How much do strikes achieve? (1972)

From the November 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The view is held by some trade unionists and by so-called militant organisations that militancy is the key that opens all doors for the working class. The argument is deceptively simple: as strikes can gain wage increases more and larger strikes will gain more increases, seemingly without limit. How far is this true? There is plenty of past and current evidence though, as will be seen, some of it is open to misinterpretation. When Marx wrote about this more than a century ago he did not share the “militant” view about the extent to which trade-union pressure could raise wages. In his Value, Price and Profit for example (Chapters IV and XIV) and in Wage-Labour and Capital (p. 35 in the Whitehead edition) he took a somewhat pessimistic line based on his understanding of how capitalism works. While urging resistance to the efforts of employers to depress wages he thought it was largely a defensive struggle, with only occasional opportunities for the workers to secure “temporary improvement”. His view was that the times when the workers can hope to gain an improvement were when the capitalists were doing well, expanding production and accumulating capital. In the reverse phase of the “trade cycle”, with sales and profits falling and unemployment rising, he thought the workers could do little.

“The relations between the supply and demand of labour-power undergo perpetual change, and with them the market price of labour-power. If the supply overshoots the demand wages sink, although it might in such circumstances be necessary to test the real state of demand and supply by a strike, for example, or any other method.”

(To bring this into harmony with the present period of fast-rising prices it has to be remembered that though money wages do not now sink, a pay increase which does not keep up with the cost of living represents a fall of “real” wages, i.e. purchasing power.)

Nothing Gained

It will be noticed that Marx talked of “testing” the situation when trade is bad. The militants reject this. They think that if enough workers strike they can make big gains in spite of adverse conditions. As regards past experience the evidence is all against the militants’ case. Apart from 1921 and 1926, the record number of days lost through strikes in any year was in 1893, when the total was over 30 million. This included Lancashire cotton workers who were out for five months, and 400,000 miners. Both strikes failed and wages generally did not rise.

Another outstanding example was the ten years 1921-1930. Unemployment was high, trade was bad and prices were falling—in all by 30 per cent. In those years, which included the General Strike of 1926, the number of days lost by strikes and lockouts averaged 31 million a year, but the strikes completely failed to prevent wages also falling by about 30 per cent.

Discontent & Resistance

The question arises to what extent recent experience differs from the past. Various changes have taken place. There are many more trade unionists, though still only a minority of the workers, and workers on strike instead of depending entirely on their own resources and trade-union and benefit-society funds can now get Social Security payments for their families. British capitalism in the past six years has been in depression with unemployment at one point topping the million mark. And strikes have been building up, from 2,400,000 days lost in 1966 to 13,600,000 days in 1971 and a likely total of 20 or 21 million in 1972. The fact that strikes have become more numerous and last longer is not simply a reflection of workers’ discontent but is also a reflection of stronger and better-organised resistance by employers. It is a truism that the most successful strike is the one that never happens because when trade is brisk employers may yield to the mere threat of a strike interrupting production.

In recent years, with sales falling off, employers have taken a tougher line because they stand to lose less when trade is slack than when they have full order-books and are hard pressed to meet delivery dates. Also, as in engineering and the building industry where the recent strikes were not general, employers with strikes on their hands received financial help from the other employers.

Keeping Pace

What then has been the outcome of the big increase in strikes? On the basis of the rise of the cost of living and the estimated increase of wage rates (not including overtime and bonuses etc.) and of average earnings (including overtime and bonuses) it would seem that real wages have been rising at about 2 per cent a year since 1966; but some complications have to be taken into account. The first is that what matters is not gross pay but “take-home pay” after deduction of tax, and owing to the way this operates take-home pay increases by a smaller percentage than gross pay. If for example a single man on pay of about £25 obtained an increase of £5 a week (20 per cent) his increase of take-home pay would be just under 19 per cent (£4.10).

And owing to the rules governing family income supplements and free school meals it can happen that some workers can be worse off through a pay increase. For a married man with two children a pay increase of £2 from £28 to £30 a week would leave him 95p. a week worse off. (The Times, 8 September 1972).

It is obvious that the past six years, in spite of more strikes, has left the mass of workers in Britain doing little more than keep pace with prices.

Some Do Not

An enquiry by the Economic Research Council (Financial Times, 18 August 1972) indicated that between 1962 and 1970 average take-home pay did not even keep up with the cost of living, though some improvement may have been made since 1970. Another factor that should be borne in mind is that the past few years have seen a widespread tightening-up of jobs through labour-displacing productivity schemes linked with pay increases. Take-home pay in terms of purchasing power has certainly not fully reflected increased output.

Some confirmation of Marx’s general argument is given by a comparison of Germany and some other continental countries with Britain. While British capitalism has been in depression, production has been expanding fast in Germany—the condition in which Marx expected the workers to be able to increase wages. Though strikes in Germany have been much fewer than in Britain, in recent years real wages have risen much more in Germany. Indeed, according to a document submitted to the TUC (The Times, 5 October 1972): “In recent years Britain’s wage increases have been the lowest in Europe.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Passing trade union laws (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade unions are at their weakest in a recession. When unemployment is high and profits fall the ability of the workers to improve their wages and conditions is seriously curtailed, and governments take advantage of this situation to introduce legislation restricting their activities. The Tebbit proposals as outlined in the 1982 Employment Bill are the latest and follow the 1980 Employment Act.

In April a conference of trade union executives met to consider a report by the TUC General Council on Industrial Relations legislation. The TUC’s recommendations to its members included refusal to participate in secret ballots under conditions laid down in the new legislation; refusal to accept government finance for union ballots; financial assistance for unions that suffer legal actions; withdrawal of trade unionists from participation in Employment Appeals Tribunals; and a 10p levy on members to cover the cost of a TUC campaign.

Response to these proposals has been mixed, with many predicting little active support among the majority of workers. But there is another question; the choice faced by those who oppose the legislation is between breaking the law or supporting the return of a Labour government that will repeal the Act. Both of these responses show a failure to understand the really important points at issue.

Present society is based on a division between the owners of the means of production and distribution and the majority of people who have to find an employer in order to live. Workers can organise together to try and improve wages and conditions but this necessarily means eating into the profits of the owners. In a recession, when markets contract, profits are liable to fall and consequently the ability of workers to gain increased wages is reduced. With declining markets many firms go bankrupt, which means increased unemployment and more competition for jobs. This also reduces the ability of workers to gain better conditions of employment.

Where then does legislation fit into this? Governments are likely to take advantage of weakened trade unions in a recession in order to place restrictions on their activities. In the decade or so since the Labour government's White Paper In Place of Strife there has been a wave of trade union law, with different governments adopting different approaches; some seemingly favourable to trade unions and some obviously hostile. But it must always be remembered that all governments exist to maintain a society based on the class ownership of the means of producing wealth. Irrespective of the prevailing industrial climate, the purpose of trade union law is to strengthen the capitalist class, whatsoever form the legislation may take. To see this more clearly it is necessary to look at some examples of trade union law.

In the 1870s there was a wave of legislation concerning trade unions, on the face of it introduced under direct pressure from organised labour. Among other things, these laws provided a measure of protection for trade union funds and allowed some picketing. But this legislation was not simply a result of growing trade union organisation. In 1867 an electoral reform law had been introduced which extended the vote to skilled workers in the towns. For some time there had been agitation for this extension of the franchise by a number of movements, one of which was led by the industrial capitalist John Bright, who had been prominent in gaining working class support against the Corn Laws in the 1840s.

