The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 3

HOME NEWS THE GUARDIAN Saturday December 13 1980 3 MacGregor's 'rescue' proposals will shed 20,000 jobs, cut steelmaking capacity arid aims at prof itability by 1982-83. But, as Michael Smith reports, the corporation's chairman views any failure to meet this as the beginning of its liquidation BSC's corporate plan seen as last chance for survival Distington, Workington, ingot mould foundry to close and 400 jobs lost Templeborough Works, Rotherham, will be run down on a restricted basis and 1,600 jobs will go Shotton, coking capacity to be -reduced by closing ovens and 500 jobs will be lost 41 Hartlepool, coking capacity will also be reduced by closing ovens, with the loss of 400 jobs Orgreave and Brockhouse will continue until alternative fuel arrangements are made for works in the Sheffield area Velindrc tinplate works, Swansea, will be reduced to a one-shift operation with the loss of 1,000 jobs. Mr MacGregor estimated that these 'measures and planned marketing efforts, would lead to an increased use of manned steelmaking capacity, from 64 per cent last October to well over 90 per cent in the year-ending March 31, 1982. The plan also sets targets which, he said, must be achieved if the business is to survive and salvage the remaining jobs. Mr MacGregor said the plan seeks to regain pre-strike domestic market share of 54 per cent by aggressive marketing and pricing and by improving, quality and deliveries.

Second, the BSC intends to increase exports above recent levels, although it is accepted that they will remain below previous peak levels. Third, the plan sets out to improve BSC's iron, steelmaking and mill activities through better working practices, elimination of over-manning, less absenteeism and unnecessary overtime, as well as improved scheduling and maintenance. Mr MacGregor's plan also makes it plain that BSC will press the Government for further substantial reductions in energy costs. BSC will also ask the Government to ease the burden of interest charges currently running at almost 200 million a year by transferring a large slice of. existing debt to equity.

The plan' emphasises that success depends on four critical factors The co-operation and dedication of all BSC's workers, including management Rapid implementation of the scheduled closures and the programmes for improving productivity The anticipated market developing, particularly in re Mr Ian MacGregor's corporate plan for the British Steel Corporation, outlined formally for the first time yesterday, is designed to restore the bankrupt organisation to profitability and relieve the burden on taxpayers by 1982-83. He says rejection or failure of the plan would lead to the liquidation of BSC. In attempting ito salvage the bulk of the BSC, Mr Mac-Gregor is reducing the workforce by a further 20,000 and cutting annual steelmaking capacity for IS million tonnes to 14.4 million tonnes. The aim is to achieve significant reductions in operating costs and improve efficiency in a bid to halt the spiral of huge losses, which in 1980-81 may approach 600 million. This follows a 544 million deficit last year.

Mr MacGregor said further reductions in capacity were necessary because of insufficient demand for steel. However, he made it clear that many manpower reductions will be achieved through improved efficiencies rather than closures. Since last March the workforce has been reduced from 166,400 to 140,400. Forty four thousand jobs have gone since September 1979. The plants directly affected by the plan are 0 Normanby Park Works, Scunthorpe, will close with the loss of 2,500 jobs Appleby-Frodingham No.

1 rod mill, Scunthorpe, to be closed and 250 jobs lost Lackeriby Works bar Middlesbrough, to be closed with the loss of 250 jobs Ebbw Vale 4-stand cold mill to close and 400 jobs lost spect of price and volume; and The continued support of BSC by the Government. The plan was drawn up against a background of a sharp- deterioration in BSCs already-poor financial position. Its trading loss between last April and September was 187 million and after adding in a further 92 million in interest charges, the pre-tax deficit stood at 279 million. Mr. MacGregor said the deterioration arose from reduced consumption of steel, aggravated by loss of market share and price competition.

Increased penetration of the UK market by overseas producers during the steel strike earlier this year had had a serious impact on trade. BSC deliveries were down by 27 per cent, despite some re While the BSC is reportedly making strenuous efforts to recapture lost market share, Mr MacGregor said yesterday that since September there had been a further weakening of demand, accompanied by verv severe price competition. It was hoped that the EEC quota and price proposals would help restore stability. Mr MacGregor said the outlook was bleak and the trading result for the second half-vear from October 1980 to March 1981 was bleak, with financial results likely to be worse than those in the opening six months. In his Introduction to the plan, Mr MacGregor warns that if BSC failed to achieve the targets now set, contingency plans for a liquidation of portions of the business would be promptly implemented.

covery of market share, and production was curtailed by 36 per cent in a bid to balance stocks to the lower level of. demand and also reduce borrowings. Total liquid steel production in the six months to September 30 was down to 6.1 million tonnes from a corresponding 9.5 million tonnes and 14.1 million tonnes produced in the whole of. the previous financial year. Steel deliveries fell from 5.4 million tonnes to 4.1 million tonnes in the home market and export deliveries were cut back to 1 million tonnes from a corresponding 1.6 million.

