This year’s T.U.C. (1962)

From the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever the explanation, nothing much did come of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edgar Hardcastle

Should the Capitalists support Trade Unionism? (1911)

From the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John A. Dawson

How to end the rail strike (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

Exploitation

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

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

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

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

Class Struggle

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

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

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

End Wage-slavery

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

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

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

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

Steve Coleman

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

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Limitations of trade union action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave Alton

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

Exhibition Review from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Bennett

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

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

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

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

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

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

New Tunes for Old

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

Re-enter the Profit Motive

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

Explanations that do not Explain

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

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

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

Is it a new Social Order?

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

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

Facts for Trade Unionists

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

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

Edgar Hardcastle

Syndicalism: its origins and weaknesses (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Buick

The Trade Unions (1966)

From the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Webbs’ wrote their History of Trade Unionism in 1894 they defined a Trade Union as “. . . a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining and improving their conditions of employment”.

A modern historian could be excused for amending that definition to read, “A continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of seeking plausible arguments why they should refrain from making wage demands”.

We have been browsing through Trade Union Congress reports of the past 20 years to try to find a year when there was no debate on wage restraint. We had no success.

During the years immediately following the last World War we find the TUC urging support for the Attlee government’s policy of a 10 per cent increase in productivity with austerity in wage demands. A few years later, with the 10 per cent allegedly achieved, there come demands for greater increases in productivity coupled with wage restraint to reduce export prices and undersell competitors in foreign markets.

At the 1951 TUC the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, told the delegates that, although world prices were stable, they must avoid making substantial wage demands during 1952.

Yearly, after that, the same tune is played with a slight change in the lyrics. For “wage restraint” we read “pay pause”, “deferment of wage claims” or “restricting wage demands”. These are argued as necessary because of the dollar gap, the adverse trade balance, the Suez Crisis or whatever threat was prominent during a particular year.

When the Labour Party is out of office the tune at the TUC is in a different key. The bulldozing bass of Arthur Deakin, the Transport and General Workers’ Union’s arch priest of wage restraint, gives place to the applauded baritone of Mr. Campbell of the National Union of Railwaymen and Frank Cousins of the Transport Workers. In 1956 these two took the limelight by opposing wage restraint under a Tory government and advocating a return to policies of the previous Labour government.

So, year after year, we find one government or another demanding that wages be held in check in the interest of national economy and the trade unions agreeing with the need for the economy but differing with the measures to be taken.

No previous government has gone to the limits of the present Labour government in attempting to force a wage freeze on the workers. Pleas for restraint are now giving place to legal measures to pare wages down. During recent weeks many Unions have announced their intention to support the government’s policy and the 1966 TUC has endorsed that policy, “reluctantly”.

The opposition, with a few exceptions, did not condemn the sacrifice of workers’ wages at the altar of capitalist crisis. The objection was to the government’s proposal to legislate to enforce a wage standstill because the law could be used by a future Tory government. How quaint! Prison punishment must be more pleasant under a Labour regime. Perhaps the cells will be padded.

The need to stabilise the £ was accepted. A lovely phrase that, “stabilising the £”. We wonder how many workers know what it means. Mr. Carron does. He knows it means that there is a need to show foreign financiers that the interest on their loans to this country is safe, that the wage slaves are frugal, docile and hard working and if they should get a bit rebellious, Mr. Wilson’s government is going to govern.

Trade Unions do not oppose capitalism and at their TUC forum they have never done more than debate the weight and size of the shackles that bind the working class. To them there is no alternative to capitalism with its production for profit and competition for world markets. They see no class struggle, only a struggle between nations. They create a picture of a good old trade ship “Great Britain” worked by an amicable crew of workers and employers with the Labour Party at the helm, steering towards the horizon of prosperity. There may be injustices in the share-out of the ship’s rations but, when the waters are troubled or the winds adverse, the whole ship’s complement must pull together to keep it on its course. It’s a pretty picture, a lovely illusion, a mirage.