Bright realised that it was necessary to gain working class support in order to transfer political power from the landowning capitalists, who still dominated parliament, to industrial capitalists like himself. The extension of the vote to skilled workers, many of whom were prominent in the trade unions, facilitated this transfer of political power. The Tory leader Disraeli also supported the 1867 Act. He saw it as necessary because, as an associate said, he 

'would rather drag the working man within the pale of the constitution by force than suffer them to organise themselves into a separate community outside it’. [1]

Once the vote was given it was necessary to try to keep this working class support and the trade union legislation of the 1870s was a means to this end.

The years of recession that followed this legislation necessarily weakened labour organisations; in fact, many trade unions disintegrated or reverted to being purely friendly societies. Trade union law served the purpose of strengthening the political power of the capitalist class but did nothing to protect the organisations of workers.

In the years leading up to the First World War. more legislation concerning trade unions was introduced. The Trades Disputes Act of 1906 protected trade unions against employers seeking recompense for losses arising from strike action. This Act was a response to the famous Taff Vale decision, which followed the suing of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants by the Railway Company. The Taff Vale case certainly stimulated the trade unions to create the Labour Party, but what is not often made clear is that a new political party was not needed in order to reverse the decision. This was accepted both at the time [2] and by later writers of labour history [3].

The Liberals accepted that the Taff Vale decision was an anomaly and that the original trade union laws of the 1870s, which gave the Liberals working class support, had covered the protection of trade union funds. The anomaly had arisen because, since the 1870s, the expansion of capitalist production had led to a large number of unincorporated companies being formed; all that was needed was an updating of the law. But of course the Labour Party has had to present the Taff Vale case as their unique concern in order to provide some justification for its own formation. In fact the Liberals were just as concerned about working class votes in 1870 as they were. Neither party differed on economic policy and both accepted the need to introduce various reforms.

The other piece of trade union law in this period was very different. The Osborne Judgement of 1908 prevented trade unions from using their funds for financing parliamentary representatives. Now here was an issue of some concern to the working class. The Osborne Judgement meant that workers who wished to give financial support to a parliamentary candidate had to do it from a voluntary fund; trade unions could not make it compulsory for their members to contribute. The Osborne Judgement was therefore in workers’ interests but the real tussle over whether it should be maintained had nothing to do with workers’ interests. It was purely a struggle between the three political parties. Liberal, Tory and Labour, over who should be the party to take power and run capitalism. Labour MPs were largely dependent on finance from the trade unions, whereas the other two parties were in fierce competition to maintain their own positions in parliament which Labour Party candidates threatened.

It was therefore in the interest of both Liberals and Tories to maintain the Osborne Judgement. Yet in 1913 the Liberal government passed a new Trade Union Act enabling trade unions to keep a political fund for the purpose of financing MPs, while allowing those who did not want to pay to contract out. The explanation for this move by the Liberal government is to be found in the political, social and economic environment between 1908, the year of the Osborne Judgement, and 1913. Firstly, the Liberal government was partly dependent on the votes of Labour MPs; they did not have an absolute majority in parliament and needed support from either the Irish Nationalists or Labour.

The Liberal government tried to get over the Osborne Judgement by introducing the payment of MPs. But that was not enough for the Labour politicians who had “fastened their hungry jaws on the vitals of the labour movement” [4] and in the end the Liberals conceded. There was, however, also another reason why the Osborne Judgment was not maintained: 1911 was a year of widespread strikes and riots with troops being used on a number of occasions to fire at workers. It was a period when, especially after the two General Elections of 1910, workers lost interest in the abilities of government to solve their problems. As one witness put it:

Nothing was more noticeable about the last two General Elections than the rapidity with which the mass of the electorate has become disillusioned as to the worth of the vote. [5]

All manner of actions, consultations and legislation was tried by the government to solve the unrest and restore their authority. The strikes continued and in the following year the stoppage by the miners led to the government intervening directly to try to solve the dispute. This was in fact an abandonment of traditional Liberal policy of laissez faire. In desperation the government introduced a Minimum Wage Bill to try to placate the miners. This, like so much similar legislation, guaranteed nothing in the long term; it was purely a crisis measure. Speaking on the Bill in parliament, Asquith the Prime Minister said: “We have exhausted all powers of persuasion and argument and negotiation". [6]

In the end the Liberals backed the legislation changing the Osborne Judgement, partly because they believed that Labour MPs would be of use to the government in reconciling the workers to their class position within capitalism. Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Party leader, had already helped to end a major rail strike. This was perhaps a foresight by the Liberals into the role the Labour Party would play in the future, as a government and as an opposition.

More recent trade union law, including the Labour government’s proposals In Place of Strife and the Tory Industrial Relations Act of 1971, has the same purpose as earlier legislation. Government proposals may arise from actions taken by the working class, whether because of restrictions placed on trade unions or because of strikes and disputes. But the law will always ultimately serve the interests of the capitalist class. Yet laws, whether they are supposed to assist trade union organisation or place restrictions on it, can do nothing to change the actual power that unions have. The laws of the 1870s did nothing to prevent the fragmentation of trade unions in the years of recession that followed, but they did increase the political power of the industrial capitalists. Similarly, the legislation of the 1974-79 Labour government, which included the Employment Protection Act, did nothing to prevent unemployment rising from million to 1½ million during that period. Nor has it protected workers from massive redundancies and unemployment since.

There is no substitute for the workers consciously organising to defend their interests. They should not look to leaders, whether in trade unions, the Labour Party or in government. Legislation, whether for or against unions, does nothing to change the fact that governments exist to serve the interests of the capitalist class, to maintain the system in which the majority of people are exploited. Workers need to organise to defend their living standards whenever possible; but they should also organise consciously and politically for the purpose of abolishing the system of society that can only operate in the interests of the owning minority.

MD

References:

[1] Quoted in Victorian People, Asa Briggs. Penguin 1970. p203.

[2] See Lloyd George speech at National Reform Union meeting Bacup. 5 November 1904.

[3] See G.D.H. Cole: A Short History of the British Working Class Movement. Allen and Unwin 1947, p293.

[4] Socialist Standard November 1910.

[5] Stephen Reynolds: Seems So! A Working Class View of Politics. Macmillan 1911, p!30.

[6] Parliamentarv Debates, 5th Series. V36, p234.

This year’s T.U.C. (1962)

From the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is normal at trade union conferences for numbers of resolutions to be carried that have no practical outcome and serve no purpose except to indicate the feelings of delegates on all sorts of issues about which they protest loudly because they cannot think of anything else to do. Delegates have only to look back at the resolutions they carried last year and the years before to realise that nobody takes any notice of most of them, least of all the Government to whom many are conveyed.

This year, however, there were one or two decisions of the T.U.C. that may, for better or for worse, have some consequences that may be worth considering.

The Delegates at the Blackpool Conference were almost unanimous in supporting a resolution calling on the General Council to examine the possibility of reorganising the structure of both the T.U.C. and the trade union movement “with a view to making it better fitted to meet modern industrial conditions.” Nothing will happen immediately as a result of this resolution. The intention is that the General Council should complete its examination in time for next year’s conference, but Mr. Woodcock warned that it would take at least two years. The movers took care not to indicate the kind of alterations of structure that may be found desirable, this reticence being the only way to get the delegates to agree wholeheartedly to the resolution. As Mr. Woodcock remarked, each union is inclined to regard its own way of doing things the right one and the other fellow’s wrong. Though no particular changes were foreshadowed, one union, the Locomotive drivers, voted against the enquiry; they think it will probably recommend a merger with the National Union of Railwayman and they have no intention of merging.

