It’s a lock-out (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Suddenly, the cry “All out, brothers” threatens to take on a new meaning, becoming not the command of the shop steward but the frustrated wail of the locked out worker, pressing round the unyielding factory gate.

For over a year now, workers in The Times newspapers have been locked out —and there are reports that, rather than face another twelve months of negotiations, the Thompson Organisation will close the papers down permanently. In case anyone has forgotten, this dispute began over the workers’ resistance to new methods of compositing, with likely redundancies. During the recent two day strikes in the engineering industry, the companies who are members of the Engineering Employers’ Federation retaliated by laying off workers and locking out others—notably at Rolls Royce. An article in the Observer (23.9.79) by Robert Taylor gave the substance of some guide lines issued by the EEF:

“Industrial action, such as go-slows, refusal to work normally and blacking of employees, products or machines should not he tolerated for more than a few days. After warning, with a sufficient period allowed for reflection, suspension without pay should be the normal response.”

This attempt at the sort of solidarity more usually expected from trade unionists —which employers, because of the essentially competitive nature of capitalism, will find rather more difficult—was illuminating. When factories stop because of a strike, we are subjected to a barrage of clap-trap from the press about, disruptive workers preventing the production of essential goods needed by pensioners, sick children . . But when the employers, also in the act of protecting their interests in the class struggle, bring production to a halt there is not a word of protest; withers in Fleet Street remain unwrung over jeopardised export markets, frustrated customers, deprived consumers and so on.

Agriculture

Perhaps the press will need a little time to catch on. The relative prosperity of British capitalism for some twenty years after the war outmoded lock-out; it was usually better to pay up on a wage claim than to shut the firm down. But it was not always so.

In the earlier days of British capitalism, before the unions were strong enough to offer effective resistance, the lock-out was often wielded to beat down living standards. In the 1830s it was used against the attempts to form an Operative Builders’ Union: the employers won, as the lock-out forced the OBU into deep financial trouble. In 1897 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers struck for an eight hour day, after a prolonged wrangle over the introduction of new machinery. The employers retaliated, with the first national lock-out ever. After six months the ASE was crushed and the employers, proclaiming themselves “masters in our own shops”, dictated the terms of the surrender.

There was a similar’ bitter story in agriculture, where workers were trying to live on appallingly low wages. In 1872, in Warwickshire, 200 farm labourers struck for a rise to 16s (80p) a week for their eleven hour day. Their case was such as to attract some support from the press (although not, presumably, in Church Times; the Bishop of Gloucester advocated throwing the strikers into the village pond). It was a bitter fight, which spread as the farmers imposed a general lock-out. At Chipping Norton, two magistrates who were also clergymen did their duty by both god and Mammon by sentencing sixteen women, some still suckling their babies, to hard labour for “intimidating” blacklegs. The strikers were defeated, partly by the effects of the agricultural depression of the 1870s, which helped to cripple their union.

Coal Mines

The Webbs described this type of dispute as the “.. . insurrection of the village and the autocratic spirit which it aroused in the owners of land and tithe. . . ” an attitude which lingered, even in more modern industry, almost as if the employers saw some advantage in behaving like feudal barons.

Before the First World War, there were about 1,500 separate companies owning the coal mines in Britain. In many cases, the company was personified by one rich, influential owner—Lord Londonderry, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Lord Rhondda, Evan Williams. Some of these companies were more “liberal” and “enlightened” than others — and some more efficient and profitable—and the mines were a traditional battlefield over wages and conditions, marked like shell-holes by strikes and lock-outs. The miners were bonny, experienced fighters and among the higher paid workers in Britain.

As part of British capitalism’s war effort, the mines were taken effectively under state control in 1917. After the war, there was a brief, hectic boom for the British coal industry as it filled the gaps left by the devastated French mines and the immobilised German pits. This did not last long and the British export markets in Europe and South America abruptly contracted. Coal had been the basis of the power of Victorian capitalism; now it symbolised that power’s decline. By 1921 the losses of the mines were growing beyond the scope of government subsidies and in April that year, with a wage claim pending, the industry was abruptly passed back to the private owners.

Far from being about to negotiate a rise in wages, the private owners were proposing a reduction of over £2 a week. Flexing their muscles as they took over the pits again, they posted lock-out notices. The miners expected support from the railwaymen and the transport workers and when this did not happen the episode became notorious as “Black Friday”. The struggle went on for three months, until the miners were forced back to work on terms worse than they might have hoped to get originally.

Newspapers

More recent times have seen little use of the lock-out in Britain although, according to Robert Taylor, in France and Germany it is more common than the strike. But now, with the employers struggling from the desperation of a prolonged recession, may be the time for its revival. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph (23.9.79) Peregrine Worsthorne gloated over the engineering workers:

“Last year an engineering strike might have shown the workers to be invincible. So may one next year. But the same could be said about any momentous historical miscalculation — even the Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Of course Worsthorne, like all the conventional observers of capitalism, is seeing things very much in the immediate, superficial sense. Every dispute has its immediate causes and how it is fought out—and who wins—must depend on the conditions prevailing at the time. Strikes have a better chance of succeeding in a boom and by the same token a lock-out is more likely when there is a slump. This was the case with the farm labourers and the engineering workers in the 19th century and with the miners in 1921. And it is so today.

The Times shut down was an episode in a long decline in the newspaper industry, in which many papers perished and the profits of the survivors have been under strong pressure. The malaise is widespread; the September report of the Confederation of British Industry showed how the rest of the employers view their prospects. They expect their profitability for 1979 and 1980 to fall below the previous poor levels of 1974-5.

Behind such immediate prospects, and behind the temporary changes in balances of strength, lies the basic, inescapable fact ‘of the class struggle. This struggle continues without pause — often without its participants realising that they are involved in it.

Firstly, the struggle is about the division of wealth in capitalist society and this is where the unions and the employers’ federations operate. There are still a few strange people who doubt the need for the struggle, who doubt that wealth is divided so that some people have vastly more of it than others.

Poverty

Reality is against them. For a long time a mass of evidence has been accumulated, using different methods—income tax returns, estate duties, social surveys—measuring the extent of this inequality. Sir Joshua Stamp, in 1919, estimated that one per cent of the population owned over 65 per cent of the national wealth. Nearly sixty years later Louie Burghes found that one per cent owned 31 per cent of the wealth and the top 10 per cent owned 70 per cent. An article by Anthony Giddens in New Society (4.10.79) estimated that the top five per cent of “the rich” own 98 per cent of the total of privately held corporate stocks and shares. At the other end of the scale the Low Pay Unit reports that at the end of 1977 one family in eight was living at or below the supplementary benefits line, which itself is little better than starvation. The figures, along with the methods of collecting them, may vary from time to time. But the fact of inequality—and of the existence of riches alongside poverty—remains.

This brings us to the wider, more fundamental, aspect of the class struggle. In this case we are not discussing a struggle participated in by thousands of trade unionists, which gets the big headlines and has union leaders hurrying to and from Downing Street. We are talking about the ultimate, about the struggle over who owns the means of production and about establishing a new society of common ownership and free access to wealth.

For the present this struggle is the work of a minority, of a few who are aware of what capitalism is and of how it operates. This conscious few know that industrial disputes are not moral issues; they know that workers who strike, and employers who lock out, are simply acting in accordance with their interests in the class struggle. They are expressing the fact that capitalism does not produce its wealth for the benefit of its people, that capitalism is a society of disharmony.

And capitalism continues only because the rest— the unconscious majority—want it to. This was the symbolic quality about those pictures of the engineering workers hammering on the factory gates. The limit of their ambition is another style of exploitation. They are, brothers and sisters, on their way to nowhere.

