Political Notes: Social Democrats so what (1982)

The Political Notes Column from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social Democrats so what

Who cares about the leadership of the Social Democrats?

Well Roy Jenkins cares. No banqueting table ever received so delighted a slaver from him as when, declared the winner of the leadership contest, he contemplated the new brilliance of his once-glimmering hopes of becoming Prime Minister. “Our aim is to . . . make a major breakthrough to government". he asserted. David Owen cares. Second in the two-man race, he did not actually say "I want an important job in any future SDP government". What he did gulp out of his chagrin was: "Roy Jenkins is a friend of mine and we will work very much together". The SDP membership cares. Nearly 76 per cent of them cast their votes in the election for the man who, they hope, will head the next government over British capitalism.

But should anyone care about the outcome of this supreme non-event? A little more than 47,000 members of the SDP expressed a preference for one or other of two politicians who are inseparably associated with one of the most dismal failures in recent history. Jenkins’ time as Chancellor of the Exchequer was marked by a savage assault on working class living standards and by a succession of economic crises, all of which were clearly beyond his control. Owen was Foreign Secretary through an average period of international tension and conflict (including early rumblings of the Falklands war). If he had any ability or knowledge of how to eliminate these problems, he successfully concealed it.

Politicians have to base their appeal on a veiled assurance that there is some sort of magic trick of competence, learning or skill which can be applied to make capitalism run in the interests of its peoples. So far, even the slickest of them have not been able to perform the promised miracle. It is depressing, if unsurprising, that there are 65,000 workers in the SDP who are naive enough to believe that a tedious rehash of the discredited tricks of the other parties of capitalism can have any effect on the system's ailments.

An authentic desire to break the political mould would lead to the discarding of all the parties who stand for capitalism. To the detriment of the human race, few workers care about that at present.

Polish capitalism

For several months now, Poland has been under martial law, and very little information has been forthcoming about developments there. But there are still thousands of trade unionists imprisoned for their activities. Solidarity is still operating underground. There have been several demonstrations against the regime which the armed thugs of the state have brutally put down with water-cannon and truncheons.

But why is independent trade-union activity and the wage rises it might gain such a horrible threat in the eyes of Jaruzelski and the other representatives of capital and profit in Poland? On July 7, Polish leaders met their Western bank creditors in Vienna to negotiate the further rescheduling of debts. The Polish rulers are still over 27 billion dollars in debt, having borrowed large amounts to finance the boom of the 'seventies.

With the onset of world recession in the 'eighties, they are finding it impossible to repay these debts, both because of the lack of resources internally and the decreased purchases in the West of Polish exports — the preferred method of repayment.

As the Financial Times put it: “Even if Polish productivity accelerated sharply, the world recession would prevent the West from buying as much as the generals in Warsaw would like” (26 January 1982). Previous rescheduling has meant that two billion dollars of capital, plus interest, are due to be repaid this year.

The Polish rulers say they can do neither, and although some of the Western governments have made hypocritically pious noises about the martial law regime, the bankers themselves are generally anxious to see their Polish counterparts do anything they can to screw more wealth out of the Polish workers, for the repayment at least of the interest. They complain that their capital has been invested without purpose since they have not seen a profit.

All of these developments prove beyond the slightest doubt that state-capitalist countries like Poland and Russia are giant corporations, which fit quite consistently into the overall framework of world capitalism, with its exploitation of wage labour by capital to accumulate profit.

Anyone for democracy?

Even for the House of Commons — where they are not unwaveringly in touch with reality — it was a remarkable day when David Owen got up to voice his concern for the welfare of the trade unions. Was this the man who was Foreign Secretary in the government which ruled during the infamous winter of discontent?

Worse was to come. Owen’s unoriginal opinion that the collapse of the NUR strike proved the need for an extension of democratic procedures in the unions was applauded by Margaret Thatcher. Was this the Prime Minister presiding over the present ruthless assault on the unions?

Thatcher foresaw the introduction of new laws to force the unions to hold secret ballots before calling a strike. It is popularly viewed that such laws would drastically reduce the number and incidence of strikes. The theory is that stolid, responsible trade unionists who want only to be left in peace to surrender up the maximum of surplus value to their employers are being harassed and misled into strikes they oppose by militant trade union leaders. Just let the silent majority have its voice, runs the theory, and there will be very, very few strikes.

It is not so long ago that the opposite theory was popular with the likes of Owen and Thatcher. In those days the union leadership (men like Arthur Deakin and Tom Williamson) were respected as bulwarks resisting the pressure for strikes from the union membership. The result was often that the pressure boiled over into "unofficial” strikes — which meant that the members were in favour of them but the leadership would not organise them. The House of Commons then did not hear calls from vain politicians for the majority of trade unionists to have its way. Instead, it heard thanks and praise for the undemocratic, resisting leaders.

In any case, Thatcher and Owen got it wrong. There is no evidence that ballots would reduce strikes; it is very possible that a strike called after a ballot would be that much stronger and determined and therefore difficult for the employers to break. Above it all is the fact that industrial disputes arise directly, unavoidably, from the class struggle. There is no doubt which side Owen and Thatcher are on. A more democratic, more powerful trade union movement will be built in spite of their opposition.

Editorial: The Dock Strike and the Emergency Powers Act (1948)

Editorial from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the unofficial strike of London dockers had lasted several weeks and sympathetic strikes were taking place at other docks the Labour Government on 28th June declared a state of emergency under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920. The Daily Herald the next day reported this as follows:

“Armed with full powers under the State of Emergency plroclamation signed by the King, the Cabinet last night prepared regulations to meet any possible crisis arising from the dock strikes.”

“The government, with its emergency powers, will, if necessary, requisition accommodation in and near the London docks for troops and other labour, and seize warehouses for storage. It is also expected to take powers for the control of all arrangements at ports, including the turn-round of ships, and for dealing with acts of sabotage or attempts to dissuade troops from carrying out their duties.” (Daily Herald, 29/6/48).

The Prime Minister swiftly followed up the proclamation with a broadcast appeal to the men on strike and the next day the strike was called off. Whether the strikers were more influenced by the appeal, or by the threat, is a matter of opinion, but there is no doubt what would have been the outcome had the strike continued. The prestige and continuance in office of the Labour Government were at stake and it would have been a fight to a finish.

Labour M.Ps. and supporters saw in the incident a personal triumph for the Prime Minister’s eloquence and sincerity. The Opposition had a double target to attack. They abused the Ministers, for dilatoriness and lack of courage, especially Mr. Isaacs. Minister of Labour, who, they gleefully pointed out, had not only flown off to America to attend an I.L.O. Conference but had actually done so in an American plane. They also laid the blame at the doors of the mammoth Transport and General Workers Union, which, they said, must be badly managed and quite incapable of serving its members properly since the latter repeatedly show their discontent by ignoring the Union and striking against its advice. Others saw in the whole affair a Moscow-inspired Communist plot to upset the Labour Government and sow dissension between workers and their anti-Communist officials.

Mr. Arthur Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport Workers Union, indignantly defended himself and his Executive against all the charges levelled at the Union. Writing in the Record (July) he made what is on paper a good case. Its fatal fault is that it is too good since it claims to demonstrate that the men had nothing to strike about. Thousands of men do not stop work, remain out for weeks on end without strike pay, bitterly denounce their officials and shout down speeches urging a return to work if, as Mr. Deakin writes, “there was no reason for the strike to start.” Mr. Deakin’s account is as follows : The dispute arose about the piece-work rate for unloading zinc oxide and on several occasions the men refused to complete the job. For this breach of discipline they were punished with suspension for one week and disentitlement to attendance money (i.e. their minimum guaranteed pay) for 13 weeks. They appealed but came out on strike before the appeal was heard. Subsequently after an appeal tribunal had failed to agree a new tribunal was set up under an independent chairman and reduced the disentitlement to two weeks. Mr. Deakin makes much of the fact that the bodies which imposed the penalty and heard the appeal are joint bodies on which the Union is represented, and also of the point that because the strike was a breach of agreements entered into by the Union “it had no alternative but to honour its obligations and order a return to work.” He maintains that the agreements had been “at every stage approved by constitutionally elected lay committees of rank and file members” and concludes therefore that “there was no reason for the strike to start, and every reason why work should have been resumed immediately the appeal tribunal gave its decision.”

