Wilson’s blunt warning

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33734, 6 January 1975, Page 13

Wilson’s blunt warning

fN.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright/, LONDON, January 5. A blunt warning by the British Prime Minister (Mr Wilson) to workers that avoidable strikes are damaging Britain's severely weakened economy has met with an icy reception from some of his own party members in Parliament. One has described the Prime Minister’s remarks as ill-advised, and another has commented: “The quicker he forgets about it, the better.” In his strongest criticism so far of Britain’s industrial strife, Mr Wilson said in a speech in Liverpool that his Labour Government was intervening in industry to fight the threat of unemployment and to help companies survive. “But this,” he emphasised, “means a full contribution from the workers — a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. We cannot afford any avoidable surge in production costs caused either by thoughtless or by calculated

sectional demands for higher living standards which are unrealistic in the year or two ahead.”

Last night, one Labour politician, Mr Dennis Skinner, said “I regard this attack on manual workers as something that the Prime Minister has had a weakness for throughout his political life. He should look around him and see precisely who are the real wreckers. “He should concentrate his mind on watching the corrupt elements within our society and those making vast fortunes out of land — even slag heaps” — an apparent knock by Mr Skin-

ner at the land-deals controversy involving the Prime Minister’s personal secretary last year. Another Labour Member of Parliament, Mr Leslie Huckfield, said: “Mr Wilson’s speech showed that the Prime Minister knows little about the car industry. “What makes his statement particularly inopportune and very illadvised is the fact that British Leyland has just begun a sales campaign to encourage people to buy British because improved production recently has given the company a greater stock of cars than expected. Trouble at Cowley R. W. Shakespeare, of “The Times” reports through the N.Z.P.A. that British Leyland faces another production crisis after the week-end as a result of a strike-vote by 250 key engine-tuners and rectifiers at the Austin and Morris car factory at Cowley, Oxford. At a meeting on Friday, the men rejected a plea by Mr John Symonds, the Cowley plant manager, that they should “behave in a states-man-like manner” and call off their threatened strike. They voted to stop work on Monday morning. In a letter circulated to the men concerned, Mr Symonds gave a warning that the strike would quickly hit car production and affect the jobs of up to 12,000

other workers, who would face .lay-offs. The tuners and rectifiers, who carry out essential work to completed cars as they leave the assembly line, are demanding that they should be upgraded from the main production-workers’ grade to the top skilled grade. This would not immediately affect their pay rates, but the men believe that in the present round of pay negotiations at Cowley a new, higher skilled rate would be established. The management is insist, ing on retaining a single production-workers’ rate, a principle established in 1971

when the old piece-work ing system was abolished.

In his letter, Mr Symonds said that in British Leyland’s present financial situation a decision to call off the threatened strike would not be seen by the company, or other workers, as losing face, but as a “statesmanlike decision taken in the best interests of the plant as a whole.”

At their meeting on Friday,, the men voted to meet again next Thursday — by which time it is probable that production at Cowley will have been brought to a standstill, with vehicle losses mounting at the rate of 1000 a day.