Ivan

On the Spot at Con-Mech (1973)

From the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nor entirely satisfied with the mass media’s reporting on the Con-Mech dispute, I went along to find out for myself. As I arrived outside the Sheerwater factory, I saw a group of four or five men on the pavement. Among them I recognised Lindsey Greig, who is one of the two shop stewards. He is 21. A graduate of Warwick University, he joined Con-Mech this summer. From the company’s point of view he is a “trouble maker” and had “spent much of his working time soliciting membership for the AUEW”. The other shop steward, Ron Connor, an ex-miner from Co. Durham, has experience of trade union membership, but is also young.

Con-Mech is a small factory-cum-office on Sheerwater GLC estate outside Woking, Surrey. The Group make bread slicers and parts for bulldozers and other earth-moving machinery. According to a circular issued by Mr. Robert Dilley, the company’s chairman, on September 28th, there are 67 people employed of which he claims 51 are “eligible to join a Union” — any union. I asked him over the phone if this figure included staff workers, typists, etc., but he emphatically denied this. However the workers and the AUEW who have checked the branch’s books, assert that the total number of shopfloor workers eligible to join the AUEW was only 31. Indeed I would think that this is the correct figure, as Dilley’s 51 could only have got in with dangerous overcrowding. It is a small factory.

Before September 19th the union had only four members, of whom Ron Connor was one. At the branch meeting 22 Con-Mech workers including Greig became union members. Next day the union members elected Greig and Connor as their shop stewards and decided to apply for a meeting between the District Secretary Geoff Hardy (a member of the Communist Party) and the Company to discuss recognition, etc. The shop stewards’ account of how this application was met is indicative of the employer’s attitude:

Our first discussion with the Management was brief and to the point. We were told that under no circumstances would they afford recognition, and that the two elected Shop Stewards could “pick up their cards” on the way out. (Undated leaflet issued in the name of Ron Connor as Secretary of the Strike Committee.)

It seems that on every point at issue there are two different and mutually contradictory stories. How many shop-floor workers were eligible for the AUEW? Dilley says 51, the union only 31. How many came out on strike? Dilley says only 20, the union 26. How many are still out on strike now (Oct. 26)? Dilley says only 9 — the rest, he says, are either back at work or else have collected their cards and got jobs elsewhere. But the union say they are paying strike pay to 16 men on their books. Were the shop stewards sacked? Not according to Dilley, but it is hard to see why, immediately after their interview with him, there was a mass walkout and decision "to withdraw labour until such time as not only the two stewards were reinstated, but the Company conceded recognition”.

On September 28 Dilley took the case to the National Industrial Relations Court under Sir John Donaldson on the grounds that the strike constituted an "unfair” industrial practice because there had been no seven days’ notice. At which stage the question ceases to be a relatively simple one of an industrial stoppage over a recognition issue, but becomes bedevilled by the AUEW’s stoic masochism and boycott of the NIRC (surely they could have countered Dilley by putting their case on reinstatement of the shop stewards and recognition?), but also by the Labour and TUC opposition to the Industrial Relations Act and NIRC.

At which point I’ll get back to those pavement pickets. Their main motive for being out was nothing to do with the Industrial Relations Act and party political matters. What they wanted was union recognition, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, a means of compelling management to do something about unsatisfactory conditions. I was told of safety hazards on some of the machines, of poor ventilation, of the shopfloor being cluttered and dirty. I heard that rates of pay were arbitrarily and unfairly fixed — the longer you stayed the less you got in relation to blokes who had just come in on "outside” rates of pay. For instance, Lindsey Greig, a young newcomer, got a lot more than an older, better and more experienced worker.

Another factor was the high speed arrival and departure of shopfloor workers. There would be seven or eight new ones every Monday, and of these hardly a couple would still be in the place on Friday. There was a tendency to take young workers, including students, and there was a high proportion of immigrant workers — Italians and Pakistanis came to nearly half the workforce. In the event, the Pakistanis have mostly stuck with the union so far, but the Italians went back in.

In the absence of a union, inexperienced, young or immigrant workers are least likely to be aware of safety hazards in operating the machines, and in case of accident are unlikely to be aware of their legal rights on compensation; also they might not be in a position to press any claim. Is this why Dilley is so opposed to recognition of the union? Is he afraid that someone might report him for empty firebuckets? Or get him to modify some of his plant, e.g. the monstrous machine outside in his backyard which chops up metal into different lengths and which the operator can only switch on or off when inside the building? Or to give up some of his old-fashioned habits, like sacking people at the drop of a hat?

The first sentence of Dilley’s circular of September 28th claims: “For twenty-five years the employees and the management have enjoyed excellent labour relations.” The men totally disagree, and they point out that last November there was a stoppage lasting several hours over pay and conditions, which ended when another director conceded a pay increase. In the next sentence, we read: “the conditions of employment have always been superior to those laid down by any Union”. The proof of the pudding is in the eating: there would be little cause for men to stay out on strike with only £6 strike pay for weeks on end and still remain resolved to force union recognition if conditions were as "superior” as Dilley alleges. The men however know very well how badly their conditions and rates of pay compare with other factories in the area, whose workers are solidly supporting them (e.g. in such practical ways as laying on hot tea twice a day, or getting statements photo-copied for the pickets to hand out, not to mention helping out with picket duty).

The employer seems an awful ass, dogmatic and intransigent, characteristically the type who has been using NIRC. The Union leaders seemed at times to have had a stronger eye on making party policy propaganda for the Labour Party than with the immediate interests of their members on strike. But the strikers themselves have shown commendable solidarity and stamina — qualities which, added to socialist understanding, will overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism.

Charmian Skelton

Blogger's Note:

By the look of this obituary for Lindsay Greig from 2015, he would have been a member of the International Socialists group (now known as the SWP) at the time of the dispute. In fact, the strike at Con-Mech is mentioned in the obituary.

By The Way. (1917)

The By The Way Column from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly three years ago now, when the present international slaughter of the world’s workers commenced, we were informed that this was the “war to end war.” From that time onwards many have iterated the same silly phrase. Many have taken up the cudgels on behalf of the capitalist class and gone out of their way to inform the unwary that this war is different in its origin to past wars, that this time it is in order to put down “Prussianism” that they are called upon to give their services and, if necessary, their lives.

Slowly but surely numbers of our class are beginning to open their eyes and to realise that they have been deceived, and in order to facilitate this larger outlook I propose giving one or two quotations which possibly may help them in their search for truth and knowledge.

From a German source, quoted in a paper the proprietor of which is a keen supporter of the Lloyd Georgian (English-Prussian) Government, we read that General von Stein, Minister of War, said:

“I do not entertain the hope that the war will be followed by international peace. So long as the interests of nations conflict there will be wars. The prospects of an eternal peace are not very brilliant just now when two great peoples which hitherto did not think of maintaining large armies are beginning to create them. Consequently after the war it will be our duty to safeguard ourselves and preserve for our descendants what we have fought for.”—”Weekly Dispatch,” May 6th, 1917.

In order to obviate the retort that might be put forward by some, that the previous spokesman was a German, and, therefore, what he says does not count, let me adduce the evidence of an Englishman who is a Liberal M.P., and as such must necessarily be possessed of all the virtues. Addressing the Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders in the British Westinghouse Co., Ltd., Mr. J. Annan Bryce said :

“It seems to be assumed by some well-meaning people that when peace is declared there will be an end of economic war also, and they deprecate any measures tending to perpetuate it. It is forgotten that this war is as much a war for commercial and industrials for military domination, and that there were no more enthusiastic advocates of it than the heads of the great German industries and financial establishments. It is forgotten that the military war is only the complement of the economic war which started half a century ago.”

Here we have supporters of the holy trinity of Rent, Interest, and Profit, or in other words, defenders of capitalist society, coolly admitting that this war is the result of an antagonism of capitalist interests.

