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LEGISLATION TUE & FUTURE OF UNIONS The trade union and Labour Movement scored a tremendous victory in forcing the Labour Government to climb down over its proposed anti-trade union legislation. The accumulation of opposition forces: from the bedrock of the Labour Movement itself forced them to retreat. To have gone ahead with the punitive clauses in "In Place of Strife" would have resulted in an irreparable breach between the Labour leaders and their base in the Labour Movement. Thus, the "Times", organ of the dominant sections of the British ruling class, correctly summed up the situation and the array of forces against the Government's measures: "Not only practically the whole trade union movement but also a majority of the Labour Party Executive, a large number of trade union and other backbenchers in Parliament and even some members of the Cabinet." The ruling class had itself been warned of the consequences of legislation at this stage actually being applied. The mere production of the White Paper had resulted in a storm of opposition which produced the massive one-day protest strikes. The May Day, strike involved wer 200,000 workers. Together with the February 27th strike, this was the first directly political strike on any big scale since the 1926 General Strike. In addition, the General Council of the I.U.C. were forced to call an emergency congress, the they only needed to look at Australia, where similar legislation had resulted in a mass strike wave in the last few months. Why, then, have certain sections of the ideologwesof the capitalist class increasingly flirted with the idea of legislation against the unions in the last few years - a suggestion eagerly clutched at by Wilson and the Labour leaders as a supposed election winner? The explanation is to be found in the present parlous state of British capitalism and the attempt to offset this by clipping the power of the unions. POWER OF UNIONS One consequence of the postwar economic upswing was to bring about a certain softening of social relations for a whole period. But as Marx pointed resulted in a massive extension and strengthening of the power of the unions. Whole new layers of workers, formerly standing outside the ranks of the organised trade union movement, have been drawn in. Thus, we have increasingof the undermining of the social reserves of capitalism is given by the recently announced Transport and General Workers' Union's drive to organise the ranks of the Army into the union. This in turn has been as a result of the example of the successful organisation of German soldiers by the Transport Union there. One of the reasons for the increased militancy and unionisation of the white-collar and unorganised sections has been the increasing tendency for the 10 By Peter Taaffe first : of its kind cinco I920.
out, "reality always has two sides"
And as if they were not convinced by this, • Because at the same time the boom has
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various postwar governments, certainly since 1960, to unload the consequences rf the slowing-down of the economy on their backs. Commencing with the 1961 wage freeze, the Tory Government, faced with the increased combativity of the manual workers, more rigorously applied itself to the task of holding down the civil servants, teachers and nurses Another. factor forcing them into the ranks of the unions has been the application of factory methods and conditions to white-collar workers, especially those employed in the big combines. Even the top executives, faced with the ruthless pace of monopolisation, and consequent redundancy, have been rushing to join ASTMS, which of the fastest-growing unions in Britain, with 2000 recruits a month. Overall there has been an approximate doubling ci union membership since At the same time, there has been the growth and strengthening of the workers' shop floor organisations. In 1966 there were almost 150,000 shop stewards in unions affiliated to the T.U.C., a vast increase since the interwar period. This process has also involved the white-collar workers, with 20% of the total shop floor representatives of those unions affiliated to the T.U.C. coming from these sections. With increased numbers has come power. In the face of this, the employers have been forced to acquiesce to the demands of the workers. Some quasi-Marxists, such as the International Socialists, have drawn the conclusion that the strikes are indicative of a lowering of militancy and a sign of weakness in union organisation. Precisely the opposite is true. In the interwar period the working class were forced to engage in long-drawn-out battles, in a period of mass unemployment, in defence of their meagre standards. Since the war, once organised workers have deployed their power At the same time, the workers have more and more encroached on the formerly "divine rights" of management. In the big combines in particular, this has resulted in the shop floor determining overtime ratios, canteen facilities, and in some cases the use and deployment of the labour force in the factory, i.e, so-called "restrictive practices". Faced with the a whole period, the capitalists were forced to tolerate the extension of "another power", continually counterposing itself to that of management and ceaselessly interfering and hamstring ng "management prerogatives". root in the factories. But with the increasing difficulties capitalism, particularly marked since the beginning of the '60s, the. British bourgeoisie have sought to deal with the power of the unions. This has been imperatively imposed by the increasing tendency of the of profit to fall. More and more it has become necessary for the capitalists to hamper the unions in the attempt to cut the working class' share in Thus, for a whole period the representatives of the capitalists, first to bring this about. Overnight, the "never-had-it-so-good" Tory Party. was converted to this concept - "we are all planners now", said Macmillan. But 11 1930. It is now 42% of the total labour force.
increased of :
the capitalists have usually been forced might of the union organisation'
Through the shop stewards' conmittees so the surplus produced by their labour.