This is not a new trade union outlook. They have, at times, been rebellious but, fundamentally, their thinking has not changed since their birth. In its early days delegates submitted and read papers to the Trade Union Congress. A few illustrations taken at random will demonstrate the continuity of ideas and policies.

The secretary of the Bookbinder’s Society in 1860 wrote:

. . . that the true state of employer and employed is amity, and that they are the truest friends.

A paper to the 1887 TUC:

It is the boast of most Trade Union secretaries that they have prevented more strikes than they have originated.

J. Kane, secretary of the Amalgamated Ironworkers in 1869:

I am determined to give no encouragement to men who refuse to obey and to abide by the written laws of our association . . . encourage me to labour on in the cause of justice and truth.

Through the years TUC debates have centred around class collaboration, suppression of strikes and the disciplining of unruly members.

There is a story of an old trade union leader who used to poke his head round the employer’s office door and ask, “Owt?” When he received the reply, “Nowt”, he would turn to his members and say, “Out”.

The story is, of course, an exaggeration but it is indicative of an attitude in days before trade unions gained their much sought after recognition. Recognition once achieved the old style leader was doomed, ridiculed and elbowed out by men more skilled in the rhetoric of negotiation.

The new men sat round the negotiating table with the employers and argued, often skilfully, not on the basis of class interest but of “justice” and “fair play”. They made agreements on behalf of their members and, when signed, the agreements were deemed to be binding on the employers and the trade union members alike. If conditions changed and agreements became unsatisfactory causing workers to rebel, the union officials had the job of bringing the rebels to heel.

When labour power was plentiful and when all industry was in the hands of private enterprise the employers could restrain wage demands without recourse to government help. But with the state extending its control over industry and labour power finding a sellers’ market, governments find themselves forced to take a more interfering hand.

Within capitalism much of the argument advanced by trade unionists is sound. Some years ago a newspaper columnist illustrated this with a tale of a benevolent employer who paid his workers a high wage for short hours. When he went out into the market to sell his goods he found himself outpriced by his competitors. He returned to his workers and told them that either he must reduce production costs, including their wages, or he would go out of business. To keep their jobs they accepted lower wages and longer hours.

What this story omits to tell is that in every country of the world the same state exists. Workers everywhere are urged or forced to moderate their wage demands in the interest of their own nation’s economy and to keep their jobs.

That is why Socialists say that there is no solution to the workers’ problems within capitalism. While there is capital and labour they will be perpetually antagonistic. While wealth is produced for a competitive market the capitalists will strive to keep the workers’ portion at a minimum. While profit is the stimulant to production the workers will be a subject class. While there is a wages system wages will be under continuous pressure. While workers continue to elect governments to run capitalism they will be urged, cajoled, commanded and compelled to moderate their wage demands.

While trade union policy is hidebound by capitalist notions the unions will 'be feeble instruments—“for the purpose of maintaining and improving their conditions of employment”.

W. Waters

Off the rails (1982)

From the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like a stillborn child, the National Union of Railwaymcn's strike simply lacked the nutrition to keep it alive. And if it had lived for any time, its strength would have been quickly sapped by some debilitating social viruses.

There was. to begin with, the matter of the NUR’s tradition. Not since 1926 had the union called an indefinite national stoppage; a more usual tactic had been to threaten a strike and enforce a discussion with the Prime Minister of the day, from which both sides would emerge apparent victors and agree to co-operate in an enquiry. But in 1982 the government, far from sending Thatcher to talk with the NUR. is exerting determined pressure on them. British Rail’s stand on the matter of wages was given strength by the government’s refusal to subsidise any concessions at a time when, in pace with the industry’s decline, the railway unions are already in retreat. With the shrinking of steel and engineering, freight carried on the railways has fallen since 1960 from 16 billion tonne miles to 11 billion. Since the railways were nationalised the work force has been cut by about 450,000.