The only war that will end war is the class war. Join, then, with us and assist in waging war for the abolition of classes and winning “The World for the Workers.”

* * *

An announcement recently appeared in the Press informing the public that “last year the British Board of Films Censors passed for universal exhibition 4,430 subjects and 904 for public exhibition.” It was further stated that among the grounds for the rejection of over 500 films were:

Impersonation of the King.

Irreverent treatment of death.

Nude figures.

Excessively passionate love scenes.

Scenes purporting to illustrate “night life.”

References to controversial or international politics.

Antagonistic relations of capital and labour.

Scenes tending to disparage public characters and to create public alarm.

Vampire women ; the drug habit ; white slave traffic.

Materialisation of the conventional figure of Christ.

Scenes depicting the realistic horrors of warfare.

Incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy.

Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies or to disturb friendly relations wkh them.

Scenes holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule.

Propaganda films of German origin.

—”Daily Chronicle,” April 3rd, 1917.

How carefully the agents of our masters choose what subjects their slaves shall see when they journey to the picture palace. The references to the “antagonistic relations of capital and labour” and the “realistic horrors of war” are distinctly good.

* * *

A study in directive ability ! Engineer for the cows. Mr. J. A. Morris Bew told the Westhampnett Tribunal at Chichester of the case of a farmer who applied to the military authorities for help.

“A man was sent to the farm on Friday night, but he left on Saturday morning.

“He was sent as a cowman, stockman, and milker, and turned out to be an electrical engineer who had never worked on a farm.”—”Star,” April 10th, 1917. Who said Business as usual?

* * *

In aid of soldiers blinded in the war a bazaar was a short time ago held at the Royal Albert Hall. Now functions of this order are not arranged for we wage slaves. No, indeed not ! Were we to absent ourselves from work, even on such an occasion as this when royalty were in attendance, doubtless we should be confronted with a notice informing us that in this time of crisis and national emergency it is highly unpatriotic to leave our masters’ business and that such a serious dereliction of duty was punishable under the D.O.R.A. And so it came to pass on the appointed day that many of the parasites of society did foregather in order to raise the wind for “our heroes blinded in the war” and whom a grateful country will ne’er forget (?) 

Now let me quote :

“Many Royal ladies are to assist in the selling. Princess Victoria has valuable lace and a wonderful fan worth £30 to offer, Princess Louise will sell Peking loot, coloured glass, a Chinese shawl, and an inlaid escritoire, Princess Beatrice presides over children’s garments, while the Princess Royal and her daughter, Princess Maud, will sell lingerie of the most lovely description. The great attraction at the Duchess of Somerset’s stall is potatoes.”

—”Daily Chronicle,” May 7th, 1917.

“Loot,” Ikey, my boy, “Loot” ! Now “loot,” according to the lexicographers is: “booty; plunder ; especially such as is taken in a sacked city.” If the purveyor of this said “loot” had been the Crown Prince, whose thieving activities we have heard so much about of late, one could understand this reference; but one shudders at the mention of Princess Louise.

* * *

The “Daily Chronicle” (8.5.17) had an editorial article on Food Rationing, and towards the close it dealt with the subject of the destruction of the house sparrow, advocated by the Board of Agriculture. By deleting the words “house sparrow” from the sentence and substituting the word “capitalist” we obtain a fine definition of that type of individual. It would then read as follows :

“The capitalist is undoubtedly a pest; he has few virtues ; he is virtually a parasite on man ; like a true parasite, he purloins much and serves us little; and all the characteristics which he has developed in the course of his denaturalised existence—his harsh voice, his quarrelsome manners, his filthy and untidy nest—mark his degeneration from the standards of true social (text wild-bird) life.”

We Socialists claim that the capitalist is unnecessary. To-day we have social production with individual ownership of the means of producing wealth and the product of our toil resulting therefrom. We suggest, therefore, the elimination of this parasite by an intelligent working class understanding its position in society, and working for the complete overthrow of the existing order of things through the conquest of political power, and the conversion of these individually owned means of wealth production into socially owned for the well being of all. Then we can commence the era of peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

* * *

The “glories of war” : Potatoe queues ; sugar queues ; margarine queues. The question of sugar is an interesting theme and affords a good object lesson of the methods of our “Business Government.” From the Northcliffe organ I cull the following :

“In certain shops—”The Evening News” has the name of one where it occurred last night—no sugar fit to eat is sold to any customer who does not buy tea.

A quantity of evil-looking sugar, full of black lumps and not without dirt and straw, is offered to customers who do not want tea.”

—”Evening News,” April 28th, 1917.

One is inclined to ask : Have all the public analysts and local medical officers of health gone to the war? Or is it a case of “one good turn deserves another” ?

* * *

An event of great importance to the workers, recently took place. Bearing in mind the scriptural injunction : “Ye cannot serve both God and Mammon,” I observed that that highly-democratic organ of the international working class, the “Weekly Dispatch” (29.4.17) vouchsafed the information that a little family gathering took place at Windsor. The touching story is thus told:

“Our Labour Ministers have had an opportunity during the week of seeing the King at Windsor Castle en famille, and it is gathered that they were delighted at the air of informality which characterised their reception.”

It is further added that Mr. George Barnes was also in the company of the elect, and “it is to be regretted that Mr. and Mrs. Henderson were unavoidably prevented from accepting his Majesty s invitation.” Strange, is it not, that these gentry who rejoice in the fact that one crowned head (the “Little Father,” better known as Bloody Nick) has received the “order of the boot,” are overjoyed at being the guests of another monarch. “By their fruits ye shall; know them” is the standard for measuring their value to the workers struggling to be free.

The “Dispatch” writer sums up this dust-throwing incident by adding :

“To be quite frank, everyone likes to see the King and Queen moving in an informal circle that includes honest, outspoken John Hodge and straight-­forward, plain-speaking George Barnes.”

* * *

The antics of these labour fakirs are excruciatingly funny. In the case of the engineers’ strike Hodge refers to “the irresponsible people of about 25” who, tiring of the dilatory methods of the accredited representatives of the union and the Ministry of Munitions, take matters into their own hands in order to force the pace, and he deplores their action, while on the other hand I read:

“Typists who earn 20s. a week in Government offices and the National Union of Clerks are grateful to Mr. John Hodge, Labour Minister, for complaining of the low wage.

If all the girls were to decline to work any longer for 20s. a week, said Mr. Hodge at Sheffield, what a powerful lever he would have. It would give him the bludgeon necessary to go to the Treasury.

“I am very glad,” said Mr. Herbert H. Elvin, general secretary of the National Union of Clerks, “that Mr. Hodge, as a Minister, has advocated a general strike on the part of women.”

—”Evening News,” April 28th, 1917.

Here we see John Hodge advocating for the women what he condemns in the case of the men. Will Hodge be proceeded against under some regulation of the Defence of the Realm Act, or is such distinction reserved for “people of about twenty-five,” and whose earnings do not yet suffice to support a triple, hodge-podge chin?

* * *

The Government have to blame themselves entirely for the chaotic conditions which they have brought into being in the engineering trades. With the deliberate suppression of news from the storm centres, the cutting off from communication of one section of men with those in other parts of the country, the one sided and meagre reports such as were allowed to be published, all tended to exasperate those concerned. The Munitions Act (Amendment) Bill still before the House, with its purposely ambiguous wording (a common feature of all Bills), also intensified the trouble that was brewing. So complex and incomprehensible is this Bill that the powers that be went to the length of issuing an explanatory poster to reassure the workers that the Bill was not designed to trespass on their hard-won rights as trade unionists, and so on ad nauseam.