COLLAPSE of all under the guise of "planning"
is one short duration to accede to most of their demands.
an with a sellers' market for labour, for lonents of qual, owir h-ve taken ot British rate OF PIE , toe. the Incomes Policy, endeavoured
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12 the real purpose of the Incomes Policy has been clearly illustrated by the work of the Prices and Incomes Board. In its latest review of the whole period since it was established, it shows the benefits to the capitalists which have accrued from its work of holding down wage claims. Thus, in its table on earnings, it is revealed that "wage costs"to the capitalists have been kept significantly lower than prior to its establishment, rising by only 2.4% in 1968 compared to a 3.1% average for the years 1957-66. At the same time, productivity per worker has rapidly increased; 4% in 1968 compared, to the 2.9% increase in the year 1967 or 2.2% average for the years 1957-66. Thus there tas resulted a piling up of greater and greater profits for the capitalists and an increased super-exploitation of the working class. One giant monopoly, I.C.I., increased its profits by 50% in 1968 (Company Journal). On the other hand, the working class, faced with an accelerated rise in the cost of living, has been forced to eat into its already meagre leisure time by overtime, women working, etcl, in order to maintain standards. Thus the AiE.F. revealed in January that there has been an enormous extension of overtime in the past three decades. Overall, whereas an average of only 30 minutes was worked thirty years ago, it is now something like six hours a week, giving the British worker a working year some nine weeks longer than his Swedish counterpart. In the manufacturing concerns, employing more than 11 workers, over one third were forced to work overtime (D.E.P.figures). In order to redress the balance, the industrial workers in particular took to the road of struggle. Thus in the key industries of the docks, engineering and the motor industry, there was an upsurge of industrial struggle in 1968. This has been carried over into 1969 with the Incomes Policy being blown sky-high in one dispute after another. In the first four months of 1969, according to official statistics, there was a sharp increase in the number of workers involved in strikes, in the car industry, 112,500 against 63,600 in a similar period last year. It was to deal with what the spokesmen called the "strike-prone" industries, in the modern capitalist sections, i.e. the "metal-working" complex of industries, that the ideaof anti-strike laws was canvassed. This sector employs one quarter of the total labour force and accounts for one third of the "export earnings". The strategists of capital have seen these workers, with the increasing degree of militancy shown by them, as an obstacle to them competing in the cut-throat with their rivals on the world market.
battles •Foreseeing the collapse of the restraining functions of the Incomes Policy, a section of the ruling class increasingly flirted with the idea of the State, their State, legislating to höld back the workers' movement. They have clutched at a straw to extricate themselves from the difficulties they have faced in the confrontation with the working class. Rather than demonstrating the strength of the capitalists, it has in fact indicated the opposite. Unable to put over their stamp in the factories they have appealed to the State to do the job for them. Barbara Castle and the Labour Leaders were themselves forced to admit this in their White Paper. "It is because employers do not in fact use what legal power they have against unofficial strikers that some have suggested a very-for reaching role for the Government,... taking from the employers the responsibility." (Parograph 89) But then the Labour leaders proceeded to obediently attempt to carry out the task which the capitalists wére unable to complete. In so doing, they have echoed all the malicious propaganda of the ruling class as they have attempted to picture the
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13 working class as the main culprit for the crisis facing the British economy. So-called "unofficial" strikers were specially marked out as "saboteurs" of the "national interest". Strikes were, it seemed, the only obstacle to a flourishing economy • STRIKES HEMPLOYERS DISTORTIONS In answer to this, even the official union leadership have shown that strike action only accounts for a small proportion of days lost in industry. Thus the General Secretary of the T.U.C., Victor Feather, showed in his speech to the June Emergency Conference of the T.U.C. that a mere, one-tenth of one per cent in gross national product is lost through strikes. Professer Turner, in his booklet "Is Britain Strike-Prone?" explodes every one of the myths as to the responsibility of the working class for economic crisis through strike action. This booklet, moreover, is a searing indictment of the employers' methods, the double-dealing and cheating used by them in order to bring pressure for action against the unions. The main points in the booklet should be reproduced in every union, a clear explanatory foreword added, and distributed to every shop steward, union branch secretary and through them to the union membership as a whole. It would have high educational value as a means of showing that it is in fact the employers who are responsible for "industrial anarchy" and not the workers. As an example of the duplicity of the employers in relation to the number of strikes in the car industry, Turner says: "In their evidence to the Donovan Commission, the car manufacturers' representatives stated that they had been informed of, on average, over 600 strikes a year in the car factories from 1962 to October 1965; a study by the present writer showed that there had been less than 100 strikes a year during this period in terms of the official definition - the overwhelming majority of the incidents included in the manufacturers' own Statistics being very miniscule affairs indeed (one firm appeared to have counted shop stewards coming back late from lunch-hour committee meetings as being on strike)!!! He also shows that if the American definition of atrikes ward used, omiting some small strikes, even the White Paper's assertion that there are 16.8 stoppages per 100,000 empIcyces, compared to 13.2 in the United States would have been reduced to 11 ior Britain, Thus, despite the punitive legislation in America, there is a greater frequency of strikes than here with a greater number involved. Moreover, the time lost in Britain through strikes "averages something like one hour per head of the working population". Compared to the enormous wastage arising from the bloody carnage in factory accidents, the illness and disease, not to mention the unemployment, arising from the chaos of capitalism, this is a drop in the the worker is lost per year. And according to a recent report, in the "Financial Times", "industry (i.e, the capitalists) is blamed for accentuating the effects of rheumatism in workers. Absence caused by rheumatia disease was highest where men had to work in awkward positions, had to lift heavy weights or had to make some effort with their backs." Many of the so-called "unconstitutional" strikes are to prevent the ruining of the workers! health, lack of safety equipment and general bad and unsafe conditions which exist in industry at the present time. With incrensed unemployment over the 1964 figure alone, there has been 12 times the days lost through strikes last year.
