to produce cars’, said Mandelson.
His words will bring bellylaughs from workers, since with private business collapsing, the Business Secretary has already had to shelve his plan to part privatise the Royal Mail.
Faced with furious working class opposition, and in a situation of acute capitalist crisis where there are no cash rich buyers, it remains the government’s job to deliver the mail!
The government has also been forced to renationalise the privatised National Express East Coast rail line. It was also on the brink of bankruptcy because of the capitalist crisis.
With more privatised rail companies also in the red, renationalisation of the rail network is becoming a fact.
However, Mandelson yesterday refused to give a jobs guarantee of any kind to the Luton workers, or to the workers at GM Ellesmere Port.
He also made it clear that he did not blame the Unite trade union leadership for any part of the huge crisis that has seen GM bankrupted on a world scale.
He said of the Luton plant: ‘What I have seen here today shows high productivity, low cost, no absenteeism, and high safety.
‘You have a workforce and a management working very close together.
‘You know in years gone past people would say in Britain that the workforce and their unions were part of the problem, here it’s very clear they are part of the solution.’
The Unite trade union leaders have also accepted wage cuts and part-time working, and are backing Mandelson 100 per cent in his opposition to nationalising GM Luton and Ellesmere Port.
It is plain that everything has been done that is possible from a capitalist point of view to keep the plant open. The only thing that Unite have not agreed to is that workers should work for nothing, BA style.
It is obvious that with no buyer emerging for GM Europe, closures are on the agenda, and this is what Mandelson is preparing. Yesterday he was just organising the trade union leaders to try to ensure that the working class goes into the abyss of mass unemployment quietly, without a fight.
This is what they did at the LDV van factory.
On the day that it went into administration, the Unite union co-leader, Tony Woodley, said that both the union and the government had done absolutely everything that was possible to keep the van plant going, and that the closure was not their fault.
This is what they are preparing to do at Luton, but first of all they are trying to cover up what they are up to.
Unite yesterday finally made a statement about the situation at GM Luton.
It pledged a campaign to ‘win a future for the plant’, but could not explain why there has not been one up till now.
It added: ‘The workers will be taking their campaign to the streets of Luton and the main towns around the plant in the coming weeks to build public support.’
How can there be a future for the plant if they will not fight for its nationalisation – when even GM Detroit has not been able to stand alone.
In fact they are just talking about a bit of a campaign to try to cover over that they are prepared to accept mass sackings or outright closure.
Luton workers must make sure that there is a proper report back mass meeting from the secret meeting with Mandelson. This mass meeting must insist on the occupation of the plant, the setting up of a council of action in the town and a national campaign for the nationalisation of GM Luton. This is the only way.
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