Many times in its history the T.U.C. has seen delegates at its conferences pass resolutions calling for re-organisation of the unions. Not much has come of such resolutions because most trade unionists nowadays have the feeling that none of the changes likely to occur will make much difference. There was a time when trade unionists could get into excited argument about the respective merits of craft unions and industrial unions, about the benefits of amalgamation, and about giving the General Council of the T.U.C. authority to control the wage claims and strikes of affiliated unions. These causes still have their advocates, but it is all in a less heated atmosphere than once it was. Experience and disappointment have had a sobering effect. The collapse of the Triple Alliance of Miners, Railwaymen and Transport workers and the “General Strike” of 1926 have left their mark.

One of the periods of lively discussion about the trade unions was just after the first World War. In that atmosphere a resolution was carried at the 1919 T.U.C. instructing the General Council to examine the constitution of every affiliated union and on the information so obtained “to report upon what, in its opinion, is the most desirable and up-to-date method of organisation that will enable the workers by hand and brain to reap the full results of their toil.”

It was moved, seconded and carried without more than a hundred words of supporting speech by the mover, and no opposition. This could have been due to the unanimity on the part of the delegates, or to a general feeling that it was a pious resolution and nothing would come of it.

Whatever the explanation, nothing much did come of it.

The idea of giving the General Council power to control the unions has often been put forward, but has had little support in this country, most trade unionists obviously preferring to keep the power to decide on wage claims and any supporting action within their own organisation. A characteristic attitude was that of a Miners Federation delegate at the 1915 T.U.C. when opposing a resolution which had called on the T.U.C. to try to obtain an all-round 5s.. increase of wages:

“This is work for the Trade Unions themselves to tackle. So far as the Miners Federation is concerned, we should object to the Parliamentary Committee coming to us and trying to get us 5s. a week extra.”

After that speech the delegates would not even discuss the resolution any more and went on to next business.

And in 1919, when it was moved that the T.U.C. should undertake the amalgamation of all unions into one body, under control of the T.U.C., only one short opposition speech was made, but it was sufficient to kill the resolution: only seven delegates voted for it out of 851.

The opposer said: “I want to say that there is not a single Trade Union in the country that would submit to the control of the Parliamentary Committee. It is ridiculous to suppose that this Congress would ever submit to anything of the kind.”

This persistent opposition to formal proposals of a changed structure does not mean that the unions in Britain have not changed. By process of amalgamation of local unions into National bodies and of more or less associated unions into larger ones the number of unions has been nearly halved since 1913 (from 1,269 to 690), while membership has more than doubled, from 4.135,000 to 9,803,000. In 1913 about two-thirds of all trade unionists were in the small number of unions with over 50,000 members. Now membership is largely concentrated in seventeen unions above the 100,000 level. But 1913 has nothing like those mammoth unions, the Transport & General Workers with over 1,300,000 members and the A.E.U. with 982,000. Apart from the Miners who had 600,000 members in 1913 (and that was a more or less loose federation, not a concentrated body) the largest union in 1913 appears to have been the N.U.R. with 273,000 members.

While these trade union developments of half a century have been going on, and indeed inducing them, British capitalism has been organising into larger units, with employers federations acquiring more experience of handling “labour problems” and productivity techniques, and making more use of arbitration and conciliation machinery.

It is arguable whether the unions are a little more effective or a little less effective in dealing with the changed conditions. Certainly their members are dissatisfied with the results, but so they always were. Basically it is because the trade unions have never dealt with anything except the effects of capitalism, and capitalism has not changed in essentials.

The workers, including the “white collar” workers who are now increasingly entering the fold of trade union organisation, are still a class that lives by selling its labour power, its mental and physical energies, to the employers. Nothing has changed about that.

Contrasted with this country with its 650 unions, of which 183 are affiliated to the T.U.C., there are other countries in which the trade union movement has been reconstructed and streamlined or where the central trade union body has powers unknown and hitherto unacceptable here. But has it made any material difference? Are the workers of Austria, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, in any better situation?

The answer is, of course, that against the universal background of the capitalist wages system structural alterations can have only relatively small affect.

What is needed, as the Socialist has to go on repeating, is that the outlook and purpose of the working class have to be changed: not the grouping of non-Socialist trade unions into organisations of different size and shape, but the adoption of a different outlook and purpose. This aim is not the one for which trade unions exist or that they can achieve. It calls for Socialist understanding and political organisation and action, not on a craft or industrial or National basis but internationally, on the basis of the common interest of all workers in abolishing capitalism and establishing Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Should the Capitalists support Trade Unionism? (1911)

From the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade Unions do not pretend to be revolutionary organisations. They accept the capitalist system as part and parcel of this happy cosmos, and consider their function to be simply that of haggling with the master class about the price of their members’ labour-power. But even this limited work they do badly—the heads of the unions preferring soft jobs under the State to the grim work of bargaining with powerful monopolies.

Now a change has taken place of late in the attitude of employers towards trade unionism. Half a century ago their attitude was one of relentless enmity, but now the far-seeing and intelligent employers adopt a friendly tone towards the unions. Radical journals such as the “Manchester Guardian,” often point out that it is just in those, trades where the most powerful unions exist that we find the least friction ‘twixt master and men, and that it is amongst the casual and “unskilled” workers, badly organised, that the class struggle is waged the fiercest. Whether this charge be true or not, such a position, when taken up by capitalist organs, deserves examination.

Cute and underground methods were not used by the capitalists a hundred years ago. Workers who had the audacity to fight for higher wages by combination were handled in ways drastic and open. Take, for instance, the following extract from the “Observer” of a hundred years ago:

“Yesterday at Guildhall, John Stanley, Joseph Jeffery, Thomas Brean, and Thomas Brent, journeymen bootmakers, in the employment of Mr. Hale, of Fleet Street, were charged before Mr. Alderman Scholey and Mr. Alderman Maguay with conspiring to raise the price of wages. . . . The magistrates sentenced them to be confined in Newgate for two months each. Two others escaped on a point of law.”

According to the law at this time, any breach of contract on the employer’s part was a civil offence, on the part of the employee it was a crime. The Act of 1871 was hostile to the workers, and picketing was illegal. But much water has flowed under bridges since 1871, and there are signs that a new generation of employers look with not unkindly eyes upon trade unions.

In the early part of the 19th. century trade unionism was associated with Owenism, and the idea was wide-spread of a single trade union for all the workers in the country. But later a “New Model” of trade unionism sprang up. To quote Meredith’s “Economic History of England,” its “characteristics were the accumulation of large funds which might be employed either for general benefit purposes or, in case of need, as strike pay, the employment of a permanent, salaried executive to advise and carry out its policy, concentration of attention in the case of each union on the interest of the particular trade in which it was formed, and the absence of interest qua union in any social problems which had not a direct bearing on the wage contract in the trade concerned.”

It is towards this “New Model” of trade unionism that employers are looking with a winning smile; it is this unionism that they are watching with feelings of thankfulness. To again quote Meredith (who, writing from a bourgeois point of view, is especially valuable) :

“Down to the great Parliamentary struggle between 1867 and 1876, the opinion of employers in almost all industries was intensely hostile to collective bargaining. There were few who recognised a moral right of combination ; still fewer who believed that the exercise of the right was in the true interest of their employees, and a mere handful who saw in it a socially beneficient force. In the last thirty years a considerable change has occurred. In most industries where the system has long been established, a large minority of employers hold all the views indicated above, and a certain percentage maintain that unionism, in the long run, promotes the interest even of the employer. Especially in large-scale businesses many employers find in the organisation of their wage-earners a useful check upon the integrity of their foremen and departmental managers, and a conveniently impersonal way of bringing pressure to bear upon dishonest or idle wage-earners. Further, the employer who relies for his profits upon skill in organising his business, and marketing his output, is protected by the existence of a union against the competition of those who, whilst inferior to himself in these respects, excel him in the will or power to beat down the standard conditions and wages of the trade. Above all, the existence of a strong organisation makes it possible in a great measure to settle the general terms upon which labour shall be employed for long periods. The employer is set free from the risk of constant minor stoppages and disputes, and can concentrate his attention for months, or even years, at a time on other problems.”