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14 But notwithstanding these damning indictments of the stystem, until balked by the opposition of the Labour Movement, the Labour Leaders and their supporters in the Parliamentary Labour Party paraded the usual "lawyers school" arguments..." If the employers can be legislated against why not the working class also.. bringing the law into industrial relations". etc. Thus did Willlowie vice chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party argue in a debate with a MILITANT speaker at a recent YS London day school. He no doubt reflected a widespread sentiment amongst Labour MPs. No wonder then that Harold Macmillan in his recent memoirs summing up his attitude towards some of the Labour representatives approvingly quoted Canning "I do not fear firebrands in this House. As soon as they touch its floor they hiss and are extinguished". A big section of the Labour MPs with little experience of the daily problems facing the workers in the workshops have drawn away from the people they are supposed to be representing. They have forgetten even the elementary history of the struggle to build the Labour Movement. The law was ruthlessly applied by the ruling class against the pioneers of the Labour Movement. The most refined legal jargon out of the mouths of bewigged lawyers and judges were used to justify open class oppression; the whip, transportation etc. to stamp out the first beginnings of Trade Unionism. The Labour Party was itself formed out of the struggle against the reactionary Taff Vale judgement, a measure applied for class reasons. The judges, lawyers, etc. are drawn from the ranks of the ruling class and their outlook is determined by the dominant capitalist ideas of the time. A graphic illustration of the role of so called "neutral" arbitrators is the work of "Sir" Jack Scamp. Appointed as an arbitrator in the car industry, he is now the personell officer of GEEC. In this latter capacity he has attempted to put over the recently anounced massive redundancies to the GEEC workers. By buffeting his car on a recent protest demonstration ten thousand Liverpool workers indicated that they knew which side of the fence he was on Where a judgement has been given against the employers it has been again because of naked cash calculation by them and their legal hangers on. The Fords case was one example which resulted in a victory for the Unions because it would have produced a greater determination by the workers to stick it out if the decision would have gone the other way. The DIRECTOR, no friend of the Labour Movement, in commenting on the case said "legal action probably made the dispute more, rather than less difficult to resolve in the end", APRIL ISSUE.
AUSTRALIA & N. ZEALAND An example of how the law has been used in an attempt to hold back wage claims is Australia. For 12 years a complicated system of legal sanctions, arbitration awards and a system of trying to split workers on craft lines has been applied in Australia. It has only been effective because of a big new influz of immigrants, sections of whom have taken time to organise themselves to fight the Government measures. Through a
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system of arbitration there is a periodic review of wage rates, with an intangible "work value" element determining how wages will rise. In this way the skilled workers at least up to the recent period have been given favoured treatment. In addition, legal sanctions, including fines, are deployed by the capitalists in an attempt to prevent any kind of industrial action. Between 1956 and 1968, thirty unions were fined on 799 occasions total of A 282,410 dollars, Against this, just to show the "impartiality" of the law, the employers were fined a mere total of A 2,514 dollars. Over a period, the opposition to these measures has been seething in the ranks of the unions and the Labour Movement. Before the recent trial of strength. this opposition was shown by the open defiance of the anti-strike laws by eight boilermakers, immigrants from England. With the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the Boilermakers' Union has spearheaded the opposition to the legal powers of the central Government, which the "Financial Times" (9/7/69) stated "make striking illegal in all cases"! Several years ago, Ted Hill, former General Secretary of the Boilermakers, here, advised his members not to emigrate to Australia, and called on the Australian boilermakers to "rally their forces and get rid of the vicious penal clauses i the Arbitration Act". The message seems to have been acted on after a delay. Recently, these eight boilermakers from England, were fined A30 dollars for walking off their job. They refused to pay the fines, and were threatened with jail, but on the eve of their being imprisoned the fine was anonymously paid! The capitalists could foresee an enormous sympathetic strike wave which would result from any imprisonment. And this is precisely what happened when the threat was put into effect by the imprisonment of Clarence O'Shea of the Tramways Union for refusing to pay a fine imposed by the industrial courts. The response from the organised Labour Movement was