But the half-year trading statement, produced alongside the MacGregor plan, contains no provision for meeting the huge redundancy and closure costs already implemented. TEESSIDE Areas claim they are being sacrificed of the Normanby' Park works employing 2,500 and a rod mill with 250, is the second serious reverse in 18 months. Since March 1979, when the recession began to bite, steel employment has fallen from 18,200 to just over 13,000 before yesterday's announcement. At the same time Scunthorpe's unemployment rate has overtaken the national average to reach 10.2 per cent with 6,570 out of work. Everything has turned upside down," said Mr Geof-frey Chambers, manager of the town's job centre.

Up to 15 months ago we were importing labour but we have been handling redundancies every month since the steel strike and BSC has not notified us of a single vacancy since December 1979. So far the redundancies have been mainly volunteers over 60 but the news is catastrophic. I can see no light at the end of the tunnel. We are isolated here with the nearest town, Doncaster, 29 miles away. Many smaller firms have relied on a viable steel corporation and people like lorry drivers have already been having a very rough time." The town of Scunthorpe with its population of 67,000 which developed after the discovery of iron ore in Lincolnshire in 1859 is to keep, for the time being at least, the main Appleby Froddingham steel works.

The works was the core of a BSC project in which hundreds of millions of pounds have been invested in recent years. By Peter Hildrew Scunthorpe and Teesside have been picked on to bear the brunt of the steel redundancies because large cuts in Scotland and South Wales would have been too hot for the Government, a local union leader alleged last night. Mr Stanley Sheridan, chairman of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation committee at Scunthorpe, said Unless we accept this as a declaration of war. we are on a hiding to nothing because we know there is another phase to come. This is a body blow to the town but it comes as no surprise to me and unless we make a stand now the rest will be plain sailing.

They are demanding complete flexibility yet they have been quite clear that unless things pick up the whole lot will close." Mr James Pearson, who chairs the Scunthorpe steelworks action committee, said, This is a political move and I am disgusted at what Mr MacGregor is doing. He is tearing the place down bit by bit. We warned that this was going to happen and there is more to come. If the unions do not fight it we are going to lose the whole town." Teesside is to lose 3,700 jobs and Scunthorpe about 4,000 in a parallel cutback of the British Steel Corporation's two general steel producing areas. Mr Sheridan described this as "playing one off against the other." The Scunthorpe reduction, including the complete closure YORKSHIRE the British Steel chairman talking, relaxing and time-watching at yesterday's press conference.

Many faces of MacGregor WALES Pictures by Frank Martin SCOTLAND Loss of further 5,000 jobs will not guarantee survival Perform for the Port Talbot and Llanwern plants or die' at Port Talbot and Llanwern. Now a further 700 are planned at Port Talbot and 232 at Llanwern. At the same time output will be increased from an annual 1.4 to 1.7 million tonnes at both works. Britain's nationalised tinplate industry is centred at three four because of a slump in orders. The Commons select committee on Welsh affairs warned recently of possible social unrest if one of the big Welsh steel works was to close, but Mr Allen denied that such fears had influenced BSC's plan.

Mr Allen said he was confi- plants in South Wales which are to lose 2,782 jobs. The Velindre works near Swansea and the Ebbw Vale plant will each sack more than 1,000 workers while the third plant at Trostre near Llanelli will lose more than 100 production jobs. All three are operating three weeks in every Shotton coke ovens to close 2,618 jobs to be axed By Paul Hoyland The Welsh industry which has already lost 24,000 jobs in the past three years now faces the loss of another 5,000, more than half of them in the tin-plate section. But these latest cuts will not guarantee the survival of the Port Talbot and Llanwern steel works. Their future will be reassessed in six months.

Mr Peter Allen, managing director of BSC Strip Mill Products, which includes the two major Welsh plants and that at Ravenscraig in Scotland, said in Cardiff yesterday that unless performance was improved and a greater share of the steel market won further contraction was inevitable. The strip mill group would then reduce from a three to a two plant operation, he warned. No decision had been taken as to which of the three plants would then be in jeopardy, but the performance of each works in the next six months would be a significant factor to be taken into consideration. A year ago the board announced 11,300 redundancies dent of getting union cooperation for the cuts. He recognised that the plan would result in further individual and community hardship and everything would be done to support remedial action.