This depression has had its effect on railway workers’ wages; signalmen and shunters have fallen from 13th place among manual workers to 21st. Total earnings of railwaymen are now often below the level at which they qualify for Family Income Supplement. In other words, they are being worked progressively harder for less in terms of real wages, some of them at starvation level. And each negotiation for more pay is surrounded and bedevilled by the employers' demands for more intense work, with the railwaymen condemned as Luddites and worse if they don't immediately accept these conditions.

The NUR’s weakness was personified by its General Secretary Sid Weighell, who is famous for the terrier-like acerbity with which he deals with the other railway unions and with those of his members who are "militants" — which often means that they want to resist any downward pressure on their working conditions. In spite of his confident cry, as the strike began, that "Our case is overwhelming”, it is no secret that Weighell was vastly relieved when the NUR conference accepted what he saw as reality and common sense and decided to take the issue back to the industry’s arbitration machinery.

This did not case the pressure on the railwaymen. British Rail soon announced the withdrawal of their original low offer of a rise and said loftily that it was no concern of theirs if the the NUR chose to go to arbitration; they would not discuss the matter again until the union had given way over “productivity” — more intense exploitation. Tory chairman Cecil Parkinson, in a speech positively rotten with false assumptions and non sequiturs, unblushingly threatened that a patriotism newborn through the Falklands war “. . . will not take lightly the return to the pursuit of self-interest over the national good”. (He was not discussing members of the Stock Exchange, or the royal family at Ascot or the firms which sold all those weapons to Argentina.)

In sober reality, history is not at present on the side of the railway workers. Railways were once part of the romance of Victorian capitalism. Their competition finished off the canals in the late 19th century and for the next 50 years they were integral to the economic and social fabric. "In South Lancashire", wrote M. Robbins (The Railway Age), "people associated the London and North Western with the Church and the Conservatives; the Midland with Chapel and the Liberals”. There were few admitted to be railway workers; those who laboured to produce the profits for the shareholders were referred to as servants of the company and were expected to forego too uncouth a preoccupation with their material welfare for the paternalism of the company. In 1871, when the economy was booming, when unemployment was low and recently passed legislation seemed to put them on a secure footing, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was formed. In theory this was a Friendly Society (its patron was the Earl de la Warr) which did not intend to organise strikes. At the time, a normal working week for a guard could be 90 hours.

The boom collapsed a few years later and from 1876 wages were cut and hours increased. One result of this was the reduction of ASRS membership from 17,000 in 1872 to 6,000 in 1882; another was the formation in 1880 of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) and later, in 1889, of the General Railway Workers Union in direct opposition to the ASRS. In most cases the employers refused to recognise or negotiate with the unions; the general manager of the London and North Western told the 1893 Royal Commission on Labour: "You might as well have trade unions in Her Majesty’s Army as have it in the railway service” — an apt comment, in view of the hard conditions and the quasi-military assumptions of employment on the railways.

This attitude was expressed in the action of the Taff Vale Railway Company in 1900. when they sued the ASRS for damages following a strike in which there was some violence. Against all expectations, the company won £23,000 damages from the ASRS — a judgement which struck at the heart of all trade union activity. Every strike has to cause damage somewhere and there is. of course, no parallel provision in the law for unions to claim redress for the effects of a lockout nor for those of a company closing down. The Taff Vale judgement has much to answer for, since it motivated the founding of the Labour Representation Committee, forerunner of the Labour Party and of all those governments which consistently fought the working class and the interests of trade unionists.

The National Union of Railwaymen was formed in 1913 from the combination of three out of the then five unions in the industry. Among the many ironies accompanying the event is the fact that it was hailed as a venture into industrial unionism — the establishment of one trade union to cover an entire industry as a step towards the working class taking over the means of production. Some craft unions remained outside the NUR, as did ASLEF and the Railway Clerks’ Association (now the TSSA). Traditionally (and the railways are a great place for tradition) there is little love lost between ASLEF and the NUR. Sid Weighell recently called the ASLEF president a liar, at which the offended man threatened to pick Weighell up by his braces and drop him down a lift shaft.