To all of this, as has already been indicated, the existence of bitter discontent in the minds of the men is a complete answer. They belong to and pay into the Union in order to be protected in disputes with the employer. They are entitled to get it even though their officials may think and tell them that the action they propose to take is unreasonable, unwise and unnecessary. They are, after all, likely to he the best judges of where the shoe pinches.

There is another and equally vital aspect of the dispute. The Labour Party does not believe that strikes are an inevitable outcome of the class-struggle which underlies the capitalist system. They have told us so often how a Labour Government would avoid strikes; by a policy of high wages and low prices, by arbitration and conciliation, by nationalisation which would “eliminate the profit motive,” by a wise and humane administration of industry including trade union representation on disciplinary bodies. These and other things were offered as an alternative to the Socialist remedy of abolishing capitalism and with it the wages system. Yet what happens in practice? Not high wages but “wage-freezing,” not lower prices but rising prices. Not the cessation of strikes, but over 600,000 workers involved in strikes (mostly unofficial) in 1947. Not industrial harmony but the invoking of the much-hated Emergency Powers Act. This is an Act that was passed under Lloyd George’s Tory-Liberal Coalition Government, in 1920. It was opposed at the time by the Trade Unions and the Labour Party. At the 1921 Labour Party Conference a resolution demading its repeal was carried. (It was moved by a delegate of the Dock Workers’ Union.) The Act was used by the Baldwin Tory Government against the General Strike in 1926. At the T.U.C. that year a resolution of condemnation was carried which held that at no time during the General Strike was it necessary to apply the Act.

Yet this is the Act invoked by a Labour Government in a relatively small dispute.

Of course they have their excuses ready: we live in critical times which necessitate wage-freezing; the people must be fed even if it means using troops and in effect smashing a strike; if you have capitalism and the wages system the Government cannot tolerate failure to keep agreements between workers and employers; and finally the Government administering capitalism must govern in such a way as to keep the system functioning. It is not worth while arguing about these various points. All they add up to is that the way to working class emancipation does not lie through Labour Government. No matter how much Labour Ministers may hope and strive through humane administration to “decapitalise” capitalism their actions are broadly determined by the necessities of that system. The road to crisis, class conflict and war is paved with the good intentions of Labour Governments.

Notes by the Way: What, the Workers think of their well-off leaders (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

What, the Workers think of their well-off leaders

Writing on the Dock strike Mr. Trevor Evans (Daily Express, 30/6/48) says that Mr. Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport Workers’ Union “made the elementary mistake last Sunday morning of arriving at the gates of the dock where he was to address the strikers in a chauffeur-driven, impressive limousine.”

Mr. Evans thinks that the above is the kind of thing that has undermined Mr. Deakin’s influence with the members of the union. Doubtless he is right. On the same day, however, Mr. Alexander Werth, Manchester Guardian correspondent in Moscow, expressed the view that the differences of wealth between the poor and the privileged in Russia have no such effect. “There are,” he writes, ” no murmurs when a chief engineer or a general is given a three-room flat in a new block in Moscow.”

Mr. Werth may be right, hut perhaps it is merely that he didn’t hear the murmurs. As he explained (Manchester Guardian, 25/6/48) that ”many Russian town-dwellers still live in conditions of what we would consider intolerable squalor and overcrowding,” and that in Moscow u four or five to a room is not uncommon,” it seems much more likely that the privileges of the lucky few are resented even if it is not wise for the Russian worker to express his resentment aloud.

The Communists and Unofficial Strikes

Recently the Communists have been giving their support to “unofficial” strikes, as when the Dockers came out. It would be a mistake to think from this that the Communists have consistently done so. Until they decided to come out in opposition to the Labour Government, which they had supported at the General Election and for long afterwards, they opposed unofficial strikes and denounced the strikers as the following examples will show. On 26th November, 1945, Mr. Ian Mackay, Industrial Correspondent of the News Chronicle, quoted from a speech made by Mr. Harry Pollitt at the Annual Congress of the Communist Party held in London on 25th November. Mr. Pollitt said :

“I am going to face you with the direct issue. You are either in favour of the party line as set out in the report or the line that mass strikes are the only way to realise the workers’ ends. If you are in favour of strikes I warn you that you are playing with fire in a way that can help to lose the peace and reduce this country to ashes . . . You can get a coal strike in the coalfields tomorrow if you want it. But if you do will it advance the working-class movement of this country or the prospect of our nation remaining first rate in the family of the United Nations?” (News Chronicle, 26/11/45.)

While Mr. Pollitt was making his speech London gas workers were actually out on .strike.

As recently as September. 1947, when the Grimthorpe miners were out on strike the Daily Worker featured a speech by Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, under the bold heading: “Horner Says Grimethorpe Men Are Wrong.” (Daily Worker, 9/9/47.)

The Daily Worker commenced the report of Horner’s speech with the following summary : “The 140 Grimethorpe strikers were accused yesterday by Mr. Arthur Horner. the Miner’s secretary, of holding their 700,000 mining colleagues to ransom and threatening to destroy all the benefits of the five-day week.” Mr. Horner’s argument was that the Union bad given a pledge to the Coal Board and Government that the miners would produce as much coal with the 5-day week as they did before in 5½ days. If they did not produce the output lack of coal can “bring down the Labour Government.” Of the Yorkshire men he said:

“The attitude of the Yorkshire miners was also wrecking the whole policy of reforms which the Union was aiming at.”

These were hard words for a Union official to apply to his own members and they contrast strongly with his remarks to Lord Hyndley, Chairman of the Coal Board, made at Whitley Bay during the Mineworkers’ Conference. To Lord Hyndley who was on the platform, Mr. Horner said : “By and large we can say you have done well and we will continue to help you to do very much better.” The Daily Herald (9/7/48) reporting this, says it was made “with a slight bow to Lord Hyndley.”

Labour Government and Profit Boom

Under the heading ”Has the Profit Boom Ended?” a City Correspondent of the Daily Herald (27/6/48) wrote that “there is substance in the belief that for some companies the industrial profit boom is at an end, and lower earnings during the next year or two may mean dividends cannot be maintained at the current level.”

The Labour Government holds that it is not only practicable but necessary to plan the running of the social system. They have plans for everything and claim to be able to mould the system to their will. How then did it come about that there has been a profit boom? It would seem either that the boom in profits was in accordance with the Labour Government’s plan, or that it happened because their planning did not work. In either event it leaves them with some explaining to do.

Full Employment, for how long?

The Central Wandsworth Labour Party (Mr. Bevin’s constituency) has published a leaflet urging electors to join the Labour Party if “interested in maintaining full employment and all the other advantages that the Labour Government have gained for you.”

It also tells us that “unemployment is less than it has been since the first count 50 years ago.”

The conclusion we are asked to accept is that so long as we have Labour Government unemployment will remain at the present comparatively low figure of 300,000. It is very doubtful whether Mr. Bevin and the other leaders still believe that they can prevent capitalism from producing its periodic industrial crises, but whether they still believe it or not we shall in due course see unemployment jumping up to the million or two million mark again when the increased production campaigns here and elsewhere have run their course.

Mr. Aneurin Bevan on Tory vermin

In a speech at Manchester Mr. Bevan, Minister of Health, let himself go about the Tory Party. “They are lower than vermin,” he said. (Daily Mail, 5/7/48). For them he had “a deep burning hatred in his heart.”

It was not always so however. In 1940 when the Labour Party decided to enter into coalition with the Tory Party under a Tory Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, Mr. Bevan said:

“The Government have been in office for two weeks and like my hon. Friend the member for Llanelly . . . I felicitate them upon the way in which they have set about their task.” (Hansard, 30th May, 1940.)