In the “Shoe and Leather Record” of August 25th. appeared a remarkable proposal, a curious gem to find in the capitalist Press. After an appeal for Industrial Arbitration the editor said: 

“Those men who are already organised may be expected to stand up for their rights. Those who are not organised have few friends, and so it is with organised labour that we have to deal, at any rate in the first place. The first thing to do seems to be to so arrange matters as to give the unions an advantage over unorganised labour. As things stand, any advantage which the law gives is in favour either of the unorganised or the disorganised. It would be easy to enact that the advantages of the Trades Disputes Act of 1906 should only apply to organised labour—that is to trade unions. For example, Section 2 of that Act might be altered so as to read that ‘it shall be lawful for one or more persons acting on behalf of a trade union,’ etc., to do such and such things in relation to what is facetiously known as ‘peaceful picketing.’ At present the Section says that picketing may be conducted by ‘one or more persons acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a trade union.’ The words printed in italics could be erased from the statute book and other words consequential thereto inserted without exacting the antagonism of organised labour, and probably with the active approval of the Labour Party. The effect of this single alteration of the law would be to compel labour to organise or to lose the advantage of the Trades Disputes Act. And without organisation compulsory arbitration is a vain thing, because unless both employers and employed can be represented in a responsible manner before the tribunal it would be useless to consider complaints.”

“To compel labour to organise“. This phrase is truly an indication that capitalists have changed their attitude towards trade unionism. It is support of the view that the unions are reactionary organisations ; that bodies of lackadaisical men bossed by leaders with the gift of the gab and an inordinate ambition, are pleasing phenomena to capitalists, especially when these capitalists, by virtue of their being “The State,” can offer the men’s leaders soft emolument and tempting pensions. Capitalists are aware that arbitration, conciliation, and all the remaining fakes, are only applicable to those industries where trade union “leaders” can boss and bully non-thinking herds of workers.

The proposal of that “friend” of Labour, Mr. Will Crooks, is one more example of the dangers run by the workers in tolerating orthodox trade unionism. A Labour Disputes Bill has been concocted, backed by him and other Labour M.P.s. This bill proposes that in the case of a trade union and the employers agreeing on a Conciliation Board, any employee refusing to abide by that decision by “going on strike” will be liable to a fine of not less than £2 nor more than £10 for each day or part of a day. Such is the treachery of men who have reached fame and fortune on the backs of the wretched English proletariat.

This is the naked truth. The worker is to be “cribbed, cabined, and confined” in iron-bonnd trade unions, hedged around with conciliation, arbitration, “local and central boards,” and the like. Surrounded by such local threats he is to lose the right to strike, lose the miserable claim that even under capitalism he should be able to take advantage of economic conditions when selling his only possession—his labour-power, an advantage possessed by the owner of any any other commodity.

Yes, the men who propose to put English wage-slaves, during the whole of their working life, still more in the power of the tenacious tenacles of the capitalist these men are their own leaders ! What wonder, then, that capitalists beam on trade unionism ? Is it matter for surprise that they propose compulsory membership of a trade union to be the lot of the workers ? Remember the quotation before cited : “Above all the existence of a strong organisation makes it possible in a great measure to settle the general terms upon which labour shall be employed for long periods.” Workers, it is for you to say that you will no longer be “employed” or “sold” at the dictates of those who pose as your leaders, but who are, in reality, the most valued servants of the capitalists.

John A. Dawson

How to end the rail strike (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A strike is not an act of nature, like a thunder storm or an earthquake. There were no strikes in the earliest human communities, when goods were held in common and no person worked as an employee of another. Fred Flintstone might have had trouble with his boss, but in the real Stone Age work was not conducted on the basis of exploiter and exploited, and the real Fred Flintstone would have been as baffled by such absurdities as working for wages as he would be by Hollywood cinematography. 

The strike is a result of an antagonism between two interests: employers and employees. The employer needs to pay the lowest wages or salaries possible in order to maximise profits. The employee, having no interest in the act of employment besides the money that can be obtained, seeks the highest wage or salary for the job.

The explanation of this antagonism lies in a brief examination of the nature of wages and salaries. These are, in fact, prices. They are the price paid by the employer for the labour power of the worker. A capitalist will only pay this price on one condition: that he expects the value of the worker's product to be greater than the wage or salary' paid. In short, capitalists only buy labour power if it will produce for them unearned income (surplus value) which is over and above its ow n value. So, contrary to the illusion that the boss gives his workers a wage or salary, the truth is that the workers give the capitalists a free gift (surplus value which is the basis of profit) and the wages/salaries paid are merely the part of what is created by the workers which is not stolen by the employer. To thank a boss for your wage is like sending a thank-you letter to a burglar who steals everything from your home and then leaves you a fiver to buy yourself a second-hand armchair.

Exploitation

Why do workers put up with this exploitative situation of constantly giving more to the employers than we are given back in the form of wages or salaries? The answer is simple: under capitalism we have no choice but to work for those who own the means of wealth production and distribution, i.e factories, farms, mines, railways, airlines, the media etc. The only productive resource workers own is our labour power, our mental and physical energies. Selling these for the best price we can obtain is our means of paying for the necessities, and occasionally luxuries, of life. Given that we cannot live on share interest or profits from employing others (because we lack capital), our only option is to try to sell our one possession of value: our labour power. We are wage slaves.

If the market creates a high demand for labour power workers are in a good bargaining position over wages and salaries. This is often so in a time of economic expansion, when both skilled and unskilled workers are scarce and capitalists, in order to receive their golden eggs, must pay the geese well. Often they will even seek to recruit labour power from overseas, as Enoch Powell did as Minister of Health when he urged West Indians to come to Britain and take low-paid jobs. Right now the market is far from expanding. There is an economic depression, millions are unemployed and the bosses have more supply of labour power available than they demand to make profits.

In the current situation, not only in Britain but across the globe, the capitalists can afford to be very arrogant. They will shed jobs, force workers to accept worse conditions, longer hours, fewer safety regulations and, above all, lower wages and salaries. In a market which offers wage slaves the simple choice between low wages or no wages workers tend to knuckle under.

The best way for workers to defend themselves is to form trades unions. Originally these were seen by the bosses as a threat and those joining them were deported (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) or outlawed in other ways. By uniting workers in a particular place of work or type of occupation unions could say to the employers that either certain demands must be accepted or the workers would withdraw their labour — strike. This is the most powerful defensive weapon which workers have under a system of wage slavery. It will not stop us from being wage slaves, but it can improve our conditions of exploitation.

Class Struggle

In this century two false beliefs associated with trade unionism have emerged. The first is that strikes can somehow overthrow capitalism. This is all nonsense: when workers decide to get rid of capitalism we will not withdraw our labour, but withdraw the capitalists' right to buy it. Striking is not a revolutionary strategy. The second fallacy adopted by some trade unionists, especially those with jobs within the union hierarchy, is to accept that employers and employees have a common interest. British union leaders under Labour governments have been especially willing to accept this illusion, particularly when state-run industries meant that strike action would place their members in conflict with a Labour-run state. These leaders are usually rewarded with well-paid retirements in the House of Lords. But the fact is that workers and capitalists can have no common interest. We are class enemies.