Mr John Foley, South Wales divisional officer for the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, the largest steel union, said that although the redundancies were painful he was relieved no plants were to close in his area. But Mr Gwynfor Evans, Plaid Cymru's president, urged a- fight against the proposed job losses. Wales had had more than its fair share of steel cuts since 1974, he said. Mr Ian Kelsall, director of the CBI in Wales, said that the cuts seemed inevitable but that there was serious concern about unemployment in the Swansea and Llanelli areas which were particularly hit by tinplate redundancies. Mr Hubert Morgan, secretary of the Labour Party in Wales, said that there was bitter disappointment.

''The party will campaign to fight the cuts." An island of wrath, page 17 By Peter Helherington SCOTLAND has been given a six months breathing space to prove itself before the British Steel Corporation decides on a second phase of cutbacks. Mr Len Itaby, director of the Ravenscraig complex at Motherwell centre of Scottish steelmaking said the industry north of the border was in with a chance if it approached an initial target of 2 million tons of steel annually. But the picture was grim if this was not reached. "We have to perform or die," he said. Nevertheless BSC says that 640 jobs will have to go by early next year to bring Ravenscraig and its subsidiary plants in line with international staffing standards." But the Scottish officer of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, Mr Clive Lewis, said that up to 1,000 workers would probably lose their jobs.

BSC employs 11,000 workers in Scotland. By our Correspondent The coke ovens at the British Steel Corporation's Shot-ton works on Deeside in North Wales are to be closed, throwing 500 men out of work. In addition, 400 jobs will go in other departments, making a total of 900 redundancies. The cuts, announced yesterday, are part of chairman Mr Ian MacGregor's BSC survival plan. A year ago nearly 11.000 worked at the plant.

With the ending of steel-making and other reductions, the workforce today numbers less than 3,500 engaged in coking and finish ing steel and making coke on the battery of ovens. Now it will sink to about 2,500. Deeside's jobless total is 7,250 nearly 15 per cent. The BSC plans to reduce steel capacity nationally will inevitably mean that demand for coke will fall. Shotton can produce 5,000 tonnes a week, but a huge stockpile is building up at -the plant.

Some estimates put the size of the coke mountain at more than 100,000 tonnes. The chances of finding "work in the area are gloomy. A survey of 6,658 Shotton workers made redundant in the past 12 months shows that 4,043 (61 per cent) are still unemployed. A total of 1,515 (23 per cent) have found work and a mere 154 (2 per cent) have taken the plunge and become self-employed. A dozen have emigrated and 672 (10 per cent) have opted for retirement.

The BSC's undertaking of March 1977 that steel making at Shotton would continue until 1982 an undertaking abandoned a year ago still rankles. Not surprisingly, Deeside steel men remained apprehensive yesterday in the face of that particular U-turn. comes on stream in two months time. The Sheffield divisional chief. Mr John Pennington, warned last night: "If we are to survive we must be competitive and efficient.

If the plan is put at risk we might have to take much more drastic action than is proposed at the moment." In Rotherham there was a feeling that things could have been a lot worse. Nevertheless the cuts will be fought. Mr Maurice Wolstenhohn ISTC executive committee member from Rotherham said thdre was no doubt there would be resistance. Sheffield and Rotherham are to lose 2,618 jobs under the BSC plan. The breakdown: Rotherham works, 1,790 jobs, Stocksbridge and Tirsley Park 626: Central Services 202.

The Tirsley Park bar mill will lose 170 jobs out of a workforce of less than 250 as the present 15 shifts a week are slashed to five. Three out of four electric arc furnaces at the Temple-borough plant will -be put into mothballs. The fourth will be used to supply a newly installed billet-casting machine which OBITUARY BL to announce fate of disciplined Longbridge workers on Monday told of the company's final de missed, 250 night shift workers waiKea out on strike. The dispute was defused 24 hours Kaiser's daughter Viktoria Luise, only daughter of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II, died yesterday from a heart and lung ailment in hospital in Hanover, West By Paul Johnson British Leyland is expected to reiterate its decision to sack nine workers and suspend two others when the hearing of their appeals is reconvened on Monday. The 11 were disciplined fol later when BL agreed to give the disciplined employees eight days in which to appeal.

Longbridge this week produced 5,220 cars more than in any week since March, 1975. The output included 3,532 cision on tneir future. The nine were sacked after what was described as a rampage through the plant when Metros were damaged, windows broken and the main administrative block occupied. The demonstration took place after 500 men were told that they were being laid off because of a dispute on another section of the Metro assembly line. BL said later that those dismissed had all been found guilty of gross industrial misconduct." When the nine were dis- Uermany.

was 88, Viktoria Luise was the Kaiser's last surviving Metros. Tne rest was made up of Minis and Allegros. Workers at Leyland Vehi lowing a demonstration at BL's Longbridge plant in Birmingham. Seven of the nine who appeared before the hearing yesterday were shop stewards. With them were their union representatives.