The Press naturally made much of Mr. Bevan’s abuse of the Tory Party but actually a more revealing passage in his speech was one that attracted no comment. He said that Churchill’s policy would mean ”cinemas, mansions, hotels and theatres going up, hut no houses for the poor.” (Daily Mail, 5/7/18.)

It is the last phrase that is significant. Mr. Bevan and the Labour Party charge the Tories with seeking to meet the needs of the rich. The Labour alternative is to try to help the poor by building comparatively low rented (and small) houses for them. It is only Socialists who seek the abolition of both rich and poor, of both the property-owning class and the propertyless working class.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Capitalism cant about strikes (1951)

Editorial from the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

During 1950 over 1,300 industrial disputes were reported to the Ministry of Labour. Almost all of them were “unofficial," because declared in defiance of the 1940 Conditions of Employment and National Arbitration Order, and the majority took place in nationalised industries. In the coal industry alone there were 863. The Labour government and the capitalist Press join in condemning strikes on the grounds that they are unpatriotic, unnecessary, and useless but they part company about the cause. While the government spokesmen and trade union officials put most emphasis on alleged Communist incitement some of the newspapers prefer to believe that the chief cause is the cumbersome machinery of the nationalised industries and the big trade unions, and the too close association of the latter with the government.

This makes it possible for some newspapers to shed crocodile tears over the workers' grievances while sermonising over the wickedness and futility of striking to redress them. Thus on 21 February the Daily Mail editorial found it “wrong than an engine-driver should get only £6 18s. 0d. a week, or that the lowest-paid should receive less than £5," and on the same day the editor of the Manchester Guardian had this to say:—

“There is general sympathy for the individual railwaymen’s case for better conditions. The lowest paid man's £4 16s. 0d. a week is not enough to meet today's living costs, and there is some validity in the trade union argument that men should not be forced to rely on overtime and Sunday work to make ends meet.”

But sympathy for the individual railwaymen turns into hostility at the idea of the individuals getting together and doing something to enforce their demands after long drawn-out negotiations have failed. For alternative remedy the Guardian slides off into a demand for radical reorganisation of the railways, while the Mail preaches the need for all to work together ‘‘in these desperate times,” and laments that “the community is ruled by force and not by justice.”

All the critics of strikes-in-practice profess to believe in the abstract right to strike. Thus the Daily Mail—“Every man has the right to withhold his labour —and we stand by that"; and, “The strike weapon is a legitimate part of our industrial machinery.”

We wonder however when the Daily Mail ever supported men on strike!

Mr. Francis Williams (News Chronicle, 22/2/51) put the usual case of the Labour Party that “in these days ” (as if they were any different from what capitalism has always been) strikes are obsolete because “everyone concerned knows that it is in fact only through negotiation that a settlement capable of advancing die interests both of the community and individual workers can be secured."

Mr. Williams was particularly incensed with Mr. Figgins, general secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, on account of his refusal to appeal to railwaymen not to strike during the negotiations. Mr. Figgins, warned by the intense discontent of the members of his union, took the line that “negotiations and strikes could take place at the same time," and he pointed out that “in 1911 we held an unofficial strike and there were negotiations very quickly."

On this issue Mr. Figgins is obviously right and the critics of strikes are wrong. Arbitration and negotiation have no meaning apart from the pressure the workers can exercise by being willing to strike. And the pretence that the strikes under Labour government play no part in securing wage increases is mere hypocrisy, as there is plenty of evidence to show. After long refusals and discussions many railwaymen struck and then the Railway Executive came out on 20 February with its willingness to offer £9,250,000 wage increases instead of £7,000,000. Later they increased it to £12,000,000.

Can anyone doubt that the unofficial strikes of miners helped to induce the Coal Board to agree to further wage increases in January, 1951, only three months after the increases granted in October last year?

The Irish Bank Clerks who held up the banks for a month can certainly claim that it brought results.

Then there is the interesting case of the electricians on the Festival of Britain site who struck for an additional 2d an hour and got it. After the strike had been going oh for weeks the Minister of Labour appointed a Committee of Inquiry. They met on Saturday, 10 February, and reported immediately in favour of the increase. The employers’ association opposed it, refused to accept the Committee’s findings, and complained that they would pay it only “under severe protest" and that it had been granted under pressure from the government. The explanation doubtless is that the government were very much concerned about the possibility of the Festival buildings not being ready in time for the official opening date.

The secretary of the employers’ National Federated Electrical Association, is reported in the Daily Telegraph (14/2/51) as saying that the increase would be paid in view of “the extreme pressure which has been exerted through the Ministry of Labour and in other directions”

“... as the government has decided that it be paid, there is nothing else for us to do but to pay it.” 

When Labour leaders say that strikes are not necessary under Labour Government and Nationalisation, and when capitalist newspapers plead for “justice” instead of “force” they are crying for the moon. Capitalism has not changed and class struggle is inherent in it. Capitalists oppose wage demands to defend their profits and the Boards of Nationalised industries are doing the same though not quite so obviously. The government by law lays on the Boards the obligation of making enough profit to pay the interest on the compensation stocks held by the former owners. If the members of the Boards fail to do their job they will get the sack, to be replaced by more ruthless directors.

In conclusion we must not overlook another group who, along with low-paid railwaymen, earn the sympathy of the Daily Mail leader-writer. These are the company shareholders whose “dividends are expected to remain frozen” under government policy. They too, according to the Mail, are being “shabbily treated.”' Perhaps if this goes on the Mail will lose patience and advise then “to withdraw their labour” like the unofficial strikers.

The trouble in dockland By a Dock Worker (1946)

From the January 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

A state of "armed truce" exists between the dockers and their employers with the Government concerned only with the smooth running of the system.

Waging a struggle against their masters, and faced with the undisguised hostility of the Labour Government, the misrepresentation and distortion of the press, and the general apathetic misunderstanding of the bulk of the working class, the dockers of Britain have exhibited a high measure of solidarity and determination.

From the first few days in October to the end of the dispute in the first week-end in November, with all the hardships and suffering necessarily involved in a prolonged strike, and without any official backing, guidance or organisation, a developed sense of discipline and organisation was shown by this section of the working class that bodes ill for the master class and their interests when reinforced by political understanding.

All strikes have their basis in the class struggle, and this dispute was the culmination of years of overwork under war conditions, working and living in bombed areas and the inevitable inadequacy of working class diet aggravated by the exigencies of war.

The normal nominal wages of dockers have increased from 14s. per day in October, 1940, to 16s. at the present time. And the cost of living has increased disproportionately, which reveals a reduction in real wages. In order to meet with this the men had to work long hours of overtime under the most harassing conditions imaginable, particularly in the "target" ports. Their efforts in this direction met with the applause of Government and Press. Coupled with this, on the insidious plea of assisting the war effort "to end Fascism," most of their hard-won trade union practices and restrictions were surrendered, and large scale mechanisation and speed-ups introduced. Now, on the equally anti-working class plea of "building up Britain's export trade," the Government and the employers are seeing to it that these speed-ups and mechanisations shall remain.

In the period 1939-1945, the dockers’ real wages having been reduced, what happened to their relative wages, i.e., what they received considered in relation to the profits of their employers?

All the large shipping companies increased their profits handsomely. Even in the worst years for shipping losses, the Cunard Line's profits improved on the previous year's.

In short, the wages of the dockers, considered as real, decreased; as relative, decreased.

For years, especially during the War, the official organisations of the Transport and General Workers' Union were out of touch with the rank and file of dockland, due primarily to the neglect of the members in looking after their Union affairs, rendered worse by overtime and Sunday work, precluding attendance at Union meetings.

Other factors have been the fusion of the Union organisation with the "war effort," and the acceptance by Union officials of administrative jobs in the large dock labour "schemes," and subsequent collision with the men; also the general structure of the official Unions which failed to expedite the claims of the men and to control the full-time officials.

