Letter: The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard  

 

The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party

Dear Editors,

Naivete is not what one expects from the columns of the Socialist Standard but the article on the miners’ strike (September, 1984) comes very close to it in stating that the SPGB will support any strike between the robbers and robbed, except when they are political. It is implied that this strike is more than just a political action, thus qualifying it for SPGB support.

Well, as I think that it is just a political strike, and you think it isn’t the score is now one all, a draw. The article goes on to say that 120,000 miners can't all be wrong, to which I must reply that 60,000 other NCB workers say that they are. As you can't produce a ballot to show what the 120,000 think, and my 60,000 can, you lose on the re-count because you cannot substantiate your case.

You enter a very dangerous minefield in trying to decide what is a political strike and what is not. The SPGB has been explaining for eighty years that politics is but an expression of the economic facts of life, then, all of a sudden, hey presto . . . we have the purely political strike. The two examples given, "dockers against immigration" and “Labour’s day of Action” had their roots in economic problems confronting the working class and being directed to political ends. This is exactly how I see the miners’ strike. So what is the exact mix which will trigger off SPGB support for a strike? 85 per cent political and 15 per cent economic? Or 60 per cent and 40 per cent? Or even perhaps 51 per cent and 49 per cent? May we be informed please?

So, is the strike political then? Messrs. Scargill and Co. have made it very plain indeed that the mere mention of Thatcher gives them all indigestion and sleepless nights, and they want to bring down the government immediately. This strike was called when coal stocks were at an all-time high, summer time just round the corner, plenty of nuclear power and oil about and no ballot. It was either "daft" (Lord Gormley) or politically motivated. In your article you state that the Labour Government did exactly what the NCB now proposes but there was no strike. So, if given exactly the same conditions, the miners didn’t strike under Labour, and are striking under the Tories, what other reasons except political reasons can there be?

Will the SPGB support any strike? I can't believe that it would be so stupid. The Socialist Standard in the recent past has quoted items from the "propaganda press" showing that certain strikes are welcomed with gratitude and delight by the bosses and are pleased to prolong them to bring the workers to heel. Support for this kind of strike brings only extra poverty and extra subservience to the workers involved. You indicate that the miners’ strike may well be in this category.

The word "support” in my working class dictionary means "to hold up — assist - sustain”. Would the SPGB assist in the prolonging of these strikes? Did the early SPGB back the Hansom Cab workers in their struggles against the encroachments made by automobile manufacturers? Would they have backed the Sword-Pikestaff and Bow and Arrow Makers Union against the encroaching Rifle. Gunpowder and Bullet manufacturers? I think not. The kindest thing to do is sometimes to advise people to leave a dying industry and not support their unavailing efforts? If nuclear power eventually takes over from coal will the SPGB be there sustaining the last striking miners in the last pit?

Mr Scargill and the NUM Executive and their bully-boys remind me of an embryonic Hitler and his storm-troopers gagging the union and menacing those who disagree. The SPGB finds fault only with the gagging, keeping a respectful silence on the activities of Scargill’s storm troopers. Activities well known to everyone in England except the SPGB. This policy of putting all the violence down to police brutality can best be described as fifty per cent SPGB and fifty per cent Trotskyist. As the gagging of the union. the split in the union and the mass violence of the striking miners are all part of the same coin, your article betrays a dangerous naivete, the implications of which need to be debated. Working Nottinghamshire miners must be wondering who the SPGB thinks is harassing their homes, property and families if it isn’t the bully boys . . . maybe it’s the police. What is certain is that working Nottinghamshire miners will regard the SPGB as a party to shun, which is a very great pity, for even Mr Kinnock has come out of his mouse-hole and condemned all violence.

