As Labour marches in Liverpool, Tory policy throws 10,000 more on the dole
28th November 1980 from the Tribune Magazine Archive
Topics
Labor, PoliticsOrganisations
National Executive Committee, Labour Party, Transport and General Workers' Union, Tory Government, Liverpool City CouncilPeople
Eddie Loyden, Keith Joseph, Brewery, Jack Stopworth, ROBERT WAREING, Margaret ThatcherLocations
London, Liverpoolby ROBERT WAREING (President, Liverpo01 District Labour Party) THE first great national demonstration against unemployment to be held outside London is scheduled to take place in Liverpool on Saturday, November 29.
Called by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, it has created a great interest among all sections of the Labour movement on Merseyside.
Although suffering along with most other regions of the country — even those which until very recently were labelled affluent — from the Tory policies of Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph, Merseysiders have lived with double the national unemployment rate for several decades.
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Even during the "never had it so good" Harold Macmillan years, the area was afflicted by what the economists euphemistically called "pocket' unemployment. Here was an unemployment blackspot in an otherwise, fully employed economy. Now the rest of Britain is preparing to converge on Merseyside to illustrate that its workers are not the sole sufferers from Thatcherism.
With a 14 per cent unemployment rate, Merseysiders can claim to be among the hardesthit victims of the capitalist • ecnomic recession made harsher by the reversion of the present Government to nineteenth-century economic concepts. In parts of the inner city of Liverpool, one in three have looked in vain for work, the yoUng black population being particularly severely hit.
At Kirkby on• the outskirts of Liverpool is to be found the worst problem of youth unemployment in Europe. Now the disease is spreading to engulf other parts of the region, such as Ellesmere Port and St Helens, which had previously largely escaped.
A year ago it was possible to find at least one large factory a week announcing redundancy plans; today it is a matter of several proposed closures every day.
In one evening's edition of the local Liverpool Echo it- is rare not to be able to read of a number of firms shedding labour. Four such stories appeared in its pages on Friday, November 7 telling of almost 10,000 jobs about to disappear.
In the case of the threatened closure of Tate and Lyle's sugar refinery, the refusal of the Government to support calls for a cut in EEC sugar beet quotas was blamed, while Plessey Telecommunications' planned axing of 2,000 jobs over five years was said to be a consequence of the firm moving to greater levels of automated production.
It was, however, the economic recession and the Tory Government's policies which were causing the jobs of glass workers in St Helens and employees of ICL at Winsford to go. United Glass was planning to off-load 290 workers at two of its St Helens plants. These factories manufacture wine and pint glasses and whisky bottles.
A drop in whisky sales and the loss of export. markets because of the false overvaluation of the pound were being quoted as the- root of the trouble. Already 1,250 jobs have been lost in the St Helens glass container industry during the past 12 months.
In many ways it was the news from Winsford which made the worst reading. Here was the proposed closure of ICL's micro-electronics plant, and with it 1,200 jobs. As Merseyside's marketing manager, Jack Stopworth, was quoted as say. ing, "The area can't afford to lose jobs of this type- — our hope had been to replace jobs lost in traditional forms of employment with advanced 'technology jobs such as those at ICL.": Around 2,500 workers (10 per. cent of its workforce) are likely to lose their jobs — a substantial proportion of Winsford's working population, many of whom were drawn to the town from Liverpool on the promise of jobs and houses.
Labour Party members, trade unionists, and the unemployed arriving in Liverpool on November 29 can be sure of "a hospitable Merseyside welcome — apart, that is, from the Liberal and Tory - councillors who dominate Liverpool City Council.
They have refused to give the demonstration their support and have turned down the request of the Labour Group , on the City Council that refreshments and free transport be provided for the demonstrators out of the Lord Mayor's civic hospitality fund.
As former Labour MP Eddie Loyden said, £1 ,000 of ratepayers' money could be- found to entertain Higson's Brewery, businessmen and magistrates, so the fund should now be used to provide for some of the needs of those demonstrating for- the right to work.
Amass meeting of shop stewards at the Liverpool offices of the Transport and General Workers' Union laid the plans for the local reception of workers arriving by rail at the city's Edge Hill and Lime Street stations, as well as those coming by road.
Unlike marches from Hyde Park t-o Trafalgar Square. this one will be through some of Liverpool's working-class areas and unemployment black spots.
The route includes the multi-racial district of Toxteth. and the council flats of Edge Hill as well as the city centre. It should give some heart and hope to those who are near to despair. local residents who are among the casualties of the Tory Government's policies.