Car Assembly Workers Victims of Imperialism

The Irish car assembly industry was started in the early 1930’s and under the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement it was a protected industry. The existence of Car Assembly in Ireland meant that in addition to the employment given on the actual assembly of cars, factories came into being in order to manufacture in this country many of the components used in the vehicles. These brought about more employment.

Just some of the components manufactured in Ireland for Lrishassembled cars, are Tyres, Tubes, Glass, Batteries, Spark-plugs, Sealers, Adhesives, Welding and Soldering materials, Paints, Springs, Floorcovering, Upholstry and Abrasives. Obviously outside of the actual work in building cars there is a vast amount of employment given by car-assembly to all these other industries.

But all these are dependent on the car assembly being a ‘Protected’ industry, all are dependent on the government imposing tariffs on the import of fully assembled vehicles in order to make their sale here uneconomic to the motor companies. Under the EEC tarrifs are not allowed and so the Irish Car Assembly Industry is facing a challenge from imported fully built vehicles at a much cheaper price than they can be built in Ireland.

Loss of jobs for workers For the workers employed at present in car assembly that means they are going to lose their jobs. They are supposedly ‘guaranteed’ alternative employment by the government. But ‘alternative employment’ that is being offered at the moment is based on offers by some of the main assembly firms to have industries connected with the parent firms set up here in Ireland. British Leyland have offered to set up a factory at Inchicore to miake seat frames for export; General Motors plan to close their McCairns and Reg Armstrong plants and set up a factory in Tallaght to make electrical wire looms for export (this will employ mainly women); Volkswagen intend to close their plant and set up a plant to assemble shipping containers for use on export cars — few workers could be employed in anything like this.

Car industry controlled by monopolies The motor companies which are at present operating assembly lines here F , in Ireland are among the biggest in the world: BLMC, General Motors (American controlled and multinational), Volkswagen (German); Fiat (Italian), Toyota (Japanese), etc. They have set up plants in Ireland not for any benefit to Ireland or to Irish workers, but for their own economic ends. As long as Car Assembly in Ireland was ‘protected’ by government tariffs they were prepared to stay and use a badly-paid workforce in a country where unemployment was high. With the entry into the EEC, pushed through by the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail parties, tariff barriers are down and so there is free importation of fully-assembled cars. In terms of “economy”, as far as the Motor companies are concerned, workforces in car-assembly must be numbered in tens of thousands, not thousands, for them to get the profit they want. Hence the tiny Irish assembly industry employing less than 10,000 is only a burden on their profit account.

Profit not jobs In Ireland we live under a system that is concerned with how much profit can be got from an industry, not how much work it supplies to those who need it. Under that system we can only expect to see the like of what is happening to Car Assembly continue: to happen more and more industries.

Many new factoriés are set up each year here, but many more close down. Businessmen are attracted by the ‘generous’ benefits offered to them by the Industrial Development Authority — often a large grant to establish a factory followed by several years of tax-free profits. Since such factories are established often in areas where unemployment is rising (usually because of the fact that the EEC agricultural policy is driving small farmers off the land) the wages that are offered are low. As the factory gets under way and the workforce becomes more and more discontented with conditions or wages, demands are made for better wages or conditions. The management resists such demands bitterly and ultimately if they have to concede defeat, they close down the factory. The only reason they were there in the first place was because they were getting higher profit than they could have got in any other country. Profit is what they are interested in and to hell with the workers. of the Irish people. can give at home. as immigrant workers.

Irish workers.

This is what is happening with the car assembly industry at the moment. Under EEC conditions there is no profit in assembling cars in Ireland so the companies pull out. Under the present system Irish workers will always be at the tender mercies of the world’s international profit-seekrs. Only if we take control of our own Natural Resources can we establish any industry in Ireland for the benefit Effects of entry to the EEC At the moment the 26 Co. Govt. is engaged in selling off Irish mineral and oil reserves to foreign companies — and with them they are selling off all the employment which they The EEC, of which Ireland is a member, was set up to make Industry and Agriculture profitable to ‘include: European businessmen. Only largescale industrial enterprises and large-scale farming suit these purposes. Therefore EEC policy is to force the closure of small industry, to force the small farmers off the land and by economic hardship to force all those unemployed as a result, to the big industrial centres of Europe In Britain we see how the economic domination of Ireland has forced Irish workers to go there and do the dirty jobs to build up Britain’s prosperity. In Germany at the moment hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers from Greece, Spain, Italy etc. are doing the dirty work to build up the prosperity of the multi-national companies which control the economy there.