S Levitt

London NW3

Reply:

Against Capitalism

It is a clear sign that a critic is standing upon thin ice when he resorts to distortion in order to make a case. Consider these examples: 1) Levitt claims that the article in the September Standard states that the Socialist Party supports all strikes, except for those motivated by political intentions to reform capitalism. He then bases a large part of his criticism on the use of the word "support". If he re-reads the article he will see that the term he objects to is not even used. 2) Levitt claims that the article suggests that "120.000 miners can’t all be wrong". No such statement is made. Clearly, it would be foolish to say that because a number of workers are taking an action they must be right. 3) Levitt — whose silly hysteria about "storm troopers" we deal with below — claims that the Socialist Party has kept “a respectful silence” on the question of violence by picketing strikers (unlike Mr Kinnock whose moral stand wins the approval of our critic). As a subscriber to the Socialist Standard, our critic will have read the article "An Open letter to the Miners” (July, 1984) in which it is stated that "insofar as the reports of workers persecuting those who disagree with them are not false or exaggerated, socialists condemn unreservedly the anti-working-class intimidation of fellow miners”. Of course, this condemnation might not satisfy Levitt, whose own exaggerated description of the picketing resembles some of the most ignorant comment of the gutter press. 4) Levitt claims that the Socialist Party attributes all the violence to the police, whereas no such point is made in the article. In fact, the Socialist Party is not in the business of blaming one group or another for the violence which is endemic to the class war. So, four distortions in eight paragraphs: now let us try to make sense of the other fifty per cent.

Our critic suggests that it is difficult to determine what is a political strike, in the sense in which the term was used in the article. The difficulty does not trouble the Socialist Party: as far as we are concerned, the role of trade unions is to defend and improve the wages and conditions of workers under capitalism. In short, they have a defensive, economic function. Strikes intended to use working-class combination for the purpose of affecting the overall administration of capitalism are politically reformist and socialists oppose them. For example, when miners went on strike to oppose immigrant labour being introduced into British pits this was not an economic action; neither was Labour’s Day of Action, which was an attempted strike designed to show that a Labour government of capitalism would be better for workers than a Tory one.

Of course, no strike is entirely economic because there is no separation of politics and economics under capitalism. So, while the miners' strike is an economic strike, not very different from others conducted by other unions, it has a political dimension insofar as its result can affect the balance of political strength between organised labour and organised capital. It may well be true that the officials of the NUM want to get rid of the present government (so does the Socialist Party), but it is naive of our critic to think that 120,000 strikers have somehow been hoodwinked into striking for such a purpose.

Levitt cannot believe that socialists would be so stupid as to support any strike. We cannot believe that Levitt can be so stupid as to think that we might, when only four paragraphs earlier he acknowledges our opposition to strikes designed to reform capitalism. As for the question of "support" — a term not introduced by us — let us be clear that, as early as 1905, when the Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was published, the socialist view has been that trade unions are a necessity under capitalism and “any action on their part upon sound lines should be heartily supported". We do not exist as a party to advise unions on how to conduct their necessary struggles within capitalism, although, as socialist trade unionists, we do our best to ensure that our unions act on sound lines and that we support union action to the best of our abilities. We might add that socialists within the NUM have done precisely that during this miners’ strike. The role of the Socialist Party is to advocate socialism and to point out that beyond the sectional, limited and repetitive struggle of trade unions there is a revolutionary struggle to establish world socialism which is both urgent and more important than mere defensive actions.

Levitt suggests that the Socialist Party — in a spirit of kindness — should advise the miners to leave their dying industry. Having issued such advice, does he propose that we urge them to buy some bikes and travel the country looking for thriving industries? The Socialist Party does not exist to urge workers to fit in with the absurd economic priorities of capitalism. What we can say to the miners is that, with an estimated 300-years’ supply of coal underneath Britain, there is no reason why a socialist society need let the coal industry die. Of course, a socialist society might decide that there are other energy sources which are preferable to coal; if so, such a decision would neither be based on profit calculations nor cause hardship to men who had been miners in the past. We think that the growing rejection of the profit-based priorities of capitalism, which has led mine workers to challenge the NCB’s definition of “uneconomic", should be regarded with enthusiasm by socialists. Our task is to show the miners that only in socialism can the economic priorities which offend them be eliminated.