With these facts as a domestic background, when shipping requirements slackened off after May, 1945, and the corresponding diminution in overtime was reflected in smaller pay packets, the dockers were faced with the problem now before the industrial workers of Britain and the other victors of the recent war, that of forcing their wages up to subsistence level.

The dock strike started in the last week of September on a local issue at Birkenhead involving some sixty men, and grew in proportion and changed in quality so that by the middle of October a large proportion of dockers in the country were involved on a national issue of a claim for 25s. a day and a forty-hour week. The full-time officials of the Dockers' Unions attacked the whole movement from the outset. Mr. Deakin, Mr. Donovan, of the Transport Union, and Mr. Barrett, of the Stevedores' Union, made themselves notable in this respect.

At monster meetings, sometimes of 17,000 men, unanimous votes of "no confidence" were passed in the officials of the Unions.

The reply to this, given by the officials, by the employers and the Government, was the gibe "unconstitutional" and a refusal to recognise the democratically elected strike committee.

A fierce barrage of spiteful, and in some cases, stupid propaganda was directed against the strikers. The Minister of Education brought even the derision of the Beaverbrook Press upon her head with her rash and unfounded speculations concerning bread rationing.

The Minister of Labour, forgetting years of Labour propaganda about the need for a "more equitable distribution of wealth," threw his weight in against the striking dockers.

The more sober capitalist press such as the Manchester Guardian, Observer, etc., while decrying the "unconstitutional" nature of the effort, nevertheless admitted on occasion the possibility of the reality of the men's grievances.

Mr. Emrys Hughes, of the Forward, indicated quite clearly his views during the dispute by the time-worn device of treating it as non-existent. One can only conclude that he didn't wish to embarrass the Labour Government. The Daily Worker was strangely reticent about the whole affair The Communist Party printed a small leaflet consisting of excerpts from a speech made by Harry Pollitt on October 13th entitled: "Danger if the Government does not make wage policy clear," in which Pollitt "stressed that economic conflict was not in workers' interests and they must use to the full the T.U. negotiating machinery." In short, don't strike. And to "carry forward the gains made during the war!" The working class should be informed at the earliest of .the nature of these gains, The dockers, at least, have another word for the changes in their position as a result of the war. The "New Leader,” the journal of the I.L.P., rallied to the defence of the strikers with the singularly inept slogans of “Sack the Dock Bosses" and "Nationalise the dock industry with Workers' Control."

The R.C.P. "Socialist Appeal" somewhat softly rebutted the silly stories of the Daily Mail regarding "Trotskyist agitation fomenting the strike.'' With their typically futile and romantic conceptions of "revolutionary upsurges," they urged the dockers to elect a "really revolutionary and militant leadership.”

On the whole, the dockers suffered as much from the attentions of their "friends” as they did from their open enemies.

The strike committees' spokesmen in Liverpool and London expressed finely on occasion the resolution of the men. and with a dignity that put their opponents to shame; but at other times indicated quite clearly their lack of knowledge of the forces arrayed in opposition.

They were, too, possessed of a naive confidence in the present Government.

It is a matter of little doubt, however, that the decision taken latterly by the Unofficial Committees to recommend a general resumption of work was prompted by the strategically sound desire to keep the men together with an unbroken organisation, and to indicate to all concerned that they retained the democratic support of the men.

Had the strike lasted any longer, there might have been the danger of a section of the strike movement weakening and resultant confusion. It is a truism that the working class learn as much from their defeats as from their victories. What, then, are the lessons to be gained from this strike, the first national dispute since the end of the war?

The first, that the dockers as a hitherto relatively backward section of the working class, are "growing up,'' and can display discipline and solidarity of a high order. Their unofficial organisation thrown up by the strike did in some respects match all that is best in working class industrial history. The second, that the employing class with their united hostility and the impudent counter proposal of an actual wage reduction in some ports, combined with the demand for a continuation of the war-time restrictions of Trade Union conditions, are determined to fight bitterly any attempted inroads into their profits. Well they know that a wage increase can only be granted at the expense of their profits.

The third, that the Labour Government does not, in fact can not, encourage workers to improve their status at the expense of their masters. And that the smooth running of the wages system comes first, as it must, in their calculations.

The fourth, the dockers must realise that a change in leadership is not the solution to their industrial and union problems. Given the same degree of apathy and rank and file inattention to their industrial problems, given the same naive confidence in a reformist Government attempting to run capitalism more efficiently than their masters, then the new officials will become like the old.

The fifth, the dockers must, like all other workers throughout the world, recognise and understand the class structure of society and the commodity character of their labour-power. That their wages are based, in the long run, on the cost of living and that the operation of the economic laws of Capitalism will defeat all their efforts to materially improve their lot.

And that the solution lies in an intelligent political movement to replace the private ownership of the means of life by common ownership and democratic control, and that in the Socialist Party there is to hand a fitting instrument for the task.

Tony Mulheron

[This article, received too late for our December issue, was written before the offer of an increase to 19/- a day. Ed. Comm.]

Recent books on trade unions (1973)

Book Reviews from the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strike at Pilkingtons by Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts. Fontana. 50p.

Ford Strike by John Matthews. Panther. 40p.

Trade Unions ed. by W. E. J. McCarthy Penguin, 60p 

Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism by Richard Hyman. Pluto Press.

Strikes by Richard Hyman. Fontana. 50p.

The New Militants by Paul Ferris. Penguin. 25p.

The increased trade union militancy of recent years has brought a rash of books on the subject. Of these listed above the one by Paul Ferris is a short and very readable journalistic account of meetings with various union leaders such as Scanlon, Jones and Daly.

The first two books describe two particular strikes, the unofficial seven-week strike at Pilkington glass works in St. Helens in 1970 and the official strike at Fords in 1971. Of the two Lane and Roberts’ is by far the better. Matthews sees only four parties involved: the unions, the rank and file, the employers and the government. In other words, he uncritically accepts the shop stewards’ claims that they represent the ‘rank and file’; indeed that they are the rank and file. In fact, however, though at times they may more faithfully represent the ordinary worker than the official union they too are just as much a minority leadership group. They are no more the rank and file than are the full-time union officials, but are essentially one of two rival groups seeking the leadership and support of the rank and file. This is fully recognised by Lane and Roberts.

The men at Pilkingtons were members of the General and Municipal Workers Union, one of the most bureaucratic and conservative unions. In April 1970 the men went on spontaneous unofficial strike, ostensibly over a wage miscalculation. The union told them to go back to work, but the strikers’ demands soon escalated to a claim, for a £10 wage increase. The union did in fact manage to get them a £3 increase (a sign of how it had failed in its job over the years of course). This wasn’t enough for the strikers, at least for some of them. A Rank and File Strike Committee (RFSC) kept the strike going in face of the opposition of the GMWU.

Lane and Roberts paint a sympathetic picture of the members of this Committee: they weren’t seasoned militants but ordinary workers who suddenly found themselves in the unexpected role of strike leaders. But the two authors don’t let this sympathy cloud their judgement. They recognised that after the union had negotiated the £3 increase a majority of the men, a small majority, but still a majority, wanted to return to work. Why then did the strike continue for another four weeks? Because, argue Lane and Roberts, those who wanted to continue the strike were better organised and led by the RFSC.

The GMWU would have been the natural organiser and leader of those who wanted to return to work, but it had been completely discredited by its role at the beginning of the strike. It was widely held to have let down its members. They, it was felt, had been paying dues to the union as a kind of insurance for just such a situation as happened at the beginning of the strike. “Something went wrong” but, instead of the union supporting its members, it told them to go back to work. The members, understandably felt betrayed; in fact they were betrayed. Hence the RSFC emerged as an alternative organisation which the workers turned to.