electric. A mass strike followed. Over one million workers, out of a total trade union memership of 24 million, came out in the biggest movement since the immediate period following the Russian revolution. The numbers involved, out of a total population of 12 million, is indicative of the pent-up feeling against the Government's penal powers, which has been gathering in the ranks of the workers' movement. The panicky response of the capitalists was testimony to the power of the strike wave. Fearful of the consequences to their economy and the possibilities whichwas opened up for the workers' movementby mass action, they intrigued to have the waits on the sidelines of the industral stage ready to pay the fines of recalcitrant unions' leaders! But this time the working class, once moved into action, demanded more than a face-saving gesture by the Government. Gorton, the Australian Prime Minister and his ministers, were forced to give an undertaking to introduce legislation to cancel the punitive powers. This they will have to do if the capitalișts are not to face another revolt from the factories The Australian events are a graphic illustration of the enormous power accumulated by the Labour Movement in the postwar period, which has affected all the advanced capitalist countries to a greater or lesser degree. It is one thing for the capitalist to put laws on the statute-book; it is another thing to apply them on a drastic scale, Where they have succeeded in nibbling 15 between the organised workers and the capitalist fine of O'Shea paid by: jour liuv.? jome and workplaces.
TORIES WILL FAIL a state, an indication of lindhearted citizenalways it serie,
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16 away at the rights of the unions, as in Australia, for the special reasons described above, once the workers have become conscious of the repressive role of legislation and have organised themselves, at the first serious test the capitalists are forced to retreat. To take on the Labour Movement would be to risk a mass social explosion threatening the very existence of capitalism itself, something which, at this stage, they are not prepared to risk. Similar legislation in other countries is an illustration of this point. In neighbouring New Zealand, for instance, the powers of the state for use against the unions have had no substantial effect on the movement of the Yet even these powers cannot prevent the workers moving into action when they feel their conditions undermined. Thus in the period 1964-66 New Zealand had • than Britain. Moreover, the powers already more strikes per 100,000 workers possessed by the New Zealand capitalists for fining workers on strike were only used with caution. In a recent meat-freezing workers' strike, for instance, when the Minister of Labour was challenged to take legal action, he refused to do so, because this would have been "obviously impracticable". In fact, the last time the New Zealand Department of Labour actually took action in court against a union was in 1955! After this experience, "The Times" pointedly warned Heath and the Tories, "New Zealand is moving away from a system which has all the restrictions on the right to strike that any Conservative could wish for". And yet a Labour Movement significantly weaker than in Britain effectively evaded the legal obstacles placed in its path. How much more so would a Labour Movement, conscious of its defeat of the Labour Government's plans to put a harness on the unions, quash the attempt of the Tories. A further illustration of the impotence of legislation against the Labour Movement is given by the example of West Germany, held up for years as the model of "industrial relations". Thus in Germany, it is now revealed, that the 36 million Deutschmarks imposed in fines on strikers under the anti-strike laws had never in actual fact been collected! In the United States, with a praised "cooling-off" system, out of 26 disputes cooled off, 24 actually ended in strikes.
BRITISH WORKERS ALSO But the most striking refütation of the "legislative school' in the ranks i of capitalist spokesmen is the example of Southern Ireland. The Irish capitalists have already introduced many of the measures which have been canvassed here for use against the British workers. Yet Ireland now has the highest "strike incidence" of all. And only two years ago, when the electricians went on strike, the leaders were imprisoned. But the strike could only be called off and negotiations begun when the capitalists released them. The British workers, no less than their brothers in these countries, have shown in the past that legal sanctions can have no permanent delaying effect on their demands. Even the Donovan Commission was constrained to remark that the Kent Betteshanger coalfield strike during the war could only be called off when the. imprisoned rainers were released and negotiations could begin on the miners' wage claims. The dockers' strike of 1948 similarly revealed that the
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17 legal sanctions of the then Labour Government served only to inflame the workers even more. The Government were consequently forced to release the strike leaders or face a mass sympathy strike.