During the First World War the importance of the railways to the British capitalist class was asserted when they were taken under state control. The war emergency offered the unions a chance to improve wages, and the railwaymen emerged, in 1918, among the better paid sections of the working class. In 1921 the Railway Act, which effectively ended state control, imposed a measure of government influence by reducing the 120-odd companies into four groups, each with a territorial monopoly and allowing for the government to keep an eye on the rates charged by the railways. A negotiating procedure was defined which was greeted with relief as the end of disputes in the industry, on the mistaken assumption that strikes are caused by the absence of machinery to negotiate the conflicts away. This assumption was soon exposed in the post-war slump, as the new, larger and more powerful companies responded to the fall in traffic by cutting wages, sacking workers and imposing longer hours on those who were left.

This process was cynically called “rationalisation”. Although the unions resisted it there were few strikes and one which was called, just as the first Labour government were taking office in 1924, was doomed because the NUR accepted the lower wages and kept services going against the striking ASLEF men. In 1928 the NUR agreed to a 2½  per cent wage cut. an agreement described by their general secretary as “the best ever made”. He was probably referring to the fact that there was an undertaking to restore the cuts when business got more profitable; but when the unions asked for this, in 1934, they were again resisted by the companies. There was then the growing competition from the road haulage industry, boosted by the experience of it during the war. NUR conference delegates were warned by their secretary, John Marchbank, that if they struck there would be no road stoppage and that many NUR members would be "walking the streets” afterwards — words which might well be used today by Weighell.

The railways were again taken understate control during the Second World War and soon after the NUR's longstanding dream of nationalisation came true. After the years of cuts, sacking, closures and battling against the railway workers, only the politically misinformed would see an unpredictable irony in the hopes which inspired that dream:

Ideologically, public ownership was regarded as the gateway to a new society, in which there would be greater plenty and less hardship for the toiling masses. Materially, the unions and their members. . . hoped that the elimination of profits would bring them higher wages and better working conditions, that State control would ensure full employment . . .

(Nationalised Industry and Public Ownership, W. A. Robson).

In contrast, the reality has been a continuing struggle against the stale machine which had taken over from the private groups. The NUR threatened a strike in 1953. in an effort to improve a low wage offer. A hastily set up Court of Enquiry secured them a much higher offer. In 1958, when the employers rejected a pay claim, a strike was averted by yet another enquiry, which recommended that railway wages should be set by reference to "comparable” jobs in other industries. This was greeted as a “common sense" solution which would eternally remove all conflict. But in 1965 it clashed with the “common sense" of the Wilson government's pay policy, which was to restrict rises to those cases where the workers could prove they were working harder, no matter what was happening in “comparable" industries. There was another threat to strike, averted by Wilson’s personal intervention. The Labour Prime Minister kept the union officials talking on beer and sandwiches (Tory Premier Macmillan had beaten them with tear-swept memories of the Flanders battles of 1914/18) until they all agreed to yet another enquiry which would produce a report to be greeted as an eternal piece of "common sense".

Of course things were different then. Before the present slump, employers were usually prepared to support industrial cooperation at almost any cost. In the present stark climate, the railways’ difficulties have been intensified by the measures of successive governments to isolate them commercially from the rest of the transport industry, with which they were linked by nationalisation. Their lack of direct profitability (a feature of railway networks world wide) can no longer be cushioned by the other parts of a state transport system. Since the early 1960s, most notably under the luxuriantly waged Lord Beeching, the railways have been cut back and the workers’ bargaining power correspondingly undermined.

The plight of the unions, then, is not the making of any feeble, or militant, leaders, nor of transport ministers getting their own back for past concessions. Railways were once dominantly powerful in capitalism and had that sort of glamour. Now they struggle, with the help of Jimmy Savile, against the drab image of the outmoded. None of this has anything to do with their usefulness to people or their material efficiency; it is all judged by their contribution to the overall profitability of British capitalism. By these standards their future looks pretty precarious. This is no time to be playing at trains.

Ivan