In the end the superior resources and skill of the GMWU leaders led to the defeat of the amateurs of the RFSC. The men went back to work for £3 a week extra, though with a pledge of no victimisation. The RSFC then made the mistake of organising a rival Glass and General Workers Union. This provided the GMWU with an excuse to deal with them. With the help of Pilkingtons the Glass Workers union was crushed and most of its members lost their jobs.

The Pilkingtons' strike, as can be seen, raised many issues of trade union tactics—democracy, strike ballots, unofficial committees, breakaway unions—all of which are intelligently discussed by Lane and Roberts. In fact it is an excellent book and essential reading for those who want to understand trade unionism, its uses and limitations.

Trade Unions, edited by W. E. J. McCarthy, is a collection of readings for management students, but it still contains material of interest to Socialists. The picture emerges of trade unions as bureaucratic organisations trying to defend the wages and working conditions of their members. "The aim of the union”, says one author, “is to primarily to benefit the group of workers concerned, rather than the workers as a whole or society as a whole”. Writes another, “Most unions seem to have come into being originally as defensive organisations to preserve a standard already enjoyed”. Both views we ourselves have often made. The unionization of an industry is estimated to have had a once-for-all effect of raising wages by 10 to 15 per cent, but thereafter to have maintained them at the same level. This would fit in with Marx’s view that at best all unions could do was to ensure that their members got paid the value of their labour power and that without unions employers would drive wages down below this level. The 10 to 15 per cent would presumably be the measure of the extent to which this had happened.

Marx’s views on unions, together with those of Lenin, Trotsky and Michels, is the subject of one of Hyman’s books. Apart from the conclusion—Hyman is a member of IS and seems to favour creeping ‘workers management of production’—this is a useful book which discusses the various different and contradictory (employers need unions to discipline and regulate their work force) roles played by the unions. Hyman’s book on strikes, however, is not so good. The obscure sociological jargon and hundreds of references make it difficult reading. Nevertheless, if you wade through it you’ll get a more accurate picture of strikes than you get in the press or on television.

None of these books state the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain on trade unionism (though they do provide evidence to confirm its correctness): trade unions are essentially only defensive organisations whose actions should be supported insofar as they perform this job of defending working class living standards, but whose other activities in support of capitalism—co-operating with employers or governments or reformist parties—should be opposed along with any manifestations of the narrow sectionalism to which they are inevitably prone.

Adam Buick

Should the workers strike? (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The final arbiter in any dispute is force. When arguments fail, when negotiations reach deadlock, when all forms of diplomacy and compromise are exhausted, then force is the only means of ensuring the victory of one disputant over the other. When this stage is reached in disputes between nations, the diplomats are recalled and the generals take the field. It is in preparation for this that governments store armaments and maintain armed forces. When this stage is reached in disputes, between workers and their employers, the negotiators step back and the strike committee comes to the fore. It is in readiness for this eventuality that the workers must preserve the right to strike.

When workers resort to strike action it is an indication that the negotiators of their Trade Unions have failed. It indicates that either negotiations have been so protracted that the workers have lost patience or else that the negotiators have been unable to achieve anything satisfactory to the Union members. In either instance the Trade Union chiefs who are responsible for the negotiations, unless they can provide adequate reasons and excuses for their failure, lose prestige in the eyes of the members. They are not usually lacking in explanations why it was not possible to achieve success. They object to their Union members taking matters into their own hands and using force because then they are discredited in eyes of the government and the employers. They protest at the melting away of the Union funds and seldom give their sanction to qualify a strike as official. When the Union leaders have arrived at an agreement with employers and have signed a contract covering the wages and conditions of employment of the members of their respective Unions, they want that contract to be honoured by the members. If the members will not accept, the leaders find themselves between a rebellious following on the one hand and distrustful employers on the other. It must be very disconcerting for these dealers in labour power en masse, having bargained for its price and arranged for the conditions of its delivery, to find it continually heading up the wrong street. If they can find a way to stop that, they will.

At the Trades Union Congress held at Bridlington during September this year, the question of unofficial strike action was discussed, as it had been on previous years. There were threats to use union discipline against those who promote, organise and lead unofficial strikes, and accusations against those who advocate and engage in them. Sir Will Lawther, better known as Will Lawther, president of the National Union of Mineworkers and president of this year’s Trades Union Congress, had a few things to say. He is not alone in the ideas that he expressed, but in his presidential address he put them into words that sum up the attitude of many prominent Trade Union leaders. Speaking about unofficial strikes, Mr. Lawther said that the strike,

". . . has been, in days gone by, the strongest weapon in the Trade Union armoury when it has been wielded under Trade Union authority for clearly defined industrial purposes.

Trade Unions have been forced to use the strike weapon when there was no other way open for them to redress their wrongs.”—(Daily Herald, Sept. 6th. 1949.) 

We can anticipate from this statement by Mr. Lawther, that he considers the strike weapon out of date, that there is now, in his estimation, some stronger weapon in the armoury, some more effective way open for the workers to redress their wrongs. There must also be a reason why Mr. Lawther thinks that strikes were the strongest weapon and are not necessarily so now. He gives it to us.

“We can go on in the old way. treating every difficulty that arises in industry as the manifestation of an irreconcilable conflict of interest between the employer and the employed; or we can recognise that the attainment of political democracy in this land leads on to the fulfilment of industrial democracy.”—(Daily Herald, Sept. 6th. 1949.)

So, according to Mr. Lawther, there are two ways in which the workers can tackle their problems; the old way, based on a recognition of the class struggle, or this new way that leads on to the fulfilment of industrial democracy, whatever that may be. We can assume that Mr. Lawther considers “the old way ” as outmoded as the strike weapon.

The arguments put forward by Mr. Lawther and other Trade Union chiefs are based on the conception that industry is run for the benefit of the whole community in each national state; that the workers are a section of this community and their interests are sectional interests must be subject to the national interest. Strikes, according to this conception, become an attempt by a section to impose its will upon the whole community. They are decried as a type of blackmail. They interfere with the smooth running of the community’s industry and must be “outlawed”. This is the line of reasoning of many Trade Union leaders, in high and lowly positions, and, unfortunately, accepted by many workers. Disputes, they, argue, must be settled by negotiation and arbitration.

But is the “old way” referred to by Mr. Lawther, really out of date? What is the relation between the worker and his employer? Is that relation different in a “political democracy” to that in other places? Has this relation undergone any change since “the days gone by”? An answer to these questions will solve the problem that besets many Trade Unionists to-day—“To strike or to arbitrate?”

Before the necessities of life can be produced, three essentials must be available; materials provided by nature, worked up into what we call raw materials; tools and machinery, which we name the instruments of production; and human labour effort which must be applied to the nature-given materials through the instruments of production in order to produce the consumable product. The workers do not own either the materials, or the instruments of production. They have only the human labour effort contained in their bodies. The other two essentials are owned by that smaller section of the community known as the capitalist class. In fact, it is this ownership that constitutes them a class distinct from the non-owning workers. The materials and the instruments of production are useless to the capitalists unless the labour effort of the workers can be engaged to operate them. On the other hand, the labour effort of the worker is useless to him unless he can have access to the tools and machinery and the materials. Those who own machinery, mines, land, factories, workshops, etc., seek to buy the energies of the workers who, in their turn, are anxious to sell in order that they may live. The relation of employer and employed is really one of buyer and seller of human labour effort. The employer does not buy the labourer, that would be chattel slavery. Neither does he buy the labour, that is the application of the workers’ energies to the materials. The capitalist already has the material and the worker does not own any, so he cannot offer it. He can only offer his ability to labour, his physical and mental energies. That is what the employer buys, by the hour, day, week or contract. When the specified amount of energy, measured in terms of time, has been extracted, the worker is free to go his way and spend his wages, which are the price he gets for the energy that he sells He must of necessity spend them on replacing the energy he has expended.