From newspaper reports it first appears that Dr. Addison refused to recognise the Shop Stewards Committee, which obviously understands the local conditions better than the Central Executive, but afterwards changes his mind and agrees to see the Shop Stewards’ Committee if they agree to “act in unison with the trade union Executives.” Later we are informed that the Ministry of Munitions replied to the engineers’ delegates, who were in session at Walworth, that: “We shall be glad, if asked to do so by your Executives, to meet them accompanied by yourselves or by any other body your Executives may desire to bring with them, but we cannot receive you under other circumstances.” Then comes the arrest of certain men on a charge of promoting strikes. Commenting on this the “Daily News“ of Saturday (19.5.1917) says :

“A number of the leaders in the engineers’ strike have been arrested, and one more step has been taken by that action on the perilous path down which the Government are being driven. We have never defended this strike. But no one acquainted at all with the circumstances which have led to this dispute, and the real history of how it has been allowed to grow to its present proportions, can doubt where the real responsibility lies for the gloomy prospect with which the whole nation finds itself to-day confronted.

“In respect of most of the men,” says the “Morning Post,” “they have been irritated and worried by the authorities. The fact is, the Ministry of Munitions have made a sad business of it ; and the sooner the Government recognise the fact the better.”

Evidently “the fact” has been recognised by the Government at last, and a meeting has taken place at which Lld. George attended and at which what appears to be a temporary peace was arranged.

* * *

The Archbishop of Canterbury has authorised special prayers for “God’s blessing on the crops and the fruits of the earth in this time of sowing,” runs an announcement in the Press. Then follows a passage from the prayer telling the All-knowing that we have some Allies and some ships which the Archbishop wants protected. It is to be hoped that the recording angel has duly noted this petition.

* * *

The King has been on tour and at one of the works he visited we are informed in all seriousness that he “clocked on” as if he were an ordinary employee. Doubtless after seeing other people work he “clocked off,” and was duly thankful that his lot had been cast in smoother places.

* * *

“One of the liveliest and noisiest meetings in Glasgow for many years was that held last night when Mr. G. N. Barnes, M.P., Pensions Minister, met with a distinctly hostile reception on the occasion of his addressing his constituents in the Blackfriars Division.” (“Daily News,” 12.4.17.) The storm in the tea-cup was over this gent’s reference to “veritable weeds” in the House on the Pensions problem. He now regretted having used the phrase as it seemed to indicate a lack of sympathy on his part.

Mr. Barnes need not worry his guts into fiddle-strings over this matter. Far from indicating a lack of sympathy on his part, his whole handling of the Pensions problem has shown him to be a very sympathetic man—but his sympathy is reserved, not for disabled soldiers, broken in the war, but for those who pay him for it—the blood-reeking masters.

* * *

The War Office recently announced its intention of opening two new groups for attestation, the age limit being from 41 to 50 years. A kind of Derby Scheme is thus once again in operation, with the promise of an armlet slightly different in design from that issued in the earlier campaign, for those who hurry along and volunteer. According to figures given in the Press there is quite a large amount of recruitable material. This card waits to see how many respond to the call. What a fine opportunity is now presented to those who a short time ago were dying to enlist were they within the age limit. Having urged the younger men to hasten forth to battle for King and Country, it is now up to them to honour the obligation they were prepared to impose upon others.

* * *

“Nine British soldiers are dying every hour.”—Gen. Baden-Powell. But, “There are worse things than bloodshed.”—Windy Churchill.

The Scout.

England’s Engineers. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engineers have recently fought for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill. For that particular purpose they fought solidly and well. The masters tried their damnedest to beat and overwhelm them with lies and conquer them with hunger. They placarded the Midland towns with crafty official notices. They tried to split the strike with lies and scorn and they tried to split it with bribes and threats. Yet the engineers ignored splendidly the Government promises, official and outside opinion, together with the cowardly threats.

For years the engineers were half-asleep. Hopefully, innocently, patriotically, they abandoned all those rules which they held to be valuable and precious in their union. Soon after the original sacrifice, as early in the war as the Autumn of 1914, they were bound to the benches and engines by sheaves of laws. Act after Act took away their strength as a fighting union. The men they trusted told them that the Allies could never win the war if the union remained as strong, or the men as free, as in the days of peace, so the engineers, like other large bodies, cheerfully gave over the ripest of their plans of advancement, the richest of their trade-union possessions. For it was promised by those they trusted that not a hair of their heads would be hurt through any concessions they made.

Then Acts were passed in a trice; rapidly passed, almost secretly passed, so that after a few months of warfare the workers of Britain had their customary weapons of defence broken or blunted and the finest of trade union safeguards cast into the official dust-bin. The engineers, like the rest, surrendered the trade-union defences of their personal welfare in what they considered to be the national interest. The unions were emasculated.

Then thought these men, surely there can be no harm in this. By the might of our numbers we can easily enough recover at our will what we give away freely. So they believed the finely-spun tales that were told. Yet still in their minds was a little nervous doubt which a generation of conflict had stamped there. Nevertheless the first months passed away silently enough. This and that call passed ringing through the land. At a word from some chief the munitions wheels went whirring on continuously through a lengthening day. What the engineers had to give they gave generously, without murmur or question. Then England became more deeply involved in the Continental struggle. Side by side with that new vast entanglement came the pinch of direct hardship in the engineers’ conditions. Then they first felt the discomforts and misery of the new laws, which were fashioned in the days they had almost forgotten. There was no relief from their insufferable toil. Holidays were stroked out. The intense strain, which commonly they experience, was increased. The Government pacified them with flattery and their trusted men lectured them on patience. Nevertheless the engineers began to regret the day when they broke their own weapons of defence and made their unions a dead letter.

At last the oppression became so unbearable, the injustice so apparent, that little scrappy revolts and outbreaks ensued. It was seen that trusted and prominent men, both Parliamentarians and trade union officials, were associated with every piece of legislation that fettered the workers more. As these outbreaks were only spasmodic they were easily over-ridden by the ruling class. The Clyde trouble of Christmas 1915 is perhaps the best specimen of these sectional and local revolts. The principle of the men was strong, but they were driven down by lies, hunger, victimisation, deportation of their leaders, and, what is more important still, because the strike was local.

It is the mass of engineers only, and not a locality of engineers, who can successfully fight. Ten thousand engineers on strike in a town may gain something in a month for that town’s men—or they may not; fifty thousand spread over one industrial area may force amendments to an  objectionable Bill from a reluctant Cabinet, while one hundred and fifty thousand men who leave their engines, with all their force concentrated on one particular principle, striking at a vitally important time, stand a good chance of getting what they ask for.

Though at the time of writing there is still some doubt as to the issue, the men may get entirely or largely what they want. Their demands are small. Such a strike is just a little barrier raised against a perfidious and dangerous enemy, a little wall between the engineers and their life-long and inveterate foe, the master class. Soon there will be fights for different purposes, fights for higher principles, fights for nobler conditions, fights for a more peaceful and prosperous basis to life and what not.

The efforts of  the engineers are making for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Act, considering they have no strike pay, considering the domestic suffering, starvation almost, which must follow this state of things, is splendid. But if the strike shows how closely industrial slavery is allied to Parliamentary action, what trivial improvements reforms effect, how unreliable the labour leaders are, it will be invaluable as a practical lesson to the engineers and their kindred of other unions.

Let it be seen, too, that if all the things the engineers demand in this strike are conceded by the Government, still will these proven enemies of the workers be left in full command of the Parliamentary power, which they will use more craftily against the workers at a later date.

However, considering the difficulties in their way, the engineers’ struggle has been splendid. At this point our sympathy with them must stop. They have found no new key to the prevention of these periodic upheavals, in which they fight for ordinary human conditions. They must find other principles for which they can fight as solidly as they have done (up to the time of writing) for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill and the upholding of the Trade Card system.