The remarks about picket-line violence are stale and naive. Certainly, socialists have emphasised time and time again, both in our propaganda and in our unions, that violent tactics should be avoided by workers who can win by force of numbers. But the state, which is an institution of legalised violence, will not simply sit back and let workers picket as they please. Laws allowing pickets to persuade non-strikers have been largely ignored during this strike — vans carrying strike-breakers (‘‘rebels”) have driven through picket lines at such speeds that it has been impossible for pickets to speak to their fellow-workers. So, mass picket lines have been formed in order to ensure that the strike-breakers either stop and listen or stay out of the colliery.

Does our critic really think that the condemnation of picket-line violence by Neil Kinnock will make any difference to the class struggle? After all, Thatcher. Kinnock and the other hypocrites who are appalled by picket-line violence are the same leaders who support the creation of war machines designed to murder civilian populations. The Socialist Party does not issue moral condemnations of selective acts of violence — we are busy advocating the case for the abolition of the social cause of such behaviour. We did not notice the Fleet Street propaganda rags condemning the picket-line murder of seven striking miners in South Africa (reported briefly on BBC’s Newsnight on 18 September).

Our critic is concerned that the working miners of Nottinghamshire will shun the Socialist Party because of what we have written about the strike. Well, they were shunning us before the strike started, but that did not stop us from trying to convince them of the validity of our case, which applies to all workers, whether unionised or not. striking or working, militant or conservative.

Editors.

Smash! (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A New Election Programme?

The most hilarious buffoonery of the election was the International Marxist Group’s putting up three candidates. At a press conference their representative was reported saying hopefully: “In an atmosphere of confrontation a few hundred votes can turn into tens of thousands” (Times, 13th Feb.). A different view from the one in their leaflet distributed on 1st May last year: May Day — End or New Beginning.

Shorn of all its flowery phrases (like “Mass Action”. “Mobilization”, “Confrontation”, “Counter-offensive” and all the boring old stuff about the failure of the wicked trade-union leaders who won’t “mobilize a united struggle to smash through Phase 2”), what this leaflet does is advise strikers to fight the police. It actually says this explicitly. We quote:

To do this [defend the picket lines] the local Trades Councils have to centralize our resources for fighting the police.

The absurdity of the entire content of this ridiculous document is apparent, for instance, in the first paragraph :

A large majority of the working class are striking work together and coming out onto the streets.

In paragraph 2, however:

Millions of workers feel that this stoppage will have no immediate effect on the Government policies. In this they are correct.

We also would say that the millions of workers are quite right. Not only did the General Council of the TUC know this very well, as they showed by deferring their strike-call date till after the Government had passed the Phase 2 Bill; but we now know that the TUC leaders were having secret meetings with Prime Minister Heath one day before the May-day marches, to be followed by the open meeting to fix a deal.

What concerns us here is the dangerous folly of the baloney being peddled by the IMG. Why on earth they have the insufferable impudence to call themselves “Marxist” only they can know. Everything in this nonsensical and pernicious propaganda is utterly foreign and contrary to all of Marx’s teachings, and especially to his actions in the International Workingmen’s Association, of which he was a founder member and author of its address, or policy statement.

We would highly commend to the IMG the statement by Marx in that address which they would do well to deeply and quietly ponder:

One clement of success they [the workers] possess, that of numbers, but numbers weigh only in the balance if united by combination and led by knowledge.

Is there the slightest sign that, amidst all the hysterical outpourings about “smashing Tory governments” and “treacherous trade-union leaders”, the IMG have given one moment’s serious thought to the meaning of what they are spreading?

Read through their leaflet! The workers must centralize their forces to “develop a General Strike to get rid of the Government itself”. The central task in holding the line is to “prepare the counter-offensive in the autumn" because the Government “presented the leaders with a clear choice, either accept pay restraint, or mobilize a united struggle which would smash Phase 2, bring down the Government and so raise the hopes of the working population that the social order itself would be threatened”.