Is this position any different in what Mr. Lawther terms a “Political Democracy”? Do the workers receive a share in the ownership of the materials and the instruments of production? Obviously not! They are still employees, having no other means of obtaining a livelihood except by selling their labour power. Their status is not altered by the fact that they have universal suffrage or by the introduction of State ownership. If they find employment in a nationalised industry, it merely means that the State buys their labour power and pays for it with a wage as does any private employer or business concern. The wealth produced belongs to the State, not to the workers who produce it. The workers in State controlled industries can only get back as much of the wealth produced by their class as their wages will buy. The relation between the State as an employer and the workers that it employs is the same as between a private employer and his workers. That the workers have a voice in deciding which political party shall operate the State machinery' does not alter their position either.

Neither has there been any fundamental change in the relation between the workers and their masters since wage labour and capital first emerged as factors determining the mode of production. The working class has always been, and still is, that section of the community that, owning none of the means of production, must sell its mental and physical energies in order to live.

Capital is a concentrated social force, but the worker has only his individual working force. If he would make effective demands upon the force that is capital, he must combine with his fellows to create am opposing force. For that purpose Trade Unions were formed. The position has become one where a body of workers, organised in a Trade Union, bargain over the price and condition of sale of their labour power. If they cannot get the price and conditions they require, they refuse to sell. Such a refusal is known as a strike. Some matters can be settled by negotiation without resort to the strike weapon, but, let it once be known that the workers are not prepared to use the only forceful means in their power, and they will be permanently on the losing side at the negotiating table. If any man who has something to sell lets it be known that he will not refuse to sell it at any price that is offered, he will get the worst of every bargain.

During the last war, in an effort to eliminate strikes, the Government introduced the Employment and National Arbitration Order, known as Order No. 1305. This made arbitration compulsory and the decisions of the Arbitration Tribunals that were set up were legally binding on both workers and employers. The order came into force in 1940 and still operates. It makes strikes and lockouts illegal unless 21 days notice of an impending dispute has been given to the Minister of Labour and he has failed to intervene. Many Trade Unionists now consider that this order is a hindrance to the furtherance of their demands, and wish to see it terminated. Mr. Clem Bundock of the National Union of Journalists, speaking at the Trades Union Congress, put the case simply. He said, 

“Some Unions—and I fancy a growing number— have emerged from the tribunal with nothing for their members but frustration.”—(Daily Herald, Sept. 8th, 1949.) 

Mr. Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, has a different view. He says, referring to Order No. 1305 that it is

“. . . the best weapon that the Trade Union Movement has got.”—(The Record. August. 1949.)

If the National Arbitration Tribunals were composed of men who saw the relationship between employers and employed as we have outlined it, who were sympathetic to the workers and whose decisions were still legally binding on both workers and employers, then, maybe, Mr. Deakin would have a case. But the men who are appointed to these tribunals view the problems brought before them from the same “community of national interest” angle as Mr. Lawther, and Mr. Deakin. The nation is a capitalist one, which means that they view all the problems from the standpoint of the interests of capital, not of the workers, except that the workers are necessary to capita] as the source of labour power. The Tribunals are influenced by consideration for selling goods cheaply in foreign markets, ensuring that industry “pays,” and all the other problems of capitalists. If these tribunals continue to function, the workers can be sure that they will be used, not only to frustrate them, but to worsen their wages and working conditions, either by enforcing wage reductions, extending working hours, or pegging wages down whilst prices rise. If the workers surrender their right to strike in favour of this “best weapon,” then, to use a popular phrase, “They’ve had it."

The strike weapon is double edged. It often brings suffering to the workers whilst only inconveniencing the employer. If other means, less harmful to the workers than strike action, but effective in securing satisfaction for working class demands, are available, they should certainly be used. The history of our class teaches us that there are no other effective means which are not backed by a preparedness to use the force of strike action.

Workers who are duped by the notion that the nationalised industries are now the property of the community and that those employed in them are servants of the community, ready to reap a reward as soon as “the country is back on its feet,” are due for a sad disillusionment. We find an example of this idea in a leaflet entitled, “For Busmen Only,” issued by the Central Bus Section of the Transport and General Workers’ Union.

"The movement has struggled for years to achieve the Nationalisation of the Industry, so that we should work for the Public and not for the benefit of shareholders. This having been achieved, it is incumbent upon us all to Rive the best service possible."

The leaflet goes on to say that you can’t get more out of a quart pot than you put into it, the implication being that the more you put in, the more you get out.

The workers in nationalised industries work for their employer, not for the customers who purchase the goods or services that they produce. If they are employed by the State they are servants of the State, not of the so-called public. And the State is not the community, it is, in brief, the executive committee of the capitalist class. Its function is to see that capitalism runs as smoothly as possible. This is usually termed “keeping law and order” or “ensuring the nation's food supply.” The State has the task of smoothing out disputes between employers and their workers, because such disputes can slow down the flow of profit to the capitalist class. Trade Union leaders like Lawther, Deakin, Tewson and others are drawn into assisting in this smoothing out process. The National Arbitration Tribunals have partially served that purpose, but workers are now getting wary of them.

The worker who urges his fellows to strike on any and every occasion is as dangerous as the “peace-at-any-price” advocate. There are times when it is obvious that a strike is doomed to failure from the start. At such times it is contrary to working class interests to advocate strike action. There are times when it may be possible to secure something satisfactory through negotiation. At such times it would be folly to fritter away working class enthusiasm and funds in a strike. But once let the workers say “We won't strike,” and they place themselves completely at the mercy of their masters who will not be slow to profit by such docility.

The class struggle goes on. It does not.cease when an industry passes under State control. We do not have the spectacle of a class struggle for some workers who are still privately employed whilst those employed by the State are immune. The State behaves like every other employer, as workers in State controlled industries have discovered.

Yes, the class struggle goes on, and every weapon in the workers’ armoury must be kept sharp and ready for use. The strike weapon is not out of date. Maybe, the lessons of years of working class struggle may show how it can be used more effectively and with less harm to the workers who use it, but it must never be discarded whilst wage labour and capital confront one another.

W. Waters.

Reported in Hansard (1949)

From the May 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are the Tories going Syndicalist?

From the Debate on a Conservative Clause to the Coal Industry Bill. (Hansard, 28/3/1949).

Mr. J. G. Foster (Conservative, Northwich). “I should like now to allude to the point of view taken up by the Hon. Member for Wallsend (Mr. McKay). He says that the House of Commons need not be bothered because there is the miners union and the Government owns the mines, and that therefore everything is quite happy as between the miners’ union and the Government. I do not think the hon. Member has quite appreciated the fact that although things may be all right between the miners’ union and the Government—and of course the top union officials have jobs in the Government and represent the unions in Parliament—things are not all right between the members of the union in the nationalised industry and their union officials in the Government. Things are not all right, as one can see, because there are unofficial strikes and it takes months for disputes and grievances to come up even to the men’s own union officials.

“It is no answer for an hon. Member to get up in this House and say ‘It is all right, the union has said nothing.’ Of course the union have not said anything. They work hand in glove with the Government and disregard the interests of the men. That is the trouble, and we get the same trouble in civil aviation and in the transport industry. That is why some breakaway unions are popular and why there are unofficial strikes; it is because the men are dissatisfied with their own union officials. There is great disquiet among many trade unionists who remember the glorious record of trade unionism that is being thrown away because top union officials prefer to work in harmony with the the Government instead of putting the interests of their men first . . .”

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Mr. Gaitskell): “I am anxious to confine my remarks as far as possible to the Bill and to the new Clause, but I cannot let tho comments of the hon. Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster) pass without making some reply to what seemed to me to be a disgraceful attack on the leaders of the trade union movement. He appeared to be criticising them for the moderating influence which they exercise upon their members, so as to help the country through its present economic difficulties. I am astonished that a prominent member of the Conservative Party should now be descending to a syndicalist policy. 1 should hope that if any Member on the Front Bench opposite is to speak he will repudiate the hon. Member for Northwich, because he made a most scandalous suggestion.”

#    #    #    #

Mr. Shinwell among the Brass-hats.

