Analysis
Why the Combine was unable to achieve the implementation of the Lucas Plan
This section starts with an introduction about the submission of the Alternative Plan by the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee to the Lucas Aerospace management in January 1976. It mentions the sources of evidence used for analysis, including correspondence from and to Lucas Management, Hansard, and the “Diary of Betrayal,” a CAITS document. The analysis touches upon the response from Lucas Aerospace management and their refusal to meet with the Combine.
Diary of a Betrayal
This section introduces “The Diary of Betrayal” publication, detailing events summarised in the Analysis Tab of the website, with emphasis on the opposition faced by the Combine and the Lucas Plan from various fronts including the Labour government, some national trades union officials, and Lucas Aerospace directors. The publication “Democracy versus the Circumlocution Office” is also mentioned here, with a reference to Charles Dickens’ “Little Dorrit”.
The Diary of Betrayal is a publication, click here for the full document, which details the events summarised in the Analysis Tab of this website. Following the national and international tsunami of support for the Combine and the Lucas Plan, quoting from official letters and documents, the Diary tracks how the Labour government, some national trades union officials and Lucas Aerospace directors formed and unholy alliance to defeat the Combine and the Plan (remembering that the Labour Party National Conference had already adopted unanimously’ support for the Combine and the Plan as Party policy; and that the Combine had done with great effort, what the Government’s secretary of state at the DTI had recommended!). The Diary begins in 1974 and tracks events to approximately 1979.
Democracy versus the Circumlocution Office is a publication by the Institute for Workers’ Control and covers similar territory to the Diary, click here for the full publication. Both publications are fascinating for Lucas Plan enthusiasts. The Circumlocution Office is to be found in Charles Dickens Little Dorritt:-
‘No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time, without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office….if another gunpowder plot had been discovered just half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament…….unless there had been…half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda and a family vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.’
Sounds very familiar!
Interview with
Brian Salisbury
Lowkey, Interviews former Combine chairman, Brian Salisbury
This is Brian Salisbury, one of the brilliant minds behind the Lucas Plan of 1979. You are unlikely to have heard of him or the Lucas Plan, because within it are the seeds of a radically different society. Until recently it seemed the powerful had successfully written him, his colleagues and the alternative their plan represented, out of the history books.
Yesterday, we travelled to his home where he graciously welcomed us and allowed me to interview him for our forthcoming documentary on the British arms trade. In the 1970s arms manufacturer Lucas Aerospace despite receiving millions of pounds in government subsidies was cutting jobs at a fast rate. This led Brian and his colleagues to appeal to Tony Benn for help in November 1974. They agreed on the idea of presenting Lucas Aerospace with a list of 150 socially useful products they could use their expertise and the advanced technology at their finger tips to create, rather than machines that kill people. This list included products that rely on renewable energy such as wind turbines, products that are now in common use like hybrid engines and also life saving products like dialysis machines, a shortage of which was leading to needless deaths across the country. He recounted their struggle to gain support for the plan and his meetings with academics like Stuart Hall.
This plan represented a missed opportunity for industrial democracy as Lucas Aerospace arrogantly rejected the plan. Worse than that, was the betrayal Brian and his cohorts faced from the Wilson government which not only subsidised Lucas Aerospace further and supported its cuts but dismissed the plan outright. The revolving door between arms companies and the M.O.D. was made apparent when the general manager of Lucas Aerospace Sir James Blythe went was appointed head of sales at the Ministry of Defence in 1981.
While the Lucas Plan has gone largely forgotten in corporate media dominated public sphere, we have constantly heard it brought up while making this documentary. In fact, we showed Brian footage of an interview we did with Lloyd Russell Moyle, in which he asserts that Labours Defence Diversification project for government is largely inspired by the Lucas Plan. Moyle said the adoption of something similar to the Lucas Plan was in fact an inevitability. I asked Brian if there was some poetic justice in the fact that Lucas Aerospace and its parent company no longer exist, but the plan which he and his comrades agonised over is alive and kicking. He smiled and said there was. I asked how we could hold their feet to the fire to ensure the betrayal did not repeat itself, he said clearly by building a movement from the bottom up which applies constant pressure.
The above statement was made by Lowkey the internationally famous Rapper and Activist following his interview of Brian Salisbury in January 2019.