Slowly, too slowly, the workers are finding out their true friends and true principles, their cunning enemies and their delusive ways. The change they make must be vaster than the repeal or modification of one Bill or the establishment of one unconnected wish. The thing that would bring them rest and peace can be done with one wish stroke. Instead of abandoning the political machine to ambitious wiseacres and unscrupulous plotters, and letting them, in the secrecy of Cabinet conclaves, everlastingly scheme to set the social changes on you, see to it that those who are now proven the enemies of your class are no longer sent to represent you. Fill their places with class-conscious men of your own ranks, controlled and guaranteed by the political organisation of your own class.

Engineers! At an early date you will be confronted with other trouble. We want your demands to be more exacting, and more deep the principles you struggle for. Fight with your brothers of other industries for these bigger and nobler things as earnestly and solidly as you recently fought. Fight politically as well as industrially, then, with the principle of the class struggle to guide your fighting, you cannot help but win.

Read our Declaration of Principles on the back page of this paper; earnestly consider them; join with us and help to establish them. Then will slave and master be abolished, and a real peace come, to all, including England’s engineers.

H. M. M.

Employers' attitude hardening (1952)

From the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

As might be expected, with world competition becoming more acute in export markets and with Government encouragement to resist demands for higher wages the attitude of employers is hardening.

Thus the Wholesale Clothing Manufacturers’ Association has rejected a claim for another 6d. an hour for 200,000 workers on the plea of “the unsettled state of the trade ” (Daily Telegraph 12/8/1952).

Workers on strike at the Fairey Aviation Company’s works, at Stockport, have been out for eight weeks in their strike over the refusal of four inspectors to join a union and over the subsequent dismissal of two shop stewards for holding a meeting on the firm’s premises in working hours without permission. The Company have remained adamant although the strike “has held up production on important Air Ministry contracts for nearly two months . . .” (Manchester Guardian 16/8/1952.)

And it was stated by Mr. Tanner, President of the A.E.U., that before the Employers’ Federation rejected the Engineering and Shipbuilders workers’ wage claim they had carried out a census of all their members asking them not only whether they favoured refusal to grant any increase but also whether, in the event of refusal, they were prepared to face a dispute (News Chronicle 14/8/1952).

Doubtless British workers will have taken note of the success of the American steel-workers’ strike and it remains to be seen whether the British engineering firms with armament orders booming are prepared to face the losses involved in a prolonged hold up. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Trade Unionism, Wherin it Fails, and How it can be Rendered Effective. (1905)

From the September 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many are the discussions that have taken place on this subject between Socialists and non-Soeialists alike. The question is, does Trade Unionism as we know it in Great Britain, help or hinder the development of the workers into class-conscious Socialists ?

The answer undoubtedly is that it materially hinders it. It does not necessarily follow that because any Trade Union or body of Trade Unionists elect a supposed Socialist to an official position that Union has progressed in a Socialist direction. On the contrary, it is generally because this particular individual has swallowed those Socialist principles he may have understood, or because it is hoped his election to office may close his mouth and cause him to refrain from the fearless advocacy of Socialism within the Union and the exposure of the unsound position in which Unionism stands today that he is elected. It is then, not the capacity for securing jobs that is the test of Socialist activity, but the number of Union members who understand the root principles— economic, political, and historical—of Socialism, and are prepared to take action consistent with that knowledge.

Let us briefly examine what has come to be known as

“PURE AND SIMPLE” TRADE UNIONISM

with the object of seeing whether Socialists can honestly support it.

Socialism implies a knowledge of the class war which is being waged between the working-class on the one hand and the capitalist-class on the other, a war which can only be fought out by labour organised in a proper manner.The “pure and simple” Unions do not organise workers for that struggle.

Paradoxical as this may seem, it is nevertheless the fact. In evidence let us take what is generally considered the wealthiest and most powerful union in the country the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

In the Annual Report of this Union for 1904 we find an increase of 703 members. This is the smallest increase since the days of the eight hours strike, a significant fact in view of the development in recent years of the motor industry. Mr. Geo. Barnes, the general secretary of the A.S.E.—fairly well known to readers of this journal as one of the many “labour leaders” who delight in rendering assistance to the capitalist-class wherever possible emphasises this significance and urges upon existing members the importance of securing fresh members. But as the report shows, 4,517 have been excluded from membership ! These are men who, by the aid of improved machinery, continually being introduced, can do work that previously only highly trained men could do. They can work for less money, and the A.S.E. excludes them therefore. All over London this spectacle of a Union working its own destruction by the

MANUFACTURE OF POTENTIAL BLACKLEGS

can be observed, while at the same time in the shops of Harland and Wolff of Belfast, A.S.E. members themselves act as blacklegs to the electrical workers by working under price, and this after having refused to undertake the organisation of the electrical workers, who are really engaged in a branch of the engineering industry !

In the slate club (or coffin club) side of this Union impending disaster is again apparent. It returns a monthly average of 5,427 unemployed members, 2,444 in sick benefit, while 4,696 are superannuated. Altogether a total of 12,567 members drawing upon the financial resources of the Society. On the year’s working the average income per member is shown to be £3 15s. 9½d. against an average expenditure of £3 16s. 1d. !

The case of the Operative Bricklayers’ Society is not more inspiring. During last year they lost 2,333 members, and the returns of the preceding three years show decreases also. The amount expended in strikes and lockouts for 1904 was £5,105 5s. 11½d. in excess of the previous year, while sick, funeral, and superannuation funds all have increases on the expenditure side. The jealous eye with which the bricklayers regard the masons, plasterers, and even the labourers, and the disputes which the Unions of these trades have engaged in, do not compel the conclusion that the O.B.S. is desirous that all workers in the trade should be in their Union, but even if it could secure the additional membership for which it is asking, on its present base it could not escape bankruptcy unless subscriptions were raised considerably. An appreciable increase of subscription, however, would inevitably result in the withdrawal of many existing members through sheer inability to pay, and the last condition of the Union, therefore, would be as bad as the first.

A further instance of how

PRESENT TRADE UNIONISM DISORGANISES

the workers can be found in the six organisations which the builders’ labourers consider necessary in London. These, together with the three other unskilled workers organisations also existing, necessitate the payment in the London district alone, in salaries, rent, etc., of eight times the amount that would otherwise be sufficient. In addition, of course, an enormous quantity of quite unnecessary work is caused, and much jealousy and strife engendered. Attempts at amalgamation have, it is true, been made, but without result, the officials of existing Unions being in the nature of things opposed to alterations that would affect them detrimentally, although Mr. Davenport, the general secretary of the United Order of General Labourers—the Union that opposed federation about three years ago—has fathered a scheme of his own. However, as the principle plank in his platform seemed to be the appointment of himself to the post of secretary at £3 10s. per week, the idea was not taken up with enthusiasm.

All the evidence, therefore, points to the fact that the existence of the Unions grows more and more precarious owing to the inability of Trade Unionists to appreciate the requirements of industrial warfare. Assailed on the one hand by capitalism, and on the other by the competition of the ever increasing number of men whom the Unions will not admit, they cannot in their present form survive. The question therefore arises:—

CAN THE UNIONS BE OF SERVICE

to the working-class ?

The answer is undoubtedly yes. But their object must be the organisation of the working-class, not a select two millions out of an adult working-class population of sixteen millions as at present. All the members of the trade, whether they can pay dues or not, whether they be unemployed or not, must be taken in. Otherwise the Union will, as previously pointed out, be creating its own blacklegs. Moreover, organisation must involve the closest of associations between members of allied trades, otherwise, as happened in the case of the Operative Bricklayers’ Society—which records 67 disputes to maintain trade customs, and four actions against reductions in wages during last year—we have the effect of any action nullified by the workers in allied trades remaining at work while the strike is in progress. The workers must be organised on a class war basis, that is, on the principle that there is and can only be, hostility between labour and capital. They must be organised to fight, not to form committees after the manner of the Bricklayers’ Society for “closer union” with the employers—surely as absurd a proceeding in view of the fact that this Society expended about £6,000 last year in struggles against the encroachments of these same employers, as it is possible to conceive.