“ . . . I have had experience of working with the so-called brass hats for the past eighteen months and I had some experience of working with them in 1929. I have also had the experience of working with other people, and I would rather work with the brass hats at the War Office than with some of the brass faces in other spheres of life.”

(Hansard, 29/3/1949.)

#    #    #    #

And another one-time “ Revolutionary.”

"Is the Prime Minister aware that forty years ago the Oath of Allegiance was even exacted from junior civil servants, the lower ranges of civil servants; and can he say why it has fallen into disuse since then? Does he not think it would be a good plan to re-impose it?”

(Mr. W. J. Brown, Hansard, 29/3/1949) 

#    #    #    #

We Wonder.

"Private enterprise has been aided more by this Government than by any Tory Government, and the result of the General Election will show that the people like it”

(Mr. A. Robens, Parliamentary Secretary to the Min. of Fuel and Power. Hansard, 29/3/1949.)

#    #    #    #

Troubles of a Labour Leader.

Captain Hewitson (Labour M.P. for Hull, Central) in the Debate on the Budget proposals. (Hansard, 7/4/1949).

"I have in my hand a list of industries numbering 151; in 122 of these 95s. or less is the average weekly basic wage. During last year trade union leaders, in spite of all the things that have been said against them about lost leadership, not being able to control their members, and so on, have been able to persuade their followers to increase production. At the same time they have prevented inuation by holding back demands for increased wages. We have accomplished that during the last year. We have reached the stage today when we cannot hold that safety valve any longer."

"I want to strike a note of warning . . . Can I go to my membership, who have a wage of 95s. or less, and justify to them and convince them that that wage is adequate to keep body and soul within them and their homes, and to give them decent shelter? We cannot do it any longer. If the Chancellor or the Government in the Budget which was issued yesterday had given concessions in Purchase Tax, and concessions that would have made life for the ordinary working class home easier, we trade union leaders could have held that safety valve for months and months ahead and so helped the country to get through its economic crisis . . .”

"There was a cartoon in the Evening Standard on the subject of the 'Old white horse, Old Faithful, the old T.U.C.' Let me say this to the Government. Their pace is determined by that old white horse. The last straw can break that old white horse's back, but, so far as we are concerned, we are not going to allow the old white horse’s back to be broken. If it comes to a last final resort, we shall fight. We say to this Government, or to any other, 'You can’t afford to fight against us who represent the organised workers in the country . . .”

Stan Hampson

50 Years Ago: Some Facts About the Dock Strike - Hypocritical Attitude of Labour Spokesmen (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great deal of cant has been spoken and written about the dockers’ “unofficial" strike which ended on November 5th, but with the threat that they will come out again if the negotiations now resumed do not give them satisfaction. The line taken by the daily Press and by the spokesmen of the Labour Government has been that there can be no recognition of “unofficial” action not endorsed by the central executives of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and the other unions involved. The pious attitude of the newspapers would be more convincing if there was the slightest reason to believe that they would have given their support if the strike had been official—but experience shows that if it had they would have opposed it just the same . . .

Those who fancy that employment by the State or by a public utility corporation is the solution of the workers’ problems should think over the action of the P.L.A. when its workers came out on strike. “A notice warning Port of London permanent labourers that they would be ‘deemed to have left the service of the Authority without notice' if they did not return to work . . . was posted outside the Royal Albert Dock yesterday.” —(Daily Herald, 13th October, 1945.)

Capitalism runs true to form even if a Labour Government chooses to pretend that it is different because it now runs under different colours!

[From editorial in Socialist Standard, December 1945]

Democracy undefended (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

A spectre is haunting the Trade Unions—the spectre of the Communist Party. All the powers of “Labourism” have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre; Trade Union chief and Labour leader, Deakin and Lawther, T U.C., and Labour Government.

Faced with the problem of a series of unofficial strikes, the Trade Union chiefs and prominent members of the Labour Party lay the blame at the door of “Communist agitators” and threaten a variety of disciplinary measures such as fines and expulsion from office in the unions. In October and November. 1948, the T.U.C. issued two statements in a pamphlet entitled “Defend Democracy,” and, more recently, they published a further pamphlet on the same subject entitled “The Tactics of Disruption, Communist Methods Exposed.” The Communist Party replied with a pamphlet, “Defend Trade Union Rights.”

At the Biennial Delegate Conference of the Transport and General Workers’ Union held at Scarborough in July this year, the following resolution was discussed and carried by 426 votes to 208: —

“That no member of the Communist Party shall be eligible to hold any office within the Union either as a lay member or as a permanent or full-time officer, this rule to take effect from the beginning of the 1950/1951 electoral campaign.” 

Throughout that Conference, from the address of welcome by the Mayor of Scarborough and the opening speech by the chairman. Brother E. Fryer, to the discussions on the last day around such matters as the withdrawal of British troops from Malaya, the Communists were challenged, threatened, accused and sneered at.

The 81st Trade Union Congress which opened at Bridlington on September 6th this year, continued the tirade. Sir William Lawther, this year’s Congress president, opened by accusing Communists of sabotaging the war effort and engineering recent unofficial strikes. On the second day Mr. Deakin claimed that the object of the Communists was to create chaos and confusion with a view to a coup d'etat. The attack was continued by Mr. Vincent Tewson, General Secretary of the T.U.C., and others. Even the Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee, when he visited the Congress on the third day, had to have a poke.

Some of the charges levelled at the Communists are probably correct, though many of them are undoubted exaggerated. We are making no defence of either side. We see the Trade Unions being used as a battlefield in a struggle between the Labour Party and the Communist Party, and this can only work to the detriment of the Trade Union movement and the working class as a whole.

The speeches by the Labour and Trade Union chiefs at both the T. & G.W.U. Conference and at the T.U.C. show clearly that their main purpose is to convince the membership of the unions of the necessity of ensuring the return of a Labour Government at the next election and of the need to help the Government steer British Capitalism through its present crisis. Fear that the Communists may do something to prevent this is the cause of the perturbation. Added to this, of course, is the fact that the present T.U. leaders, having climbed into their jobs, some of them decidedly lucrative, by means often similar to those they now accuse the Communists of employing, are anxious to kick away the rungs of the ladder so that no rival shall climb to challenge them.

The resolution passed by the T. & G.W.U. Conference. preventing Communists from holding office in the Union, is an example of what we can expect to see develop in other unions. Support for that resolution was called for in the name of democracy, but its application will deny the membership the right to nominate and vote for whom they please when they next elect their officers. That is not democracy. Trade unions are organisations of workers which aim to improve and maintain wages and working conditions of their members. Within such organisations are men of varying shades of political opinion and members of all political parties, and of none. Their attitude to the problems that they discuss in the Trade Union branches and conferences will reflect their political ideas. When they elect an officer, it is because they think he or she is the best candidate for the job, and they have often little or no consideration for the candidate’s political attachments. Now they are to be denied this free expression of their wishes. All nominations for even the most humble of jobs will be vetted, and only selected candidates will be allowed to go to poll. And the vetted ones will not all be members of the Communist Party. The opening paragraph of this article was a paraphrase of the first sentences of Karl Marx’s and Frederick Engels’ “Communist Manifesto.” We give the next sentence just as they wrote it:

“Where is the party in opposition that has not been described as communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? ”

Just so! Any opposition to the policy of the clique that is in power will be branded as communistic and the exponents will be dealt with accordingly. That is made obvious by the frequent use at the T.U.C. of the phrase, “ Communists and fellow travellers.” That “fellow travellers” can include anybody, and it will.

Thus, it is hoped, the unions wifi be purged of officials who may influence the members against the tie- up between the policies of the Labour Party and the Unions. The Trade Union chiefs declare that these “disciplinary” measures are the will of the membership, but the speeches, cheers and boos at the T.U.C. do not necessarily reflect the membership’s sympathies. Even the decision at the T. & G.W.U. conference cannot be claimed to be representative. The agenda for the conference usually contains hundreds of resolutions and amendments, and no branch of the union could possibly consider them all and mandate a delegate. Even were it possible to decide on the resolutions, the election of delegates to the conference is on a trade group basis and not from the branches. The trade group, as such, gives the delegates no definite instructions, so they go to the conference unmandated and make decisions off their own bats, which, according to Mr. Deakin, are inviolate.