These facts have now penetrated the heads of even the most obtuse capitalist commentators, if not yet the rather thicker material composing the heads of the leaders of the Confederation of British Industry. Realising that they would reap a whirlwind from legislation at this stage, the capitalists have opted for the next best thing. They have cajoled the att:D.c. and Wilson, 11 Congress. the left, such ao union leaders into attempting to police the workers. Out of the series meetings between the I.U.C. and Wilson, the "Programme for Action" was born and eventually accepted by the June recall Congress. This in turn has been greeted by the capitalist press and even sections of the left, such as "Tribune", as a big step forward. "Tribune" went so far as to say: "The idea of the General Council...acting as a 'general staff for labour'...echoes a demand put forward by the Left for many years." (6/6/69.) But the miners, on the other hand, with the harsh experience of industrial battles behind them, more pertinently warned that they had not defeated the penal laws only to find a more refined means of holding back the workers being attempted by. the T.U.C. For this, in the final analysis, is what the T.U.C. is attempting. "Programme for Action", despite proposals for amalgamations, etc., accepts the same standpoint of the Government, i.e. that "unconstitutional stoppages" a threat to the "national interest". They have sought powers to intervene directly in disputes and are pressurising the individual unions to apply sanctions against the leaders of so-called unofficial strikes, including the use of expulsion as an ultimate weapon. They have particularly marked out those strikes, such as occur in the motor industry, which throw other workers out of work. The inter-dependence of the motor industry is one instance where a strike involving one small section can reverberate throughout the industry and result in thousands being laid off. But it is the motor manufacturers themselves who are responsible for this state of affairs. Their "scientific management" techniques have produced a situation whereby stockpiling against interruptions in production is cut down to a minimum in order to reduce "overheads" and so boost profit margins.
TUC ACCEPTS STANDPOINT OF GOVT Moreover, as Turner once again shows, capitalists actually provoke strikes when the order books are thin. He says: "occasionally management have retriated against a small stoppage in one section by laying off workers not Involved in the initial dispute, in order to bring pressure to bear on the originnl strikers to return to work or as a general deterrent to future stoppages. In such circunstances, what appears as a big strike may virtually be a partial - though not explicit - lock-out." (Page 37). (Our emphasis). He also demonstrates that the very same "scandalous industrial anarchy" which the motor manufacturers ceaselessly complain about is very often consciously brought on by them: "A great part of the apparent 'loss' of working days from strikes in the motor industry has occurred at times when it was not inconvenient to the industry that production in fact be reduced..." (Page 39). Expressed very simply, this means that the motor capitalists provoked strikes in order to lay off workers in times of limited orders. They then used these same incidents to attempt to bring about restricting laws against
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Of course, when thousands of workers are thrown out of work through a strike in another part of industry, it is an issue on which the unions should take action. But instead of seeking to act against workers on strike, the T.U.C. would be more suitably employed in examining their causes. They would find that it is almost totally the employers who are responsible for large shut-downs. This has clearly been revealed in the car accessory plants of Girlings in 1968. In one strike, the total weekly claim of £100 for a small group of security men was rebuffed by the management after months of patient negotiation. The resulting strike threw thousands out of work and cost one company, Ford, £4 million in lost production. Instead of regurgitating the propaganda of the employers about "wildcat" strikes, the General Council should take the demands of the Ford workers as a starting point to ensure that the employers pay for the chaos of their system by guaranteeing a full week's wage when workers are thrown out of work as a result of an industrial dispute elsewhere in industry. They should be conducting a mass campaign to explain to every worker the elementary facts which reveal the chaos, mismanagement and waste of the productive potential which is a result of the obsolete rule of the bourgeoisie. Some of this material we have mentioned above, and these are daily occurrences in the factories. But even the Labour Party publications have recently revealed the extent to which the state bolsters up the capitalists. Stung by the constant harping of the Confederation of British Industry on the issue of "excessive" Government expenditure, Transport House, in its economic bulletin, pointedly revealed that the capitalists to the tune of £2 million a day. Similarly, in the "Mid-Term Manifesto" presented to last year's Labour Party Conference, it was admitted that "more and more it is Governments which finance risk projects, while all too often private corporations tend to avoid the very risk which in classical theory is the justification of their existence". This is an indictment of the capitalist system. The implication is clear: the capitalists have lost their "justification" for continuing to control and own the productive forces. And this has been revealed in a thousand and one other ways. In research, for instance, the State accounts for two-thirds of all that which is carried on in Britain. And yet the Government still bends the knee to capital. But now the N.E.C. of the Labour Party is considering more radical measures for the next election manifesto: a wealth tax and the "extension of public shares" in industries such as aircraft and drugs. But why wait until the next election to put the measures into effect? Why do not the Labour leaders commence to introduce them immediately as a means of mobilising mass support? These minimal measures would in fact bring them right up against the capitalists. Of course, every section of the Labour Movement would welcome a wealth tax as a step forward. But the experience of this Labour Government has demonstrated what results from even limited attempts to clip the fingernails of the capitalists, as with the Corporation Tax bill. As a result of the pressure of the capitalists, 130 amendments were accepted, which effectively emasculated the main purpose of this Bill. So too would it Sections of the capitalist press are even now suggesting that this proposal could be turned into an advantage for the dominant sections of the bourgeoisie, the monopolies. Thus, the "Observer" remarked: "The the workers in times of boom.