The position of Socialist Trade Unionists is clear. They should, it seems to me, endeavour to effect the

SOUND ECONOMIC ORGANISATION

of the workers by systematic propaganda of Socialism inside existing Unions—a work which, it must be remembered, has, hitherto, never been seriously undertaken, in the result should it be found that the “pure and simple” element, aided and abetted by Trade Union leaders, many of whom are interested in maintaining the present sectionalism among the workers, and are, as can easily be demonstrated, consciously playing the capitalists’ game, are too recalcitrant for satisfactory progress to be made, there will be no other alternative left than that of forming separate Socialist Trade Unions and crushing the existing Unions from the outside.

Trade Unions will play an important part, perhaps the most important, in the overthrow of the capitalist-class and system. The political party of the workers,—the S.P.G.B—while building up the political side, bears in mind the fact that both are essential. As we get nearer and nearer to the time when there will be a Socialist majority on the administrative bodies, particularly the executive of the nation, the capitalist-class will not sit quietly and watch themselves legislated out of existence. When we

REMEMBER FEATHERSTONE

Hull, Michelstown and Grimsby it stands to reason that they will oppose by all the means in their power the attempt of the class-conscious workers to capture the State machinery in working-class interests, and undoubtedly if the Trade Unions have not achieved their highest purpose—capacity and readiness for the organisation of production and the carrying on of industry—they will, when the Socialist working-class have secured their majority, endeavour to effect a counter revolution by closing down all works of importance.

Therefore it is all important that the economic organisations of the working-class should be as sound as their political organisations. Neither can be sound unless founded upon a clear recognition of the causes underlying and

THE REMEDY FOR PRESENT CONDITIONS.

Well grounded upon knowledge and thoroughly organised, the working-class, in the day when they have attained to the position of the dominant class in the legislature, need have no fear of any measures the capitalist-class may take in their endeavours to secure themselves a longer lease of life. They will be able to take over and work the industries of the country which the capitalist system itself is even now rapidly ripening for the change in face of any difficulties capitalism may attempt to thrown in the way, and so usher in the Socialist Republic.

E. J. B. Allen

Editorial: Fair shares in misery (1958)

Editorial from the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

If somewhere in the universe there were beings who had learned to run social affairs on a sensible, socialist, basis, and if some writer there offered to his readers a factual account of our trade union movement, they wouldn’t believe him. They would say that it just is not possible that men and women who possess such industrial skill, knowledge and capacity could behave as shortsightedly as they do.

This thought is prompted by the report of proceedings at the conference of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions on August 13th. We quote from the Evening News:—

“The two giant unions of the “Little TUC“—the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions— clashed to-day over what should be done about the ‘sack.’ 

“At the Confederation's annual conference at Paignton, the 1,300,000-strong Transport and General Workers' Union pressed a four-point plan to 'cushion' workers faced with dismissal.

“They demanded full consultation with the unions on the selection of workers to be sacked, plus cash compensation.

“The Amalgamated Engineering Union, Britain's second biggest union, took the opposite line. They demanded that nobody should be sacked unless alternative work was found and that work-sharing schemes should be introduced.

“The split widened when Mr. Les Kealey, national engineering officer of the transport union warned the 40 unions represented at the conference that workers generally are not willing to 'share the misery' when it comes to dismissals."

If the two propositions may be thought to represent the lowest possible level of what passes as thought in the trade union movement, the long discussion that followed was even worse; with such ancient fatuities as “getting down to the basic principle of the right to work” and “ work or maintenance.”

It was a relief and no surprise to read in the stop press news that it had ended with a typically pious and meaningless formula:—

“Announced at Paignton conference that TGWU and AEU had reached agreement on redundancy, with policy declaration that district committees and shop stewards would do all possible to ensure minimum of hardship”

Of course the trade union officials and delegates who drafted those statements and made those speeches will defend them. They will say that it is all very well to be theoretical but, things being what they are, trade unions have to be practical. They have to recognise that as the employers have more workers than they need the misery of unemployment in one form or another has to be accepted.

To which the socialist reply is that things don’t have to be what they are.

What is the problem the workers are facing? They have produced for the employers more than the latter can profitably sell at the present time, so many workers are threatened with the sack; which means that they will fall from the employed workers' standard of living to that of the unemployed. So they spend a day arguing whether the added misery should be spread evenly or in lumps. And to make even this ludicrous choice between evils they have to get the consent of the employers, who are masters of the situation. What makes the employers masters of the situation? The government does. How does the government come to be in this position? It was voted there by the elector?. Who form 90 per cent. of the electors? The workers do. In whose hands therefore does the remedy lie? In the hands of workers like those who sent delegates to the Paignton conference to waste their time with nonsense calculated to make the angels weep, and who send M.P.s to Parliament

What should be done? The answer is, or ought to be, obvious. The workers, who conduct all the processes of production from top to bottom, at present do so on behalf of the capitalist class who are the owners of the means of production and the products. This is capitalism and it exists all over the world, but it is not a necessity; it is a man-made arrangement that the working class can end when they will. When they choose to end it by introducing Socialism, production will be solely for the use of the population. Men’s livelihood will no longer be dependent on the willingness of employer to employ them. And the notion that, as production rises above a certain level (determined by profit) the standard of living of the wealth producers should be reduced will appear as absurd and irrelevant as the “remedies ” discussed at the Shipbuilding and Engineering Conference. ‘

Editorial: Can't the Engineers meet the Miners? (1957)

Editorial from the June 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There were two items of news in the Press during the first week of May that had a certain importance in themselves, but which gain greatly in significance when brought together. They both dealt with nationalisation. The first was from the engineers.

"Leaders of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, at their annual policy-making conference at Eastbourne, yesterday adopted a resolution calling for nationalisation of the motor car industry. The resolution stated that lack of planning in the industry had been a contributory factor in the decline in car production in the past year and that nationalisation would establish full employment in a planned and prosperous economy' " (News-Chronicle, 3/5/57).

The second related to the miners, being a report of a speech at a South Wales Miners' Conference by the President, Mr. Will Paynter.

  “Mr. Paynter said that ten years' nationalisation had shattered illusions that the workers would exercise a decisive control in running the industry. Nationalisation changed the form of control for the better, but fundamentally for industry remained a source of profit for the previous owners and big business generally. Participation of the workers in control and direction of the industry was non-existent, and consultation was superficial and largely window-dressing.

Miners' wages and conditions had not improved to the measure that could be reasonably expected. Nationalisation had been deliberately used to provide coal to big industry at low prices to enhance their profits. It had also been exploited by the State in meeting financial burdens that legitimately were liabilities for the Exchequer.

'Nationalisation is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end. Its role and function today reveals the "end" as being a cheap product for capitalist industry to strengthen and perpetuate capitalism'" (Manchester Guardian, 7/5/57). 

The S.P.G.B. has been telling the miners and engineers for 50 years that nationalisation would not solve the problems of the workers. Now that the miners, with 10 years enlightening experience behind them, are discovering the truth of what we said, may we invite them first to dissuade the engineers from wasting their time, then to get together with the latter to study the case for Socialism?

Press Cuttings (1941)

From the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Men We Want More Than Millionaires

“Skilled engineers to-day are far more valuable to the country than the millionaires,” said Mr. G. Tomlinson, M.P., of the Ministry of Labour, to-day. —(Evening News, April 24th, 1941.)

* * * *

The High Cost of Killing.

