Support
the steel unionsSupport
the steel unionsIndustry Secretary Stephen Byers expressed his anger over the fact that Corus management had given him the details of its jobs massacre only one hour before the stock market was informed.
Corus treated the government as irrelevant because Mr Byers and the government as a whole have paraded their irrelevance as an article of faith.
"Don't ask us. we're only the government" has been their response to companies swinging the axe against jobs in Britain's manufacturing sector.
At every stage, it has stressed that these matters are the business of the companies concerned rather than of the government.
Even now, following all the company's contemptuous attitude to them, all that government ministers have done is to ask the company chairman to think again.
The unions are correct to insist that the closures and jobs cuts are unnecessary and that Llanwern can make steel more productively than the plant in the Netherlands from which Corus plans to import steel to meet the market currently covered by Llanwern's output.
They are correct to say that the company's butchery will result in more steel imports, a worrying balance of payments and devastation for entire communities.
Corus workers deserve more than the crocodile tears or tea and sympathy now washing over them.
They need a fighting lead from the government that most of them voted for, which will insist on Llanwern, Ebbw Vale and Shotton being kept open, irrespective of the attitude of the Corus chairman or the European Commission.
Production of steel must be maintained as part of a coherent industrial plan to meet society's needs rather than the narrow profits agenda of company shareholders.
The fashionable, almost mystical, obsesion with market forces as the sole way to guide the economy is being exposed daily as no more scientifc than a snake-oil salesman's potion.
Government ministers should abandon their fascination for the supposed genius of the rich figureheads of big business.
There is nothing mystical about their ability to make super-profits and to receive huge bonuses and dividends. Their wealth is created by working people whose reward for making others rich is to be thrown on the scrap-heap.
The government must back the steel unions against corporate greed. There is no third way.
Corus bosses let the cat out of the bag when, in dismissing the bid by steel community union ISTC to run the Llanwern plant, they said that they didn't "want competition."
Many people suspected that this was the underlying basis for the merger between Dutch company Hoogovens and British Steel.
It was carried out to minimise competition by closing down Llanwern and other sites in order to protect shoreholders value.
In classic capitalist style, eschewing any of the usual rhetoric about partnership, Corus pays out £700 million in dividends to its shareholders and the bill is picked up by 10,000 Welsh steel workers sent up the road.
After the massacre of the south Wales coal industry in the 1980s, the last thing required was such a body blow to steel.
Closing Llanwern's blast furnace will leave the remaining finishing plant dependant on outside supplies of hot metal, as and when required by the company, and it is difficult to see a long-term future for this truncated site.
Once again,the government's response to industrial disaster has been less than convincing.
The offer to "sit down with the company and see what other forms of support we can offer" is an inadequate response to a very serious situation.
If EU rules stand in the way of what it wants to do, it should disregard those rules, as other member states do.
More importantly, it should make clear to Corus that its conduct is unacceptable and that it will not be allowed to abondon Llanwern, Ebbw Vale and Shotton without any responsibility for its effects on Wales.
A Labour government must stand up for working people's rights against transnational corporations rather than appearing as an ineffectual bystander or as an apologist for corporate arrogance
According to 'New Labour', governments can't provide jobs. Blair and Brown reckon that the 'market' and big business know best. All government can do is to bribe transnational corporations to invest in Britian.
That's why New Labour are keeping most of the Tory anti-trade union laws, why they are privatising schools, prisons and air traffic control - and why they want to take Britain into the Single European Currency.
Bankers and big business want the euro because it makes it easier for them to invest abroad. It is part of the strategy of privatisation and public sector cuts to be policed by the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Workers across Britain suffer as competition drives down wages and conditions - and destroys jobs.
It's private ownership that isn't working. The capitalist jungle - dominated by the giant monopolies - cannot provide secure, fulfilling and well paid jobs for working people. The alternative is to start facing up to the bankers and big corporations, to take back control of the British economy.
That's why we need AN ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIC STRATEGY, including:
Fighting for the Alternative Economic Strategy would unite millions of people against the capitalist monopolies, for a change of government policy. It would open the road to socialism, where full employment and production are planned for the public good. This is the Communist Party's alternative to crisis-ridden capitalism.