A more recent fallacy is that the class struggle is all a thing of the past. Strikes were once useful, but now workers have been "tamed" and outgrown such disruptive practices. It is quite true that in a recession unions are limited in their capacity to obtain improved wages and conditions, and that after several years of sustained attacks on trade unionism (not just in Britain, but across the world) many unions are demoralised, depleted and legally weakened. But the class struggle has not gone away; the struggle of the RMT against RailTrack is clear proof that strikes can still be used as a powerful weapon to force the bosses to retreat. If the Railtrack employers had accepted the original pay settlement without a strike they would have lost hugely less profits than has since been the case. The more united striking workers are the greater the chance of victory. This is why strikes should always be conducted democratically, for willing strikers will fight longer and harder than workers pushed into a strike by union leaders. Working class unity is also important because the bosses will always seek to bribe scabs to fill in for union workers, so weakening the effects of the strike.

Socialists recognise the important need for workers to be in unions. Not just to be in them, but to participate democratically. The unions must not be hijacked by would be Lords who use them to create a spurious class unity or by muddled leftists who use workers' struggles for their own ends. When there is a strike which is on sound class lines and democratically organised, socialists are always on the side of the strikers and against the employers and their hirelings, the scabs.

End Wage-slavery

We do not leave the class struggle there. Unlike those leftist groups which imagine that fighting the class war is the be all and end all of working class action, socialists maintain that fighting over terms of wage slavery, while necessary, is ultimately futile. The aim to struggle for is to end wage slavery and with it the class struggle.

We have stated that in pre-property society there was common ownership of resources and no employment. Socialists are not calling for a return to those times, but for the creation of those social relationships in the setting of current technological development. In short, we are not opposed to modern production, which is now capable of producing enough for all, but to modern relations of production. The objective, then, is to abolish the minority class ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth and replace this with common ownership and democratic control on the basis of production solely for use, not for sale or profit.

Do socialists want more strikes? No, we do not. The strike is essentially a feature of the waste caused by capitalism. Who wants trains standing still when there are places for people to go and goods to be moved? In a socialist society, where wage labour will be a thing of the past, there will be no reason to strike, for each of us will work according to our abilities and take from the common store according to our needs.

There will be those who say that this is too much to hope for. But what is the alternative? Years of workers striking and struggling over crumbs from the cake which we have baked. Is it not time to seek more then crumbs or even a bigger slice of the cake and go for the bakery itself?

Steve Coleman

Nine days that didn’t shake the world (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

At 11.59 pm on 3 May 1926 the General Strike began, called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in solidarity with much put-upon miners in the coal industry. The intention was to force the British government to act on behalf of over one million locked-out colliers.

The coal industry was in decline. It had reached its peak annual production, of 292 million tonnes, in 1913. Seven years later output had fallen to 233 million tonnes. The First World War (1914-18) had made such demands on the industry that many of the better coal seams had been depleted.

The same period had seen the expansion of coal production in other countries such as Poland, Germany and the USA. After 1918, as coal working became more difficult in British mines, and therefore more expensive to produce, cheaper imported coal became an increasing challenge.

The Dawes Plan of 1924 enabled Germany to once again export coal, ‘free coal’ as it became known, as part of war reparations. The effect was to reduce the price of coal on the international market. A year later the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, placed Britain back on the gold standard.

This strengthening of the pound sterling made exports more expensive which, along with raised interest rates, led to economic instability in some sectors and a quest for cost cutting in Britain. Coal mine owners subsequently found themselves faced with falling profits.

The reaction was, as usual, to make the workforce bear the cost. There began a sustained process of increasing working hours and reducing rates of pay. Miners, unsurprisingly, reacted against this assault on their living and working conditions.

The response of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain was, in the words of AJ Cook, the Federation’s leader, ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day’. As to action, Cook had made his position clear in 1924, ‘I believe in strikes. They are the only weapon.’

Unrest in the mines echoed through many a steel mill and loco shed, through industries also having straitened times. This resulted in widespread sympathy for the hard-pressed colliers, organised workers expressing solidarity.

Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of the Conservative government, introduced a nine-month subsidy of miners’ wages along with a Royal Commission under Sir Herbert Samuel to investigate the industry.

Its main recommendations, in March 1926, were nationalised royalties, national (rather than local or regional) pay and employment agreements, along with the withdrawal of the government subsidy and a reduction in miners’ wages of 13.5 percent.

Emboldened by the Commission’s report, mine owners proposed new employment terms of a longer working day with reductions in pay packets. The Miners’ Federation rejected these proposals, exposing the supposed neutrality of governments in such matters.

Following failed negotiations on 1 May, the General Council of the TUC announced that a general strike would commence at a minute to midnight two days later.

Despite there being up to 3 million workers on strike, mainly but not exclusively in heavy industries, there was no clear strategy as to how to conduct or progress the campaign. The government, however, was organised and responsive.

The Labour Party, not wishing to be associated with disruptive and possibly revolutionary action, adopted a sympathetic but distanced attitude. A legal ruling under the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, declared that union funds during a general strike were not protected. This enabled employers to sequestrate union assets.

On 12 May, the TUC called the general strike off. The miners were left to fight on largely alone until the extremes of poverty forced their return to work under even more stringent conditions. Capitalism’s prioritising of profits over the needs of workers had been blatantly demonstrated.

Although the strike garnered mass support, the majority of workers were not directly involved. There were some though prepared to physically confront any who were actively working to mitigate or undermine the strike.

For example, in Leeds, on 5 May, a crowd of over a thousand gathered by the Corn Exchange. They were determined to prevent the continued, somewhat reduced, running of the tram and bus services.

To make their point obvious, coal was taken from a delivery lorry and used to pelt a tram on Duncan Street, smashing its windows, thereby forcing it to stop. Next day more trams and buses were forced out of service the same way.

Such small victories may seem significant in the moment, but they serve only to provoke a predictable response from the forces of the state. The police responded with horses, truncheons and arrests. What occurred at Orgreave six decades later was not unprecedented.

The week after this event the General Strike ignominiously collapsed when the TUC’s General Council went to Downing Street and surrendered. This was always the most likely outcome as was the defeat of the miners’ strike later that year.

Limitations of trade union action

Trade unions have served a positive and useful purpose as a collective response by workers to the depredations inflicted on them by capitalism. Indeed, they have played an important part in tempering some of the worst features of capitalism, fighting to improve wages and working conditions for their members.

They eventually gave workers a voice in parliament by founding their own political organisation, the Labour Party. However, ameliorating the excesses of capitalism was, and is, the extent of their power.

The slogan ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ gives voice to union and Labour Party aspirations. It leaves capitalism free to determine to its own advantage the definition of the word ‘fair’. Also, the word pay indicates no sense of looking beyond capitalist relations; employers who take profits while employees depend on wages/salaries. A relationship defined in terms of money.

Unions and their political party can only, at best, reform elements of the capitalist system. Miners, in the twentieth century, exemplify this. In the 1920s their parlous state motivated a collective, if limited, response by their fellow workers. Ultimately defeated.

1 January 1947 was Vesting Day, when the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act of the previous year came into force. There were many who welcomed this as a ‘socialist’ measure, along with the NHS a year later, by the reforming Labour government.

Just 25 years later, in 1972, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was taking strike action against the employers, the National Coal Board (NCB). Had coal mining been truly socialist those miners would, effectively, have been striking against themselves.

Mining could not, of course, be a socialist enclave within a capitalist economy, just as there cannot be a single socialist country in a capitalist world. The NCB ran the mines on behalf of the state that itself runs society of behalf of capitalism. Coal mines were reformed, but not socialist.