It cost about 75 cents to kill a man in Caesar’s time. The price rose to about 3,000 dollars per man during the Napoleonic wars, to about 5,000 dollars in the American Civil War and then to 21,000 dollars per man in the World War. Estimates for the present war indicate that it may cost the warring countries not less than 50,000 dollars for each man killed.—Senator Homer T. Bone (Readers’ Digest, October, 1940).

Editorial: Wages and Human Needs (1940)

Editorial from the December 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The apologists for Capitalism are all reluctant to admit the truth about the way wages are fixed. They do not like to admit in the first place that the means of production and distribution are owned by a small minority of the population and that society is divided into a propertied class that lives by owning and a working class that lives by the sale of labour-power to the owners. Nor do they like to admit that wages are fixed in a fierce, unequal struggle between employers and workers, so that the cost of the bare necessities of life of the various grades of workers provides the levels to which wages generally conform. Rather than admit that this is the way Capitalism works, those who defend it give much thought to formulating theories of wages which do not look so brutal and unprincipled. The theories differ in their phraseology. Some try to present the facts in terms of the so-called “value of work” of the different grades of worker, others point to schemes of co-partnership and profit-sharing, etc., but all have in common the assumption that the workers as a whole have little to complain about, although in particular occupations or industries there may be a need for some improvement. Social reformers who accept Capitalism, of whom Mr. Seebohm Rowntree is an outstanding example, have given years of study to the problem as they see it—but without the problem ever being any nearer to solution. Now the war has brought the question of engineers’ wages into the foreground and the theories are being examined again. The employers state that in their view it is against the “national interest ” to grant the wage increase asked for by the Amalgamated Engineering Union. They do not take their stand on “inability to pay” the increase, but on the plea that wages are already high enough and that the Government should exercise control. The view of the Union has been put in an interview with the Daily Herald by Mr. Jack Tanner, President of the A.E.U. :—

“We are still a democratic state,” he declared. “It is not for the engineering employers, or any other set of employers, to say what is in the best interests of the country.

“We are anxious that the industries of the nation, together with the Navy, the Army, and Air Force, should be put on a common basis.

“We raise no objection to the conscription of labour if that is necessary, provided that wealth is conscripted also.

“Take the profit motive out of industry. Let there be a common pool for using all the resources of the nation—employers to be on the same footing as the rest of the community. Let payment from the nation’s resources be on the basis of service and value to the nation.

“If the engineering employers are so concerned about the national welfare, I suggest that they agree that the industry should be nationalised as are the armed forces, so that the conscription of wealth may be the same as the conscription of life.”—(Daily Herald, November 29th, 1940.)

It will be noticed that Mr. Tanner, though he criticises the existing arrangements, offers as an alternative that “payment from the nation’s resources be on the basis of service and value to the nation.”

He is probably unaware that avowed defenders of Capitalism use the same nebulous phrase about “service and value to the nation,” a meaningless form of words which capitalist investors, who claim that they render “service” by their investment, will readily accept on their own interpretation. It also obscures the sectional point of view which permits workers with a non-Socialist outlook to believe that it is possible to measure the “value to the nation” of different types of work, and hence desirable to perpetuate different incomes for different grades of workers.

Coming back to the point of view of the open defender of Capitalism we find The Times (November 30th) expressing itself as follows: —

“In fact any increase of wages in an industry almost wholly devoted to munitions must be paid by the country. The questions to be decided are whether the wage rates and the earnings of engineering workers are fair and reasonable when related to human needs and to wages in other industries, and whether an advance, which the industry could pass on to the taxpayer, would be justifiable.”

The Times approaches the dispute cautiously and with an air of not being committed to either side. This is a reminder that there is a war on. In times of peace the issue would be fought out in the usual way by a strike or lock-out, but now that is the last thing desired. It is indeed one of the difficulties that beset Capitalism at war, for the normal cut-throat capitalist procedure cannot be reverted to when, for military reasons, output must not be interrupted. The employers, the Government, and The Times are all hoping that arbitration will avoid any such interruption, but notice the hollowness of the principle to which the National Arbitration Tribunal is to direct itself. It is asked to decide whether engineering wages “are fair and reasonable when related to human needs and to wages in other industries.” The Tribunal is therefore to take into account all those sections of industry where wage rates are at their lowest; for example, the agricultural workers’ 48s., and the Post Office and railway workers getting in some cases even less. (Mr. Tanner should notice Post Office wages when he pins his faith to nationalisation.) What kind of principle is this? All it does is to accept the fact of low wage levels in some industries and elevate it into a principle for regulating wages elsewhere.

And what of “human needs”? The simple minded, not used to the subtleties of arbitration tribunals, will suppose that human needs can only mean the needs of human beings. Nothing could be further from the thought of The Times ! The Times is not proposing that engineering shareholders, cabinet ministers, millionaire newspaper proprietors, church dignitaries, and arbitrators shall all be ranked together with engineers and labourers for the purpose of deciding what are the needs of all as human beings. What is meant is that the class division of society shall be taken for granted, and that “human needs” shall be considered solely in relation to the needs of that sub-species known as the working class.

This state of affairs will not be remedied until class-divided society has given place to Socialism. Then there will be no wages problem. Class struggle will have disappeared to make way for common ownership of the means of production and distribution and for the application of the Socialist principle, “From each according to his capacity; to each according to his need.”

War on the Wage Front (1957)

From the April 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is  the Time Opportune?

Along with the shipbuilding workers who came out on strike on 16 March, millions of workers in the engineering, building, railway and other industries have claims awaiting settlement. The newspapers and politicians urge the workers to be moderate and to submit their case to arbitration and they profess to be shocked that a trade union official, Mr. Hill of the Boilermakers, should say "No arbitration. We are going to fight" and that Sir William Grant chairman of the Engineering and Allied Employers, West of England Association, should declare:—“This time we do not want government interference. That is quite positive. We want to fight it out ourselves. We have got to stand firm and prove to these fellows that things are not done so easily." (Daily Mail, 13, March, 1957.)

In the same quarters tears are shed because there should be a hold-up of industry “just now,” the idea being that strikes are all very well in the past or in the future but not (as the Daily Mail puts it) “just as Britain is coming out of the Suez squeeze and the gold reserves are climbing up again." This is humbug and is a line of argument that should be totally ignored by workers considering strike action. If at any time conditions are relatively favourable for workers to strike be sure the Government and the employers and the Press will find reasons why it should not take place then. But workers with long memories will recall the many times past when they have been lulled into delaying action while the employers prepared for battle. It happened in 1922 with the engineers in a dispute over an overtime agreement. Negotiations broke down in April, 1921, but the employers waited seven months before they delivered their ultimatum that led eventually to a weeks long lock-out—they were waiting for the heavy unemployment to undermine the resistance of the workers and to deplete the funds of the Unions through payment of unemployment benefit.

Are the Employers Bluffing?

The present engineering dispute is being fought against a background that is very different from the lock-out of 1922, and the difference is not that, because of the so-called “Welfare State,” the wages war has changed its nature or that arbitration has made strikes unnecessary. The difference lies in the state of industry and of unemployment, the factors that workers do need to study closely. Strikes are not won by bull-headed bravery; the employers, with the Government behind them, if they regard an issue as vital, cannot be starved into submission, and in a long-drawn-out battle of that kind are bound to win. But if trade is good and employers do not want to have profitable production interfered with their first blunt refusal to make an offer will prove to be bluff. That may well be the situation now and short sharp strike actions may be successful.. A few months ago with motor car and ancillary plants on short time many employers may have contemplated a show-down over wage claims but with the motor trade recovering and engineering and shipbuilding profits and exports on a high level it is more likely that employers generally will be prepared to pay a wage-increase rather than have plant shut down and contracts interrupted.

The Daily Mail in a leading article (13/3/57) has admitted that “there is little question that the shipbuilders could afford higher wages . . ." They were doubtful about some engineering firms but it is rather surprising that they should have gone so far as this.