Incidentally, “The Record,” official organ of the T. & G.W.U., tells us that the conference also carried a resolution to the effect that,

“. . . while recognising the economic difficulties confronting the nation, expresses concern at the absence of tax reliefs in the budget, and the increased cost of living, and re-affirming a conviction that nothing short of a policy of increasing the purchasing power of money and an increase in the real value of wages will meet the needs of the people . . . .”

Modest as this resolution is, we hope Mr. Deakin and Co. will regard it as inviolate.

The Labour Party originated from the need to make the voice of the Trade Unions heard in Parliament. From that beginning it has grown and evolved to a fully fledged party of capitalist reform. It has outgrown its parent and now dominates the working-class scene. The unions which gave it birth are now made subservient to it. Whatever pro-capitalist policy the Labour Party may adopt, the Trade Unions must be brought to heel. The Labour Party attempts to operate a system of society that cannot be operated in the interests of the working class and it comes into conflict with the workers. Trade Union leaders, in an endeavour to save the Labour Government embarrassment and to justify its anti-working class actions, must oppose the wishes of their members. They try to suppress strikes, calling them unofficial and the work of Communist disrupters. Such strikes hamper the smooth running of Capitalism, and the Labour Government wants it to have a smooth passage. To keep Capitalism going the Government wants more production at lower costs. This cuts right across working-class interests and gives rise to industrial unrest. The Trade Union chiefs, handcuffed to the Labour Party, and some of them with their eyes on £5,000 a year jobs, have got to try to subdue this unrest. With cries of “the Nation’s need before sectional interests” they plunge in to do battle with their opponents and critics within the Union’s ranks. Any man or group of men who are likely to become a rallying centre for the workers in their struggle to resist the pressure on their wages and working conditions, will be branded “Communist ” and thrust out.

The Conferences and Congress are taken up with this battle between political elements, and the outstanding factors in a worker’s life, his wages and his hours of work, get scant consideration. Listen to Mr. Deakin at Scarborough: —

“We cannot promote extravagant wage claims —or even modest ones in some of the higher paid industries. I doubt if we can get any increases at all this time, and it is not leadership to suggest that we can.”

“You can’t get a forty-hour week now. It is a luxury it would be madness to ask for.” (“The Record,” August, 1949.)

The T.U.C., like the T. & G.W.U. conference, had little time for such trivialities as wages and hours of work. The more important job of lambasting the Communists took precedence over everything else.

Unless the workers start kicking soon they will find that they have been nicely clipped in the wing and their talons have been cut so that they are helpless to resist all that is coming to them during the next few years. When we say “start kicking” we do not mean “start kicking the present leaders out and putting Communists in their places.” That will not alter the situation except that the position of the two parties will be reversed. The Communists will be just as determined to cling to the jobs and to suppress opposition as are the Labour leaders. No, we mean start getting down to the job of running their own affairs instead of leaving them to the Lawthers and Deakins, start regaining control of their own unions, start realising that they have a class interest that is opposed to the interests of their employers, whether that employer be an individual, a company or a state.

The strength of the working class is in its numbers. Its weakness is in its lack of understanding of its class interests. Remove the weakness and the workers are all-conquering—they can remodel society as they wish.

W. Waters.

The Five Jailed Dockers (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dockers are worried about their jobs, or rather about the drop in standard of living they will suffer if they lose them. Since 1967 the number of dockers has fallen by a third, from 60,000 to 40,000, mainly as a result of the so-called container revolution. One aspect of this problem has been that much container work, even in dock areas, has been done by workers other than dockers, some non-union, some members of other unions, but all generally at lower wages.

It is the policy of the dockers’ unions, the Transport and General Workers Union and the rival National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers (expelled from the TUC in 1959 for “poaching” TGWU members), that the work should be done by dockers, at dockers’ wages. To this end, the dockers have taken various forms of industrial action, official and unofficial, legal and illegal, from blacking container firms to a national docks strike.

A number of the blacked container firms took the TGWU and some of the shop stewards (from both unions) to the National Industrial Relations Court complaining that the blacking was an “unfair industrial practice”. The Court agreed : the TGWU was fined at least £55,000 and, eventually, five dockers sent to prison for “contempt of Court”.

The reaction to the jailings shows that working-class, or at least trade-union, solidarity still exists. Besides other dockers, thousands of newspaper workers, miners, train drivers and others (including those at the blacked Midland Cold Storage depot) stopped work. Such was the pressure that even the TUC would have called a one-day general strike of all its ten million members if the five dockers hadn’t been released, an unprecedentedly during move from the Knights of Congress House. And of course they were released, obviously as a result of this working-class resistance. The government itself may not have directly influenced the Courts, but the workers on strike did. The House of Lords and NIRC were left with no alternative but to hurriedly concoct some legal excuse for letting the men out.

This was a successful defensive action by the working class and one which the Socialist Party of Great Britain welcomes just as we would have supported the one-day TUC general strike. Not of course that we share the romantic illusions of those who thought that such a strike might have been the beginning of “the revolution”, but because experience has shown that, on occasions such as this was, a general strike can be a useful weapon to defend the interests of the working class within capitalism. The Industrial Relations Act was designed to make working-class industrial action in defence of wages and working conditions less effective, so it is in the interest of the working class to try to make the Act itself ineffective.

This said, there is one reservation we must make, from a Socialist and working-class point of view, about the dockers’ activities. Their struggle had a sectional aspect in that they were pushing their interests as one section of the working class not just against employers but against another section of the working class. For their demand that container work should be done by dockers is a demand that it should not be done by those now doing it. This at least was how it was seen by the workers at Midland Cold Storage, all members of the TUC-affiliated Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW). In a leaflet dated 10 July and issued to lorry drivers they declared:

“We are entitled to defend jobs that are ours. The dockers want our jobs and with your help are prepared to close down our firm. Why? The work we do is no different to that done in the many Cold Stores throughout the country.. We are not blacklegs — we are ordinary working men and we want our jobs. Dockers who picket our Depot have no greater claim to work available in a community. If they have, is your job really safe?”

It is because we as Socialists stand for the interests of the working class as a whole that we cannot take sides in such inter-union or inter-worker disputes and cannot endorse the dockers’ campaign.

Their action in picketing places such as Midland Cold Storage, though understandable (as is the reaction of the USDAW members employed there), illustrates one of the limitations of trade unionism. Trade unions, as the very word suggests, represent not the working class but just sections of it, their members, and in pursuit of the legitimate aim of protecting their members’ standard of living often emphasise, and exaggerate, the sectional divisions within the working class. This the Socialist Party does not support.

Needless to say, the concern expressed for the other workers by their employers and Mr. Heath was so much hypocrisy. The former were concerned rather with not having to pay dockers’ wage rates and Mr. Heath with saving his anti-working class Industrial Relations Act. Some of the older dockers may also have seen as hypocritical too the support expressed by the Labour Party for the five jailed men. They may have recalled the occasion in 1951 when a Labour Attorney General, acting on the instructions of a Labour cabinet which included Mr. Wilson, prosecuted some dockers for breaking an anti-strike order, also unsuccessfully as it turned out.

So, while the solidarity strikes to get the dockers released demonstrated the usefulness of trade unionism for the working class, the pickets and counter-pickets at the docks demonstrated the opposite: its tendency to divide the working class by sections rather than to unite them as a class. Working class unity, which is indispensable if capitalism is to be ended and replaced by Socialism, is a task for a political, not the industrial, organisation of the working class. To this end the Socialist Party of Great Britain exists and we appeal to all workers to join our struggle so that the system which forces them to engage in these degrading squabbles for jobs can be quickly abolished.