It has been estimated that 253 coal mines closed during periods of Labour governments between 1964-70 and 1974-76 with the loss of over 200,000 jobs. Prior to 1964 coal was in long-term decline. The economic problems of mining coal in Britain that so adversely affected mining in the 1920s, difficulties in extraction and cheaper imports, along with newer competition from other fuels, oil and natural gas, resulted in falling profitability.

Even the success of flying pickets and a second strike in 1974 could do little to divert capitalist economic logic. By 1984-5, any illusion as to the socialist nature of coal mining was surely dispelled by the Thatcher Conservative government.

No matter how great the solidarity of workers in dispute, or subsequent reforms enacted in response, ultimately capitalism, through its state, will organise matters to its own requirements. Reforms granted are readily withdrawn when increased profitability demands.

Strikes are essential to our lives as wage-slaves, yet their very existence is a mark of the failure, to date, to confront the reality of capitalism and the necessity of replacing it with socialism.

Dave Alton

Exhibition review: On The Line: 100 years of strikes & solidarity (2026)

Exhibition Review from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A hundred years on the line – People’s History Museum, Manchester

This month is the centenary of the General Strike, which took place from 4 to 12 May 1926. An exhibition ‘On the Line’ is being held at the People’s History Museum in Manchester until November. It consists of banners, photos, pamphlets and leaflets relating to strikes and other workers’ struggles over the last hundred years.

The earliest item on display is a banner ‘Union and Victory’ from the Great London Dock Strike of 1899. There is relatively little on the General Strike itself, but there are photos of soup kitchens, military convoys, and polo players enrolled as special constables policing the streets on horseback. Also, a copy of a pamphlet, written by a barrister, on what to do when arrested.

Among the other disputes covered are the UCS work-in in Glasgow in 1971, Grunwick in 1977, Orgreave in 1984, the ambulance workers’ strike in 1989, and the Liverpool dockers’ strike in 1996. As would be expected, there is a lot of material relating to the miners’ strike of 1984-5. This includes Women Against Pit Closures, with a photo of women in Barnsley supporting the miners, and a T-shirt from Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (‘Pits and Perverts’ is the slogan). A strike at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry from 2023 is recalled with a robot costume: workers felt they were being treated like robots. There is documentation of recent strikes, such as those by couriers and delivery workers, and last year’s strike by resident doctors. From 1972 there is a poster about four workers arrested on a picket line, a reminder of the possible consequences of workers defending their pay and conditions. A 1986 poster ‘Murdoch is bad news’ captures the role of the capitalist media in undermining workers’ struggles.

As noted in the exhibition, Stanley Baldwin, PM at the time, described the General Strike as ‘the road to anarchy and ruin’. The 1927 Trade Disputes and Trades Unions Act, passed in response to the strike, prohibited mass picketing among other forms of resistance. The TUC ended the strike without an agreement; the miners stayed out for another seven months before being forced to return to work.

The June 1926 Socialist Standard responded to the ending of the strike by commenting, ‘The greatest Trade Union action that was ever taken in any country was closed by the most gigantic swindle in the whole history of Trade Unionism.’ It then went on to criticise other organisations’ reaction, such as the ‘Communist’ Party. There was no point, the article argued, in preferring left-wing over right-wing leaders: the very idea of leaders and leadership should be rejected. Trust in leaders was not a good idea: ‘Trust and ye shall be betrayed’. The strike itself was seen as ‘a sham fight’.

The exhibition as a whole is well worth visiting, and gives a good, if necessarily only partial, idea of industrial actions over the last century. Of course, such struggles are still needed, as workers do their best to resist the exploitation and oppression of capitalism.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: The Function of Trade Unions (1960)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now the trade union is primarily organised to protect and fortify the workers of a trade section, or of a group of more or less allied trades. Its methods are economic, not political; the cessation of, or threat to cease, production and distribution, the strike, direct pressure upon or resistance to the employers, are its weapons-—their effectiveness is not in question here. The members join for trade purposes--for the regulation of the hours and conditions of employment —for the friendly society features — and a very large number because it is a trade condition: membership is compulsory. But membership for political action is certainly not the rule, even if it ever occurs; and it is clear that the unions could never have arisen had the contrary been the case. The only unity in trade union ranks is and has been on the economic plane. What economic interests have joined together politics tear asunder—for the simple reason that all shades of political opinion meet in the economic organisation.

[From the article, The Osborne Judgement, Socialist Standard, November 1910.]

The Taming of the T.U.C.(1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

What has happened to the trade unions, to their national platform the T.U.C., and to their political shadow the Labour Party? Where now is the trade union army that fought the general strike in 1926? In what dump have they parked their rusty weapon, the strike? Where are the Reds of yesteryear, and who are these men and women with their generous sprinkling of O.B.E.s, Knighthoods and Peerages who at Margate earned from the discerning observer of the Manchester Guardian (10/9/48) the tribute that “once again the T.U.C. has shown the moderate good sense that often seems to surprise its own leaders as much as the critics”?

How are we to account for the incontestable and remarkable fact that the workers—to whom the T.U.C. is supposed to give guidance and inspiration—got from it little but gloom, austerity, wage-freezing, and appeals to work harder; while the capitalist press and financial circles are congratulating themselves that it was a very successful congress from their point of view!

Easy answers are provided from different quarters but they are not the right answers as we shall see on examination.

New Tunes for Old

At one time it was taken for granted that Congress was a place where the Unions recorded their dissatisfaction with the effects of capitalism, made their protests about the home and foreign policies of the Government, discussed wage demands and strikes to enforce them, tried to smooth out inter-union disputes, passed well-intentioned, pious, resolutions in favour of peace and internationalism, and paid lip-service to what they assumed to be the Socialist objective of the Labour Party. Much of it was muddled and trivial but at least there was the sense of working class solidarity and of a forward-looking movement. But now the members are perplexed to find that all the old demands, good, bad and indifferent alike, are being dropped, modified or even reversed; and that all of this is being done out of deference to the Labour Government of which they expected so much and that they worked so long to raise to power. Now, strikes are looked on with disfavour and “unofficial” strikers condemned with a harshness that used to be directed only against the employers’ Wage claims have given place to a modified “wage-freezing.” The use of the Emergency Powers Act and of troops in strikes is no longer condemned since it is a Labour Government that is responsible. Non-contributory social insurance schemes were once demanded, now the workers are told that it is better for them to contribute. For years it was a cardinal principle of trade union and Labour Party programmes that there should be no taxation on the food arid other articles the workers buy, but only direct taxation like income tax arid surtax and death duties; now the opposite principle is preached and practised. Conscription, in peace time was always condemned, now it is accepted without protest. The list of abandoned claims could be greatly extended but it will suffice to look more closely at one of them.

Re-enter the Profit Motive

At one time it was argued that higher wages could come out of profit, and the leaders urged the rank and file to work for the abolition of the profit motive and look instead towards the principle of service to the whole community. This year the whole theory was thrown overboard. Sir Stafford Cripps, erstwhile denouncer of profit, addressed the delegates on the need for greater production and for the voluntary abstention from claims for higher wages. He backed up his case with the seemingly unanswerable argument that “even if corporation profits were reduced by a quarter – a very drastic cut – it would mean an average addition to wages and salaries of not more than 4d. in the pound.” (Manchester Guardian, 8/9/48.) Sir George Chester, speaking for the T.U.C. General Council in opposition to a resolution demanding statutory control of profits and dividends, dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s of Cripps’ statement by informing the perplexed delegates that you can’t do without profit —” Profit in the form of marginal surpluses was essential to the conduct of industry whether it be nationalised or in private hands, it is inescapable until we can alter the whole structure of industry and replace profit by some other incentive.” (Daily Herald, 10/9/48.) No wonder that the Financial Times, organ of the investors, drew substantial comfort from the ‘week’s proceedings. “Margate,” wrote the Financial Times Labour Correspondent (11/9/48) “has cleared the air. In future it is going to he much more difficult for attacks on profits or the profit motive – either particular or general – to be sustained. The hitherto despised ‘capitalist’ incentive has at last been officially recognised as – at least for the time being – socially necessary.”