Labour Government is providing subsidies, be with this measure.
18 i.e. state bribes, to the strongest
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arguments in favour of such taxes rest on the belief that they would make capitalism work better!. They see it as a whip for the laggard sections of the capitalist eliss, to drive the inefficient to the wall, panticularly the smaller firmo ......"it would compel the sleepers among these firms to wake up". At the same time they demand that surtax should be cut in order that the total levy on capital is not cut. And as if to emphasise the point they point out that "In fact, few of the countries which operate a wealth tax do so. In Sweden for example, wealth taxes are offset against income taxes, so that no one pays more than 80% of his income in taxation." If this proposal were to seriously mean inroads being made into the resources of the capitalists it would he only onc The capitalists worliamenidea trum r they would go on an investment strike. The surplus which they extract from the labour of the working class is used for re-investing back into industry and piling up greater profits. Profits are the lifeblood of the bourgeoisie. Touch the capitalists profits and he will refuse to invest which in turn would result in a seizing up of production and a consequent rise in If this measure is to be seriously put into effect it would inevitably bring the Labour Government into head on collision with the bourgeoisie and either bring on the collapse of the Government or further measures to prevent the sabotage which would inevitably be forthcoming. This would in turn mean that the question of taking over the commanding This is the conclusion which the trade union movement should be drawing from the experience of the past period. The growing together of the State with monopoly capital forces every serious struggle to take on a political character. When Leslie Cannon attacked the one day strikes as "political" and opposed to the "traditions" of the British unions he was deliberately ignoring the fact that it is the very actions of the capitalists, turning to the State for succour, which gave the Seamen's strike, the Ford's strike and the struggle against anti-trade In each instance the workers in these industries were forced to see the struggle for amelioration of their conditions in terms of "who holds state powerli? A dynamic and politically armed trade union and labour movement would provide the answer with the demand for the reorganisation of society along socialist lines. But this conclusion the present General Council is stubbornly resisting. In fact at a time when a more openly political approach is needed they are suggesting abolishing the yearly ECONOMIC REVIEW because it is ostensibly outside their province! This after the experience of the last few months and with CONJ rr sult.
unemployment.
heights of the economy would be posed.
RECENT STRIKES union legislation a political character.
19
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the unfolding battle taking place in industry at the present time! But the proposals of the TUC will cut as little ice with the industrial workers as have the Government's. Their main danger is that they provide a propoganda field day for the capitalists to reinforce the latent anti-unionism in the politically backward sections of the population. This will in turn be used in the future against the organised workers by the bourgeoisie. And there is no doubt at all that the "democratic" face of capitalism will be replaced by more openly repressive methods when the bourgeoisie can no longer afford to give concessions to the working class. Thus a serious representative of the capitalism, Lord Gladwyn remarked in 1965, at a time of increasing gloom for the ruling class .... "Everything seemed to point to the continuance of some kind of democracy in western Europe - even in the near Bonarpartist regimes, such as that of France. If there was mass unemployment, and a general fall in the standard of living, however, democratic regimes would probably give place to something which might call itself democratic, but would be the reverse of democracy." TIMES 2/0/65. Although there is no immediate danger of fascism being But at the present time the General Council will be baulked by the same forces as the Government, a powerfully organised working class which is in no mood to tolerate the dragooning attempts of the workers has been graphically revealed in the series of major strikes which have rocked the employers. Moving into action, a movement has been unleashed which has forced the capitalists to retreat. Thus the recent Leyland workers' strike, the first for 40 years, resulted in a victory for them. Similarly the first national strike of the Post Office Engineering workers forced the Government to concede all their demands. So too the Merseyside dockers' strike brought victory with the employers granting the dockers the right to man the Container terminals. This strike, incidentally, clearly revealed that the dock workers are not at all opposed to Containerisation so long as it does not result in the dirty stick for the workers. Their spokesman during the strike revealed what the employers conception of modernisation is : "putting half the men on the dole. What we mean by it is that dockers should have a reduction in their working hours". But the issue which has clearly brought to the surface the support of the rest of the workers at the plant and the housewives in the town. Despite the combined pressure of the capitalists through the press, radio and television and the pressure of the TUC leaders, the workers remained solid. Sixteen times they took a ballot and every time they voted stubbornly to continue the strike, when behind the scenes the employers were privately assuring the trade union leaders that their claim would be granted if they returned to work. unions have a crisis.
BYen given State or the trade union leaders.
