Letter: A Critic of the Busmen (1949)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

East Ham, E.6.

Dear Sir,

I am not a member of your party, or any other party, so perhaps it is not quite in order that I as a very ordinary individual, should write you.

Somehow or other your Socialist Standard booklet has found itself inside my letter box, and I commenced to read the Busmen’s Case.

The Busmen’s behaviour on that Saturday afternoon was the meanest rotten trick they could play on the long suffering public and it certainly earned them the public’s disgust, not its sympathy. Many people had to walk home in the drizzling rain and the ordinary worker was debarred his Saturday sport.

These strikes don't affect people with cars, it only causes them amusement; and after all, these men know all the facts having to work on Saturday and accept them as a condition of employment. They don’t work any longer hours than the average man and have a rest day thrown in.

Supposing the surgeon of a hospital was doing a vital operation and it was past one o'clock midday, would he down tools unless he was paid time and a half The ambulance man, the nurses, postmen. Everybody who is a public servant.

Yours seems to be a one-sided policy, take all, give nothing. If men want to strike let them strike for their suffering wives, who for nearly ten years have had to put up with a ration book and pay the prices what's asked, because it means going without, if you don't

Be men and strike to bring down prices and better food.

They certainly would earn the women’s praise and uphold them in their convictions.

Yours truly,

Margery Anderson.

Reply.

Our correspondent states that she commenced to read the article on the London Busmens’ half-day strike in our February issue. It is a pity that she did not complete the reading. Had she done so she would have found the answer to most of the points that she mentions.

We have not sufficient space to repeat the article in detail, but we will briefly touch on a few points. Before giving vent to her "disgust” at strikers, we suggest that our correspondent considers the fact that a strike is the expression of a struggle between opposing interests and the responsibility for any inconvenience caused is as much, if not more, with the employer as with the workers. But despite her disgust she urges men to strike for their "long suffering wives" and to “strike to bring down prices.” Would a strike to bring prices down to the limits of the wage packet cause less inconvenience than a strike to bring wages up to the level of prices?

The statement that “these strikes don’t affect people with cars” is meaningless. Neither do they affect people with pedal cycles. If our correspondent means that the capitalist is not affected, we already said that in the article.

She says that the busmen know the facts of Saturday work and accept them as conditions of employment. Sure they do. They also know the rates of pay that the job carries. But we venture to suggest, that if busmen, or any other workers, accepted rates of pay that were agreed upon at the times when they took their jobs years ago, their "long suffering wives” would be more disgusted than is our correspondent. Conditions change and workers must continuously struggle to adjust their wages and conditions of employment to the changed conditions in their industries and the world around them. The busmen did not protest at Saturday work. They asked for more pay for more work done.

The supposition about a surgeon proves nothing. Surgeons, like other workers, strive to get the best price for the energies that they sell. If they are not prepared to accept the price currently obtainable, they do not do the job. Like anyone else they must live, and that factor may force them to accept lower rates than they would wish, but they have their union and their means of struggle. The following extract from The Star 29/3/49) proves that. Referring to a meeting of the "Doctors’ Parliament” in London to discuss amongst other things, insufficient pay, The Star says: “Buckinghamshire delegates agreed to urge the meeting to call for mass resignations from the Health Service unless adequate fees were granted.” Where a section of the workers are poorly organised or do not wage a determined struggle, their working conditions are also poorer. That is one reason why the nursing profession that our correspondent uses as an illustration, has been notorious for its low pay and bad conditions of employment.

Is our policy one-sided? There was no reference to our policy in the article under discussion. Our Declaration of Principles will be found on the back page of each issue of this journal.

"If men want to strike” begins a sentence. They don’t want to do anything of the sort. If wives are to pay the prices that our correspondent complains about, then men are forced to strike to get the necessary wage or, as she correctly puts it, "it means going without if you don't.”

W. Waters.