Irish people don’t want to emigrate Few Irish workers will want to subject themselves to a new emigration surge. They have the power to stop this process, for at the moment a war is taking place in Ireland which is attacking the very basis of foreign control. It is attacking the once-secure foothold of British imperialism. In the 26 Cos. the government has backed Britain, therefore a victory over Britain in the struggle will be a victory over the 26 Co. collaborators, and over their policy of selling out the interests of There is little that can be done about the destruction of the Irish Car Assembly industry, in a world where profit is the most important thing. It is inevitable that it should go eventually but not until suitable and secure employment has been got as an alternative.

Reg Armstrong workers give the lead In the short-term, car-workers should support the lead given by the Reg Armstrong assembly workers in their sit-in at their plant in Ringsend in Dublin. They are demanding committment from the managment on the future of their jobs.

The action sub-committee of the ATGWU in a statement issued recently has made several recommendations to their union representatives concerning the immediate future of the industry. They * Call on the government to invoke the anti-dumping clause of the Treaty of Rome at once in order to halt the massive importing of fully assembled cars into Ireland.

To at once commence extensive publicity campaign to answer claims that the industry is not viable.

To at once organise the whole industry, particularly the component factories, in a militant manner for the defence of the livelihood of the workers.

* To demand from the government special provision, such as the ‘green pound’ agreement on agriculture.

Such a provision to ensure the continuation of the industry on a full working week.

* To call on the government to withdraw all import licences to any car assembly firm which ceases production in Ireland.

We demand that all cars and commercial vehicles sold in Ireland must be assembled in Ireland.

Essentially these are all- short-term demands but they show that workers must force from the government a guarantee of employment in their jobs.

It is not the workers who are to blame for the run down of the car-assembly industry. Why should the workers be asked to'pay such a bitter price for the policy of the government?

{UE FACE OF BRITISH The new British ‘Anti-terrorist’ Bill presents the true face of British democracy and standards of justice, and in the subtlety of its anti-Irish bias, makes a complete mockery of Westminster’s anti-racial legislation. For in effect what it is designed to do is to create a climate of strong anti-Irish feeling in Britain backed up by tough laws so wide-ranging in their powers, as to extend the The anger of Liam Cosgrave against the remains of James McDaid brought to Dublin on the way to Belfast, cannot be separated from the eulogies associated with the death and funeral of the late Erskine Childers Jr. Childers established a reputation for generoisity and humanity by quoting the command given to him by his father, Erskine Childers senior, Against the State Act to the U.K.

In the broader view it amounts to a rationalisation of repressive laws through the area of the lapsed Sunningdale partnership, making the work of the Common Law Enforcement Commission almost obsolete and by the swiftness and vindictiveness of its introduction, providing a whip with which to beat the submissive puppet government Special Powers Act and the Offences in Dublin — and obviously with some of Erskine junior. Such a person, turning over his materials will find the obituary articles for Arthur Griffith and for Michael Collins which Erskine senior wrote and published in ‘An Phoblacht’, of which he was the first editor. He will find also the obituary for Childers himself, written probably by Frank Gallagher.

Ironically Cosgrave Junior has jailed DEMOCRACY is already preparing to press home even more repressive laws at the behest of the British government.

by spot arrests, expulsion, seven lobby, stem not so much from the Birmingham bombings, but rather from the grim determination of the effect, for the Coalition Government The carnival of reaction constituted days detention, unlimited powers of the ordinary police constable and the bowing to the ‘hang ‘em and shoot em’

A Chara, British government to refuse to solve “he Irish question on anything but their own terms — and the terms of the extreme. right-wing at that.

This week has seen the final bankruptcy of a Labour government pledged to a just solution in Ireland. Legislation which even their own Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins describes as “‘draconian”’ and which pinpoints the large Irish working population as number one targets for the attacks of the right-wing National Front thugs.

!CRA members at RTE last Sunday

----- pull-quotes -----

CHILDERS BURIED ON THE EVE OF 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS FATHER’S EXECUTION BY COSGRAVE NO.1