20 ven lear warning m The temper of the industrial
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Only the public admission by the strike inquiry of the validity of the men's claims was sufficient for them to call off the strike. But the refusal of the blastfurnacemen to accept the original formulas revealed underlying unease apart from the immediate pay claim. In fact a total lack of confidence in their own Union leaders, combined with the fact that productivity agreements which would result in the sacking of at least 3000 at the Port Talbot plant alone, had been signed over their heads by the Union leaders. The role of the IC was designed to bring about a return to work in such a way as not to undermine position of the top leadership of the Blastfurnacemen's Union. This same leadership, despite the unanimity of the workers, accepted the standpoint of the TUC on "unconstitutional" stoppages sanction the actions of the men. The TUC's role in both this strike and the Leyland strike indicated that the General Council set its face against an important workers' movement instead of giving it a lead, spreading its. case to other sections of the workers and mobilizing the maximum support to ensure victory for those who are out on strike. For the General Council to become a real General Staff of Labour it would have to organise to make the unions better fighting instruments of the masses and not to urge that the top leadership be policing the ranks on behalf FOR A REAL GENERAL STAFF The original conception of the Minority Movement during the 1920s for a real General Staff of Labour, was based on the conception of mobilising the workers to change society. It also meant that the trade unions nommitted to this programme should organise to get this strategy accepted also by the Labour Party. But even this slogan under the influence of the Communist Party was transformed into a trap for the workers during the 1926 General Strike. In their hands it helped to perpetuate the legend that the trade union leaders Purcell, Hicks and Swales were "left wingers" because they sat on the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee and declared verbal support for the Soviet Union. In practice they 'acted as strike breakers in derailing the 1926 General Strike and so effectively prevented the successful development of the social revolution in Britain at that time. The Communist Party even after thiş defeat refused to unmask these "lefts" for almost a year after the To answer the attacks of the employers, the misrepresentation as to the effects of strikes and any legal enactments against the Unions, including the proposal of the Government to maintain the legal sanctions of the Incomes Policy, it is necessary not just to accept the status quo or the present make-up of the Unions. It is necessary to make changes, but changes which will make them more fitting to the workers' needs. It is claimed that 90% of the strikes which take place are "unofficial". But this is an indication of the remoteness of the union organisation, as also are the actions of the leadership of those like the blast furnacemen's Union. In order to bring them under the control of the workers, it is necessary that they be organised, the unit to the job, with an extension and General Workers! Union at its last Conference was forced to give a greater power to shop, stewards and shop floor representatives because of, the of the bosses.
strike.
of the power of the 21 and refused to shop stewards and combine committees. The Transport
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22 the lack of contact and understanding of the workers' real feelings which developed in certain sections of the union officialdom. The T.U.C. revealed in 1959/1960 that only 25% of all strikes were even known to the headquarters of the Unions! At the same time, the process whereby positions in the unions become a stepping stone for place and career at the expense Only recently certain officials in the Or sport and enter or stand the eeeent and Municipal Workers? Union have put in for sizeable increases which put them well above the average wage of the workers they represent. The "lead" has been given by Sidney Greene of the N.U.R., who has just been given a 225 a week rise, while pouring scorn on the demands of the signalmen for a 7d-an-hour increase! As an elementary step, the demand should go through the union branches, and be echoed at every union conference, that every official should get on average no more than the skilled worker, excepting travelling and other expenses (rigorously audited by rank-and-file members), including the General Secretaries of the Unions, Combined with the demand that all officials should be elected and subject to recall, this would be the first step to seeing that the unions really represent the feelings and demands of the rank and file. This would in turn mark the beginning of a campaign to win the whole of the Labour Movement for the socialist transformation of society.
BOLD SOCIALISTLEAD REQUIRED Not only have the latest movements in industry indicated the need for generalising the workers' struggles on a national plane, but some of the elementary lessons of the workers' struggle on an international plane have been absorbed by the advanced workers. Thus the reaction of the Liverpool G.E.C. workers to the planned redundancies in Liverpool was one of intense anger and a determination to prevent this happening at any cost. When a T.V. announcer questioned the validity of the decision to stage a sit-down strike, a shop steward retorted that "only action gets results - look what happened in France in May last year, and in Derry now". The London tenants, threatened with eviction by the London Tories, made the same point. Similarly, as a result of the Ford strike early this year and the unsuccessful attempt of the employers to play off the Continental and American workers against the British workers, the A.E.F. and T.G.W.U. have taken steps to organise with the American Automobile Workers' Union and the continental Unions for international-wide action in the Ford Company in the future. The movement of the workers is crying out for a lead and a direction. Neither "Programme for Action" nor the document of the N.E.C. of the Labour Party provides this. Instead of tinkering with the system, a bold socialist lead is now required. The bourgeoisie can see, historically, the ground disappearing from under them. Thus the Institute of Directors, fearful at the pace of monopolisation, has remarked: "One cynical view is that Socialists encourage the formation of large units in industry as a prelude to easier nationalisation". The "cynics" are wrong; the amalgamations into bigger and bigger monopolies are an inevitable process under capitalism. But the capitalists, while being forced to carry it through, can also see that it can only serve to increase the pressure for State control in the long run. They can foresee the pressures which have begun to take shape in the Labour Movement, involving a shift to the left of the active workers.