As was pointed out explicitly in a recent Socialist Standard (and even that was re-quoted from 1919 and has been confirmed by history ever since), in every strike, above all the 1926 General Strike:

The masters are in a far stronger position than the workers on the economic field and will beat them, at will, any time they wish.

This is why Marx wrote in the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen’s Association that

To conquer political power has become the great duty of the working class.

(Selected Works of Karl Marx, Moscow, p. 440)

As for all the other rubbish about smashing (these idiots are obsessed by the word SMASH; it recurs repeatedly in their manifestoes) Tory or Labour governments, this cannot be done by strike action alone. If a government feels that it has lost popular support, as shown in Italy or Denmark, and estimates that it may lose the next election, it may well resign, go into opposition, and laugh its head off at the troubles of the new government trying to grapple with the problems. So far from being “smashed” by resignation, there is every sign that they positively enjoy it.

As for “threatening the social order”, this probably is the stupidest nonsense of the lot. Trades unions are organized on a job basis: the vast majority of trade- unionists are not Socialists and have no desire whatever to threaten the social order — they uphold it. Neither would “threatening the social order” mean any real progress in changing it in orderly fashion. It could merely lead to chaos.

As for all the other tripe about the naughty, wicked trade-union leaders, we have pointed out repeatedly that they operate by the approval and consent of the members.

Let all strikes be called at the most favourable moment — when the bosses are doing allright-thankyou and don’t want them. Let them be short and sharp; if they are not won quickly they won’t be won at all. Let the members decide by democratic vote and, if things go wrong, democratically decide to retreat back to work in an orderly united fashion.

Above all, ignore and reject the dangerous, meddlesome folly of these academic hot-heads and professional hooligans who run about “smashing” everything and call on trade-unionists to “fight the police”. This plays straight into the hands of the authorities and is in fact all they need to crush strike action. On the industrial field the workers’ strength is in the withdrawal of labour. This may get them a rise in wages; but only political action can control the police (and the army) and establish Socialism.

Horatio.

The Socialist Forum: By Parliament or Strikes? (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

C. Foster (W.8) asks whether we propose to use Parliament or to organise strikes as a means of obtaining power and introducing Socialism, both of which methods “seem to have failed so far.”

The Socialist Party aims at dispossessing the propertied class of their ownership and control over society’s means of living. This cannot be done while they control the armed forces and the machinery of administration. When the workers gain control of Parliament and the local councils (by means of the vote), they will have disarmed the capitalist class, and can then set about organising society on a different basis. It is true that Parliament has failed to do this in the past, for the simple reason that Parliament has never yet been controlled by a party with a mandate to work for Socialism. The Labour M.P.s, without a single exception, asked and received a mandate from the electors to reform capitalism. The electors are getting what they asked for. That they do not like it is our reason for anticipating that they will, sooner or later, decide to try Socialism instead.

Strikes are in a different category. The usefulness of Trade Unions lies in the direction of resisting encroachments by the capitalist class on the workers’ standard of living. In this they have been partly successful. They might, with greater knowledge, be more useful, but their potential usefulness has limits. The employers, being wealthy, can, if they deem it worth while, afford to prolong disputes to a point which means starvation for the workers. They can do this because they own the instruments of production and the accumulated products, and have the forces of the State to back them up. Trade Unions can serve as more or less useful instruments of resistance, but they cannot, in their nature, serve as means by which the workers can obtain control of the machinery of government. This must be done by Socialists organised in the Socialist Party.

Editorial Committee.

Limits of T. U. Action (1972)

From the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who advocate that trade unions should stage political strikes to try to defeat objectionable government legislation should heed the little-publicized fate of the New Zealand Seamen’s Union last November.