The Labour Party and Strikes

Labour spokesmen have attacked the Tory Government for their handling of wage disputes and in particular have blamed the Government for allowing the cost of living to rise. But no one should be deceived into thinking that things were any different when the Labour Government was in power. In 1948 there was also an engineering wage claim, which likewise the employers turned down. The engineers then too threatened strike action and their case was based on the rise of the cost of living and the general inadequacy of pay. But far from the Labour Government giving them encouragement, this was the time of the “wage-freeze” policy and the workers were being told that they should not ask for more pay although prices were rising.

But the engineering workers persisted and their threat to strike brought results, for a court of inquiry specially appointed by the government recommended a wage increase, though it did so with the explanation that it was only because of “particular circumstances" in the engineering claim and was not to be a precedent for other workers and so upset the Labour Government's “wage freeze" policy. It did in fact open the way for other workers to claim.

Don’t worry about the Germans and the Japs

The workers who demand more pay and threaten to strike are being told, as they always are on such occasions, that British export prices will be pushed up and foreign manufacturers will capture all the markets. The obvious working class reaction to this factor ought always to be that of strengthening international trade union organisation so that workers in all countries can act together on wage claims, this time some sort of all-round movement is in being for wages are rising fairly generally in Europe, U.S.A. and elsewhere. In Germany it is the engineering and shipbuilding workers who are leading the way and Japanese workers also are striking:—

“In Germany, organised labour is growing steadily more militant; Its appetite has been whetted by the success of the 16 week strike of engineering and shipyard workers over sickness payments and annual holidays, and similar claims are expected from other branches of the Metal Workers Union. In Japan, this year's labour troubles look like being worse than last year's. . (Financial Times 14/3/57).

Nonsense abort Nationalisation

Some engineering and building workers are deceiving themselves with the notion that the long-term way out of their wages difficulties and the threat of short-time or unemployment when sales fall off, is to press for nationalisation of their industries. They should think again and drop this nonsense. Nationalisation has solved no problem for the working class and they have before their eyes a striking example in the railways. The railwaymen are among the worst paid industries. They have just rejected a miserly offer of a three per cent. increase and appealed to arbitration for more. And at that arbitration on 26 February of this year the spokesman of the Transport Commission, opposing the claim, gave the same reason as does every group of employers, “the duty" of the Commission to resist the claim on the ground of their financial difficulties, the fact that they are making a loss instead of a profit (Daily Telegraph, 27 February, 1957).

Nationalisation is not deserving of working class support and to raise the issue in relation to a wage claim is worse than useless.

But that is not to say that workers should go on year after year imagining that there is no other way except to strike for higher pay when trade is good and go down fighting when trade is bad. The way is open whenever a socialist working class wants to use it. It is to take democratic political action to get rid of capitalism and establish socialism in its place. Then there will be the certainty, through the ending of the destruction and waste of capitalism, of bringing about a vast increase in the production of useful things and no propertied class to stand in the way of that so much promised and never arriving "higher standard of living.”

The suicidal action of the workers every few years at general elections is of far greater and more lasting importance than the strikes for higher wages that occur in between. At elections the working class places in power the Tory or Labour politicians who use their office to keep in being the social system which makes the workers a propertyless class producing wealth and profits for the capitalist minority. Given this situation, with the government in the background safeguarding the position of the propertied class, the industrial struggle over wages and conditions of work can go its up and down way indefinitely without ever settling anything. Socialism is the only way to end it and open up a new horizon for society.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Engineers and Communist strategy. (1926)

Editorial from the April 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another "Victory" for the "United Front." 

After being locked out for ten weeks, the Hoe engineers have returned to work on the employers’ terms and in accordance with the advice of their leaders, local and national. On Tuesday, March 16th, the Communist Party issued a manifesto urging the strikers to “accept the decision of the National Council,” “in the interests of the working-class movement.” — “Daily Herald,” 17/3/26.

Thus the united front is complete. Sir Alan Smith, Mr. J. T. Brownlie, and “the intelligent minority” are at one. For two years negotiations for a rise in wages in the engineering industry have been in progress, only to result in the unions being finally told that any attempt to enforce an increase would be met with the resistance of the whole organisation of the employers. The reply of the unions is to sanction local movements (for an increase) of a “constitutional” character. This means that the movements must conform to the procedure, provided for in the existing agreement between the employers and the unions, “for avoiding disputes” (“Daily Herald,” 17/3/26). By thus tying the hands of their members in advance by the red tape of “conciliatory procedure,’’ the leaders have doomed these movements to the same sterility as the national negotiations.. Any real efforts to enforce their demands will be met by the lock-out or the threat thereof; and this is what the leaders are determined to avoid, judging by their action over the Hoe dispute.

Where, then, do the workers stand? If the leaders, including the district committees, are in earnest in putting forward demands for increases, what explanation have they to offer for allowing a section of their members to be defeated when making those same demands? If they are afraid of a lockout now, whence do they propose to derive their courage upon the inevitable failure of the local negotiations in the near future? How many years of parleying with the enemy is necessary in order to prove that there is no alternative to a fight?

Surely, fellow-workers, no more conclusive proof of our repeated criticism of Trade Unionism as it stands can be asked for than the patent futility of agreements with the bosses to avoid disputes. As well might two armies at war set down on paper a scheme for avoiding battles.

The Socialist Party has no illusions concerning the power of strikes. We have pointed out repeatedly the limits within which they can be successful. We do not encourage the workers in the fallacy that strikes will bring them nearer to their emancipation or substantially improve their position under capitalism. Especially do we advise the workers to avoid long strikes, which merely deplete the union funds at inopportune moments. This much, however, is clear—that so long as capitalism lasts, strikes are necessary as weapons of defence, as means of applying the brake upon the downward tendency of the workers’ social position.

For this reason we counsel our fellow-slaves to beware of the “leaders,” actual and potential. Keep the power in your own hands! The Hoe strikers made the fatal mistake at the last minute of leaving the matter in the hands of the committee, who promptly ordered them back to work. This sheep-like policy was commended by the Communist Party which thus, omce more, proves its worthlessness to the workers.

If the Hoe men were justified from the standpoint of working-class interests in striking at all, then it was up to them to stick to their guns until it was proved that they were beaten. If they were beaten, then the fact should be frankly faced as such. The Communist Party, however, is a stranger both to logic and honesty. Palpable failures are claimed as “successes,” defeats as “victories,” by these incompetent busybodies in their endeavour to create the illusion that they are “leading the masses in the every-day struggle against the bosses !” The nature of their ambitions, however, is made clear by their readiness to come to terms with the Trade-Union bureaucrats when given the chance. All they wish for is a share in the “swag.” A chaotic “Labour” movement, political and industrial, offers tempting jobs. Ignorant of their class position, the workers demand leaders; and the Communists are willing to fill the bill for the price !

As for the “constitutional” issue, what a curious change of front for a party which has repeatedly advocated minority action ! Perhaps the Hoe men were not sufficiently “intelligent” ? As Socialists, we are believers in democracy. To look for democracy among the Trade Unions, however, is to ignore their political and economic ignorance at the present time. Unofficial strikes are the logical outcome of official inaction resulting from the apathy of the majority.

Bearing these facts in mind, we point once more to the necessity for the organisation of the workers for Socialism. Non-Socialist Trade Unionism holds no message for the working-class. It can lead only to an endless series of defeats. What is needed is a clear recognition of the fact that the interests of masters and slaves are irrevocably opposed; that nothing but the abolition of mastership, based upon class ownership of the means of life, will free the workers from the burden of robbery and degradation.

We call upon our fellow-slaves to unite as a class, to throw off their entangling “agreements” and “alliances” with the masters’ representatives, both upon the industrial and the political field, to fight the class war to a victorious finish through the establishment of Socialism.