Letter: Strangled or United? (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strangled or United?

From time to time I have it pointed out to me that the present TUC has such a stranglehold on the worker that even if he wanted to he would never be allowed to think and work it all out for himself, his very existence being in most cases dependent on his joining the union. This is one of the biggest problems the Party has to contend with in propagating true Socialism.

Do you consider the article on the General Strike, published in the Sunday Express of 2nd May, to be a true description of events at that time? If it broke down after nine days due to weakness of purpose (the writer states that there were two distinct sections of the community opposing the miners), would the Party consider the worker of today to be in any way more united and consequently stronger in his fight for freedom (if he is fighting for it) than in 1926? I feel that support for the Constitution is as strong as ever, but I would welcome your comments.

Doris G. Featherston, 

Stonesfield

Reply:

The amount of correspondence we receive means the holding-over of many letters, and yours was received at the same time as our issue on the General Strike was coming out. We assume you have now read that issue and made your own comparison with the Sunday Express article.

Workers are organized in unions out of necessity—it gives them a proper bargaining position—but any stranglehold is not one of the unions over their members. The meek acceptance of wage restraint is made possible by the fear of unemployment; in other words, the unions are controlled by the workings of capitalism. Workers in the majority (in and out of unions) fail to see that there is an alternative to capitalism and it is this which makes them follow trade-union and political leaders in the vain hope that they will in the future solve the problems they have failed at in the past. This failure cannot be hidden. Support for the Constitution must be viewed in the same light of the wrong assumption, that capitalism is the natural order. Knowledge of the Socialist alternative will unite the working class in a manner not before seen.

Editorial Committee.