Explanations that do not Explain

One plausible but fallacious explanation of the change in the trade unions is the Communist one, that the leaders have been corrupted or have sold out to American capitalism and that what is wanted is new leaders, Communist ones. Neither at present nor in the past have Communist leaders produced any better results than the others. Where they differ is only in the fact that their guiding principle is unscrupulous or misguided subservience to the policies of the Russian State Capitalist regime. True the Communists have sometimes been associated with sound action by the trade union rank and file, but only by accident and because at the moment it happened to serve some aim of Russian foreign policy, never by consistent loyalty to the interests of the working class.

A somewhat similar explanation is that the trade union and labour leaders have been sobered and undermined by office and responsibility and have, in consequence, imbibed new ideas in place of the old. Some who say this think the change is good because the new ideas are better, others think them worse; but the explanation is only a half-truth. Men who have both the will and the power to put their beliefs into practice do not become “sobered ” and “undermined” by the responsibilities of office. Capitalist office does not soften the capitalist convictions of a Winston Churchill. With the Labour leaders the position is different. They are the victims of their own wrong theories and self-deception. They thought that, without any mandate to abolish capitalism, they could tame the capitalist tiger ; instead of which they are finding, as Socialists always said they would, that it is the tiger that determines the route, the pace and the policy.

The official version offered by the Labour Party and expressed by their Secretary, Mr. Morgan Phillips, in a Labour Press Service article, “Three Years that Changed Britain,” is that July 1945, when the Labour Party took office, marked the beginning of “a peaceful revolution “which made the people of Britain” for the first time in history . . . masters in their own land.” July 6th, 1945, was, he claims, the “great day” that the Socialist pioneers worked and waited for. If what he claims were true it would indeed be understandable that the tactics suitable in a struggle by the working class against the capitalist class would now become pointless and obsolete; obviously there could no longer be strikes of the workers against the capitalists if capitalism were abolished and the classes themselves had vanished. But, of course, it is only a shadow of the truth, as was shown at the T.U.C. by the speeches of Cripps and Chester referred to earlier in this article, and by other events happening before our eyes.

Is it a new Social Order?

The Capitalist Ministers who say that the old order has already passed away tell us that the reason we are prevented from reaping immediately the fruits of the “Socialist” triumph, is that Tory rule and the late war have left their aftermath of disorder and destruction that has yet to be cleared away. This is so reasonable an explanation that its inadequacy is not at first sight obvious, but the truth is that the minds and hands of the Labour Ministers are every day becoming less full with the heritage of the past war and more full with the problems and preparations for the new grouping of capitalism and the new wars that face us. The plans for Western Union and Marshall Aid are plans for a capitalist world in which capitalist Europe will try to save itself by union from being crushed between the American and Russian contestants for world dominance. It is not for the past war but for the coming war that, under Labour Government, the armed forces are greater than they were in 1938 and that for the first time in history we have peacetime conscription. During the week the T.U.C. met, the Government were considering extending compulsory military service from 12 to 18 months, and decided to delay demobilisation. The same week that saw War Minister Shinwell, author of When the Men Come Home, address Congress on the coming General Election, saw him also at Southampton seeing the Guards off to the fighting in Malaya; the troopships are once again outward bound. When Sir Stafford Cripps told Congress that production must be increased by greater output from each worker because it is not possible to increase the number of workers in production, it is capitalism, not Socialism, that demands that the hundreds of thousands of workers under arms and on munitions work shall be maintained and indeed increased. The Labour Government promised that it would bring about friendlier foreign relationships, particularly with Russia, and thus safeguard peace. The fact that the international situation goes from bad to worse is not because the Labour Government are incompetent or evilly disposed but because capitalism is in control.

Those who have eyes to see will realise that it is not the Labour Government and the T.U.C. that have changed capitalism, but capitalism under Labour rule that bids fair to change the trade union movement from an organ of working class struggle into little better than an instrument to aid the Government in the smooth running of capitalism and the campaign to get the workers to work harder and forego wage claims.

Facts for Trade Unionists

The great need in the trade union movement is for straight thinking and plain speaking. Sir Stafford Cripps and Sir George Chester are right when they say that you cannot have capitalism without profit; it is their conclusion that is wrong. Having told the workers that you cannot have the one without the other they say in effect that it is necessary now to put up with both. That is the fundamental error of the Labour Party’s theories, obvious to Socialists from the start but only now being shown up in practice in a way that all can see. The Socialist Party has always held that the working class cannot achieve power for Socialism, and cannot have Socialism in operation, until a majority have gained the understanding and will for Socialism. Without clearly seeing what they were doing the Labour Party worked on the quite different doctrine that a Labour Government lacking a mandate to establish Socialism could take capitalism in hand and administer it in accordance with Socialist principles. It cannot be done, and if seriously attempted, only chaos would be the result. As well put a pacifist in charge of the conduct of a war, or a conscientious teetotaller to build up a profitable brewery. Either the Labour Ministers had to keep their muddled good intentions and produce chaos, or they had to discard them and try to make a success of capitalism on the only principles possible, capitalist principles.

Trade unionists who are Labour Party supporters now find themselves face to face with a difficult decision. If they remain loyal to the Labour Government that is carrying on capitalism they weaken their struggle against capitalist exploitation on the industrial field and undermine their own unity, if they continue the struggle for which trade unions were formed they come into conflict with the Labour Government. It is a cruel dilemma but it has to be faced. The long years of muddled thinking have to be paid for and there is no easy way out. Backing the Government in running capitalism means stultifying the trade union movement and spreading apathy and despair; with the certainty that at the end of the road, even if the present production crisis is eased for a time, there will be new crises and new and larger wars. The alternative is the seemingly slow but in fact the only way, the way indicated by the Socialist Party at its formation, that of working for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. There are no short cuts and there is no other way.

Edgar Hardcastle

Syndicalism: its origins and weaknesses (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month the main French trade union confederation of the time adopted at its Congress in Amiens a Charter which, spreading far beyond France, became the doctrinal basis of a theory of unionism and revolution known as “syndicalism” (this is in fact merely the ordinary French word for trade unionism, so in France this doctrine is known as “revolutionary syndicalism “). As this doctrine has played an important historical role in working class thinking and organisation, we mark this event by publishing below an English version of the chapter on trade unionism that appeared in the pamphlet Pour le Socialisme Mondial (“For World Socialism”) put out in French by the world socialist movement in 1981 and which reproduced the Charter in full as well as giving a socialist assessment of it.

Associations of workers of the same trade have existed since the Middle Ages but only became organisations of wage earners to negotiate wage rates and conditions of work with employers in the middle of the 19th century. Up till then these associations had been mainly mutual aid societies, but even these had been banned by the Le Chapelier Law of 1791 which was later incorporated into the Napoleonic Code. Workers’ associations nevertheless continued to exist. It was not until 1864 that they were permitted to come out into the open and not until 1884 that they were fully legalised.