The other two will go before the panel on Monday and all those concerned will then be cles' five Lancashire factories Most royal houses in Europe are expected to attend the funeral services in Brunswick Cathedral The popular Viktoria Luise based on Leyland and Chorley, where 1,400 workers are to be made redundant in the next four months, have accepted a 7.3 per cent pay award- Pledge on the Ripper By Michael Parkin The Home Secretary, Mr William Whitelaw, yesterday promised West Yorkshire police his total support in their hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, who has killed 13 women in five years. "All the resources that can be found for it will be found," he said after visiting the Ripper squad at Mill-garth Divisional Police Headquarters at Leeds. Mr Whitelaw was giving an open air press conference with his words sometimes drowned by 12 women demonstrators chanting Curse you for all men and Free the Maw sisters the two Bradford women sent to prison for lulling their drunken father. Mr Whitelaw said he had visited Leeds to tell the Chief Constable, Mr Ronald Gregory, and his officers that he had complete confidence in them and in the work they were doing. The decision to bring in an advisory team of four senior police officers and a forensic scientist to help the Ripper squad had belonged entirely to the Chief Constable, he said.

During his visit to the Hipper squad, Mr Whitelaw was shown some of the thousands of "Help us Find the Ripper posters that have been shown all over West Union members get cheap BL loans Vigil for Lennon Hunt saboteurs refuse to obey order Four hunt saboteurs were By David Leigli Trade union leaders yesterday launched a novel offer of cheap loans to trade unionists who buy BL cars. The patriotism is not new but a cash incentive to help workers save each other's jobs breaks new ground. Under the scheme, which offers 8 million members of almost 50 unions savings of between 50 and 175 on a two-year loan, BL hopes to sell another 50,000 cars next year. This would push BL's market share un from 22.5 ner ruled tne uueny of Brunswick until her husband's abdication in 1918 while Duke Ernst August and his troops served at the western front during World War I. She wrote several, books, with some them reaching a circulation of over 100,000.

This earned her so much money that she declined allowances paid her. by the family estate. Jean Lesage, former premier Jean Lesage, a former premier of Quebec and father of the "quiet revolution" that modernised the French-speaking Canadian province in the 1960s, died in his sleep at his home late on Thursday, aged 68, it was announced yesterday. Ex-premier dies, page 6. given prison sentences yesterday after refusing to be bound over to keep the peace, But the sentences were suspended scheme's organisers, said yes-terinty Our objective is to use trade union organisation as a selling platform for BL cars on terms which will benefit our unions and benefit us all by keeping jobs." The major trade union leaders have negotiated a deal under which BL Finance, 80 per cent owned by Lombard North Central, will provide ,10.75 per cent loans to buy new BL cars and 11.75 per cent loans to buy second hand cars from BL dealers.

This compares with a market rate of 12 to 16 per cent for new cars and 2 per cent more for finance to buy second hand cars. The union leaders believe they are offering the cheapest loans for second hand cars. The scheme will be promoted with Union Jack motifs at BL dealers' premises and advertisements in factories and union newspapers. The union leaders could not negotiate a flat discount on BL car prices for their members. Dealers and distributors clearly cannot offer additional special inducements to trade unionists because they have not got any spare resources left," Mr Grantham said.

"BL is already involved in cutting prices to the bone." They are prepared to offer the same deal for other British cars if manufacturers such as Ford are willing to step up production cott, 21, of Birkenhead, Mr Roger Thorn, 18, of Sutton Cold-field, Mr Geoffrey Lewis, 18. of Birmingham and Mr David Callender, 21, of New Brighton were told they were in contempt. Mr Alan Vickers, prosecuting, said the anti-blood sport campaigners had used sprays to throw the hounds off the scent and also used horns and whistles to confuse the hounds. The saboteurs told the court that they had been assaulted by the Master of the Hunt, Mr Maurice Bell. PROTECTED by a bulletproof vest, Mark David Chapman, alleged assassin of John Lennon, is surrounded by prison officers (above) as he enters a psychiatric centre in New York.

The Mayor's office announced yesterday that New York City, where Lennon spent the last five years of his life, will organise a prayer vigil for him in Central Park on Sunday. It wiil start at 7 pm Greenwich meantime pending appeal. The four were among 14 men and women who attempted to disrupt a meet of the Wensleydale Fox Hunt All denied conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. But when Hang West magistrates a Leyburn, West attempted to bind them over, four refused. The four Mr Craig Gro- cent, following the successful launch of the Mini Metro, to 25 per cent.

Mr Roy Grantham, general secretary of APEX, one of the.