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This is expressed in the turn to the left inside the Unions, particularly marked in the case of the A.E.F., the I.&G.W.U. and the N.U.N. The scheme of Cannon to bring about an amalgamation between the E.P.T.U. and the M.&G.W.U. is designed to bring about a right-wing counterweight to these unions. But even this step will recoil on Cannon and Cooper. The shift to the left will also affect these unions also at a later stage. USE- POWER OF UNIONS In the short run, the concession of Wilson in backing away from a head-on collision with the unions may bring abort a temporary "peace" between the Government and the industrial wing of the Labour Movement. But even now the dissatisfaction in the ranks is apparent by the demand of the A.I.F. for the complete abandonment of the Incomes Policy penal clauses by the Government, and the DiD d~ for way strike, organised iy the I.U.C., if this is not complied with, Probably after a General Election there will develop an even greater determination by the ranks in the Labour Parties and Union branches to see a change in policy by the for the setback and the whole disastrous course of the Government over this period, If victory, then, as I; ank Cousins implied at the I.&.G.W.U. ›onierence, the unions will present their bill of goods: "It (the overnment) must give up trying to placate the unions' enemies and try to A process of transformation will follow. Frank Cousins, by way of answering the demands for a break from the Labour Party, pointedly stated: "It is not the Labour Party of Mr Wilson. It is the Labour Party of the members - our Labour Party•" In that statement is foreshadowed an inevitable clash between the Labour leadership and the Trade Unions and local Barties, if Wilson and the Government cling to their present ruinous policies. The Labour Party rank and file will cast out from the Party those sections of the Government and the Parlicmentary Labour Party who fail to reflect this new mood which is developin;. It will in turn mean a swing towards a mass left wing inside the labour Party at a certain stage. But it is not sufficient just to express opposition to the Government's measures. Nor to replace the present policies of the Labour Government with the same limited reform programme adopted prior to the 1964 and 1966 elections. It in as impractica) and inadequate in the hands of the Ieft M.P.s and the General Council as 1% was in Wilson's. It is necessary to learn the lessons of the struggle to defeat the anti-trade union legislation, brought about primarily by the action of thousands of workers. It is necessary to go further. Instead of a policy of half-way reforms, it is imperative that the Unions be armed w. ih a socialist programme for the taking over of the 250 major monopolies, banks and insurance companies. If the campaign against the anti-union laws could move hundreds of thousands of workers into action, linked to the demand for equal pay, a minimum immediately, this measure would bring millions into the struggle for a socialist society democratically controlled and managed by the workers themselves. At the special Trade Union Congress it was Richard Labour leaders. If defeat ensues, placate its friends".
wage, a million houses social services 23 a year, a massive extension o? education and the there will be a demand for an explanation
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Briginshaw, General Secretary of SOGAT, who pointed out that the Trade Union movement in Britain had the organised power of 9 million workers, which with their families made up about 20 million, behind it. In the wake of the defeat meted out to the Government's anti-Union laws. the "Daily Mirror" lamented that there existed in Britain now "a power outside the precincts of Parliament as great as that which exists within. Imbued with a sense of their own power, these millions of workers would be able to rally behind their banner also all the downtrodden, unorganised and impoverished sections of the workers for a change in society. This is the goal which the Trade Unions must set for themselves. Their enormous power needs to be used for the struggle to win the Labour Party to the kind of socialist alternative as outlined above. Once implemented this policy would herald the beginning of a new era. It would end all attempts to curtail the power of the unions. Instead the unions would provide the main pillar for a socialist Britain. From their ranks would be drawn the technical and administrative personel to begin the economic transformation of society. The British workers would then offer the hand of friendship to the workers throughout the world, leading to the collapse of the world bourgeoisie and the ending of poverty and all attacks on the A TEACHERS' CHARTER - an article for further discussion - by TED COXHEAD TEACHERS' UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE EDUCATION CUTS - by ISLAY FULLERTON THE I.L.T.A. STRIKE AND THE INTERIM CLAIM - by BRYAN BECKINGHAM MILITANT TEACHER will come out three times a year (once a term) and the cost per copy is 9d (1/2 postage paid). Order from:- MILITANT TEACHER, 197, Kings Cross Road, London W.C.1. MILITANT TEACHER 24 workers' organisations once and for all.
= = = = The Autumn issue is now out with articles on :- THE MOVEMENT AMONG SCHOOL STUDENTS - by BOB LABI letters news = = = = = A Journal Produced by Socialist Teachers For Teachers, School Students and the reports • Labour Movement
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