In the 1860s the main workers’ organisation in France was the “Association Internationale des Travailleurs” (International Working Men’s Association) which had been founded in 1864 by French and British workers. Although Karl Marx played a prominent role in its activities the IWMA was not a socialist organisation but was mainly concerned with organising trade unions and supporting strikes. It did, however, introduce some socialist ideas to French workers. Thus in 1869 we find a federation of workers’ organisations in Paris proclaiming as its final aim “the total emancipation of the workers in a new social order where the wages system will be abolished” and in 1870 Leo Frankel declaring (not quite accurately) during a trial of some French members of the IWMA that “the international association does not have as its aim an increase in the wage of workers, but indeed the abolition of the wages system”. This demand for “the abolition of the wages system” had first been raised by the British Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s and had been taken up by Marx in an address he gave to the General Council of the IWMA in 1865 (published after his death as a pamphlet entitled Value, Price and Profit which we strongly recommend for an understanding of trade unionism, its uses and limitations). It was to become a prominent slogan of French trade unionism in the period up till the First World War, after the working class movement had recovered from the setback represented by the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.

In 1895 various trade unions and other workers’ organisations joined together to form a “Confédération générale du travail” (General Confederation of Labour) which in 1902 declared its objective to be “the disappearance of the wages system and employers”. In 1906 the CGT adopted at its congress in Amiens a new programme. In view of its historical importance we reproduce (in a contemporary translation) this “Charte d’Amiens” in full:

“The General Confederation of Labour unites, independent of all political groupings, all workers who recognise the struggle to be carried on for the abolition of the wages system [. . .]

Congress considers this declaration to be a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic field, places the workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, material and moral, carried out by the capitalist class against the working class.

      Congress makes this theoretical affirmation more precise by the following points:

Regarding day-to-day needs. Trade Unionism pursues the co-ordination of the efforts of the workers, the increase of the workers’ welfare through the realisation of immediate amelioration, such as the shortening of working hours, wage increases, etc.

But this is only one aspect of its task. Trade Unionism is preparing complete emancipation which can only be realised by the expropriation of the capitalist class. It favours as a means to this end the general strike and considers that the trade union, now a unit of resistance, will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation.

Congress declares that this two-fold task, for day-to-day life and for the future, arises from the actual position of wage-earners, which forces the working class and imposes on all workers, whatever their opinion and political and philosophical views, the duty to belong to the basic organisation, the trade union. Therefore, so far as individual members are concerned, Congress declares complete freedom for every Trade Unionist to participate, outside of the trade organisation, in any forms of struggle in accordance with his political or philosophical views, confining itself only to asking him, in return, not to introduce into the trade union the opinions which he professes outside it.

In so far as organisations are concerned, Congress decides that in order that Trade Unionism may obtain utmost effectiveness, economic action should be exercised directly against the employing class and that the Confederal organisations should not, as trade unions, pay any attention to parties or sects which, outside or alongside, may pursue completely independently the transformation of society.”

The doctrine here expounded became a current in the working class movement that has become known as “syndicalism”. Only some of the leaders of the CGT accepted this doctrine and regarded the trade unions and the general strike as the means to overthrow capitalist rule and establish a new society. The bulk of the members were interested only in “day to day needs”, though they were sometimes prepared to support revolutionary phrases as a means of frightening employers into conceding higher wages or better conditions.

The Charter was not as anti-political as it has sometimes been claimed to be. It does not proclaim the incompatibility of trade union and political action, but only that political divisions should not be introduced into the trade unions. This was sensible, since to be effective in their role of bringing pressure to bear on employers over wages and working conditions trade unions need to organise as many workers as possible, irrespective of their political or philosophical views. They are, and must be, composed of workers of all views. To introduce political views (including the anti-politicaI views of the anarchists) is to risk division, so weakening the union in the face of the employers. In recognising this the Charter of Amiens adopted a sound position (one which is unfortunately not always remembered today).

Trade unions arise out of the wage-relation that is at the basis of capitalism. Capitalist society is divided into two classes: the capitalist class who own and control the means of production and the working class who, excluded from such ownership and control, are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. The wage which workers receive is the price of their labour-power and the price of this commodity fluctuates, like that of all commodities, around its value as determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it. If competition between workers for jobs was unrestricted then wages would tend to fall below the value of labour-power, as often happened in the 19th century before effective trade unions existed. Combining together in trade unions to exert collective pressure on employers is a way workers can prevent their wages falling below the value of their labour-power. Put another way, it is a way of ensuring that they are paid the full value of what they have to sell. This is the usefulness of trade unions to the working class but they can do no more than this. They cannot substantially increase the living standards of their members under capitalism but they can ensure that wages are not reduced below the subsistence level.

Trade unions, then, are defensive organisations of the working class which, in order to be effective, must recruit all workers, on the basis merely that they work for wages in a particular industry or trade and not on the basis of their political or philosophical views. This means that they are not, and cannot be, revolutionary organisations since they will be composed of non-socialists as well as of socialists. In fact at the present time, when the working class does not yet want and understand socialism, the overwhelming majority of trade unionists will inevitably be non-socialist and hence non-revolutionary. This was so before the First World War too. This was why it was absurd to expect, as did the syndicalists, the trade unions to act in a revolutionary way for this was to expect non-revolutionaries to behave as revolutionaries.

To end capitalism the great majority of workers must have first come to want and understand this change since the new socialist society which will be established in place of capitalism can only function with the conscious and active participation of its members—something the syndicalists did not accept. They imagined that they, as a conscious minority, could lead the discontented mass of workers in a general strike against capitalism. This would inevitably have been defeated with many workers being killed, especially as the anti-political stand of the syndicalists meant that the state, which controls the means of coercion, was to be left in the hands of a government representing the capitalist class.

Although the sincerity of the syndicalists’ desire to end capitalism cannot be questioned, their understanding of the future society to replace it can be. In suggesting that society should be organised on the basis of trade unions—“the trade union [. . .] will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation”—the syndicalists were merely projecting into socialism the industrial and professional divisions of workers which exist under capitalism. Since socialism is based on the social ownership (= ownership by society) of the means of production, the trade union ownership proposed by the syndicalists was not socialism at all but a modified form of sectional ownership.

The First World War revealed that not only were the bulk of CGT members not revolutionary but that they were patriotic. From this time on began a process of collaboration with and integration into the state by the trade unions which continues to this day, with the unions represented on many governmental institutions at national and local level and receiving subsidies from the state for certain of their activities. Trade unionism, in other words, has dropped its pretence at being revolutionary, though the present CGT did not eliminate its paper commitment to “the disappearance of the wages system and of employers” till 1969. This has led some to argue that as the trade unions are no longer revolutionary they should not be supported by those who want social revolution, but should on the contrary be opposed. This is not a fair criticism nor a valid conclusion.

The trade unions are essentially defensive organisations with the limited role of protecting wages and working conditions and it is by this criterion that their effectiveness or otherwise ought to be judged. By this standard, although they make many serious mistakes (disunity and rivalry, collaboration with the state and with political parties), by and large the existing trade unions do succeed in protecting wage rates and working conditions against what Marx called “the never-ceasing encroachments of capital”. Our members do join the existing trade unions and work within them to defend wages and conditions. We do not criticise the unions for not being revolutionary, but we do severely criticise them when they depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between workers and employers; when they collaborate with employers, the state or political parties; when they put the corporate interests of a particular section of workers above that of the general interest of the working class as a whole.

But even if the unions made no mistakes of this sort, what they can achieve for the working class under capitalism is very limited. They can—and do—enable workers to get the full value of their labour-power, but they cannot stop the exploitation of the working class. This exploitation is inherent in the wages system and can only be abolished along with it through the conversion of the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of the whole community. But this requires political action based on socialist understanding by a socialist political party for which the trade unions, with their limited defensive role, can never be a substitute.

Adam Buick