The union (which had only 1,450 members) called a strike to protest against some clauses on discipline in a shipping bill which was then before parliament. After four days the Minister of Labour gave the seamen a 24-hour ultimatum to return to work. They refused. The government’s reaction on Friday 5 November made Britain’s Industrial Relations Act look positively liberal. The Seamen’s Union was struck off the register of approved unions; its funds were frozen; all agreements to which it was party were set aside; its striking members were barred from getting any social security benefit on the grounds that they were "voluntarily unemployed” and, finally, the airforce and troops were sent in to move people and supplies.

On the Monday the Federation of Labour (New Zealand’s equivalent of the TUC) which had taken over responsibility for the seamen’s interests called on them to return to work and on Wednesday the seamen agreed. A former official of their former union was reported as saying that

  the reason for the back-to-work decision was ‘to keep the organisation intact to live to fight another day’. He said the seamen’s decision to stop work in protest against the controversial shipping and seamen amendment Bill, was to ‘knock the Bill over’. He said: ‘We realised today the tactics proved wrong. Maybe the boys will realise it’s only by being under the umbrella of the trade union movement that we can progress in relation to improving our conditions of employment’ (Lloyd’s List, 11 November. 1971).

The New Zealand seamen, for all their commendable fighting spirit, learned the hard way the futility of minority industrial action to defeat, even over a comparatively minor reform, a legally-constituted government enjoying majority support. Trade union action, though necessary to defend living standards under capitalism, is limited in what it can achieve. It can, by and large, keep wages in line with rising prices but it cannot overthrow governments or dispossess the capitalists. That can only be done by the democratic political action of a Socialist majority.

General Strike — sixty years on (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The so-called General Strike took place 60 years ago in the nine days 4-12 May 1926, in support of the coal miners but when it failed the miners stayed out for seven months before being forced back on the coal owners’ terms. This naturally invites comparison with the unsuccessful coal strike which lasted about a year in 1984-5. On this occasion, although the NUM called for supporting action by the TUC and other unions, and did receive some financial and other support, there was no general strike action such as there had been in 1926.

In spite of other similarities, including the formation of a rival miners' union based in the Nottingham coalfield both in 1926 and 1984, great changes had taken place in the industrial background between those dates. In 1926 coal was for all practical purposes the only source of energy. There were over a million miners, almost the highest total ever reached. In 1984 there were 241,000 and since the strike this figure has fallen to 140,000.

If ever there was a time when a strike by miners could be expected to have a decisive effect it was in 1926, especially as the miners belonged to the Triple Alliance, along with dockers and railwaymen who between them wholly dominated transport. By 1984 a large and increasing share of the energy industry was held by oil, gas and nuclear power. The recent big fall in world oil prices further undermined the competitive power of the coal industry and may still further reduce its share as a source of energy. During the 1984 coal strike prices were continuing to rise, in line with the inflation policy imposed by all governments. Labour and Tory, since 1945. It was very different in 1926.

With the suspension of the gold standard in 1914 prices rose fast until 1920. The government then decided to operate a deflation policy, through reduction of the paper currency in circulation. Prices fell drastically until 1922 and more slowly until 1925, when the gold standard was restored. A version of the events leading up to the miners' strike in 1926 put out in Labour Party circles was that the wage reductions called for by the coal owners in 1926 were caused by the re-introduction of the gold standard in 1925. That was a wildly inaccurate representation of what actually happened.

When prices began to fall in 1920, including the market prices of coal and other products of industry, employers pressed successfully for the reduction of wages. The wages of coal miners fell exceptionally heavily, the decrease having mainly taken place before the 1926 strike. Between 1921 and 1925 the average weekly earnings of coal miners had already fallen by 40 per cent. The further fall in 1926 was 5 per cent, though with some increase of hours as well. The Labour Party version disregards the fact that the gold standard stabilises prices; it does not reduce them.

The 1984 strike was mainly against the closing down of unprofitable pits, while the strike in 1926 was about wages and hours of work. The 1926 strike was against the private coal owners; nationalisation did not come until 1947. In both events the government threw all its weight against the strikers, the National Coal Board being just as ruthless as the private coal owners had been. The miners' union spent 40 years campaigning to create the nationalised coal industry and then another 40 years fighting against the capitalist monster they had helped to form — a demonstration of the utter uselessness of nationalisation — state capitalism — as a remedy for workers' problems. Both in 1926 and 1984 a prominent question was government subsidies to the coal industry. In both instances the withdrawal of subsidies helped to provoke the strike. The 1926 strike was followed by a tightening of the law against the unions, in the 1927 Trade Disputes Act. In 1984 the law had already been tightened by the Thatcher government. In both 1926 and 1984 the strikes had long been prepared for by the government, special organisations having been set up for that purpose. In 1984 huge stocks of coal had been built up at pit heads and power stations.

One aspect of the 1926 strike recalled an event that took place seven years earlier, when the Triple Alliance of Miners. Dockers and Railwaymen organised a kind of "general strike" against British military involvement in Russia. What was at issue was the ability of the government to intervene decisively. The year 1919 was marked by widespread strikes, including unsuccessful strikes by some of the police, by a number of mutinies in the army and riots and attacks on the police. It was against that background that the government faced the Triple Alliance in 1919.

An account of what happened was published in The Times (16 November 1979). The Prime Minister. Lloyd George, called the Triple Alliance leaders to meet him and told them "the army was disaffected and could not be relied upon":

  "If you carry out your threat and strike then you will defeat us. But if you do so. have you weighed the consequences? The strike will be in defiance of the Government of the country and by its very success will precipitate a constitutional crisis of the first importance. For if a force arises in the state which is stronger than the state itself, then it must be ready to take on the functions of the state, or withdraw and accept the authority of the state. Gentlemen, have you considered, and if you have, are you ready?".

According to the account in The Times the miners' leader, Robert Smillie, said "We were beaten and we knew we were". The strike did not take place. It is evident that the issue raised by Lloyd George in 1919 overshadowed the TUC General Council in 1926. They went into the general strike reluctantly and seized the first excuse to call it off. Long before 1926 the government had overcome its problems with the police and the army. It confronted the general strike and the coal strike confident of its ability to defeat them and resolved to do so no matter what the cost.

The term "general strike" is somewhat misleading. The number of workers on strike was only 1,580,000. apart from over a million miners. This was not because the TUC was unable to get other workers to strike but because those on strike (mainly transport workers, building workers, printers and engineers) were chosen to make maximum impact, without causing unnecessary and useless hardship to other workers.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, through the columns of the Socialist Standard, had much to say about the strikes and the general strike, based on an understanding of the realities of capitalism and recognition of the fact that a politically confident government. with effective control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, can defeat any strike if it is prepared to use its power to the limit. For example, the Socialist Standard in April 1919 stated that, given the backing of the state power, "on the economic field the Masters are in a far stronger position than the workers and can beat them any time they decide to fight to the finish". In the issue for April 1922, an editorial urged the unions to take united action. It pointed out that the employers were taking on one section of the workers after another:

  How can the situation be tested7 There is only one way. The organised workers must take united action to hold up industry. It is not a sectional question. The whole of the workers are involved, and if they remain divided, they will be attacked and beaten, in detail by the employers . . . First the stoppage must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely. If it does not achieve its purpose in a short, sharp, action, then it will have failed and the men must accept the inevitable for the present.
  Second, it must be carried out peaceably. Any attempt at riot or destruction must be sternly repressed, as it would at once give the signal for the use of the armed forces against defenceless men . . .
  Third, the decisions to come out and to go back must be in the hands of the rank and file. No power should be given to leaders — revolutionary or otherwise — to decide these points.
  Such action would cause practically no increase in the misery that already exists and it would be a real test of the situation.

There were then, and still are. other voices — organisations urging the workers to take violent action, or to rely on indefinite strikes, as if the workers can hope to starve the employers and government into submission.

Of course, the article went on to remind the workers that strikes only deal with the effects of capitalism without looking to the causes and emphasised the need to take political action for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

"Huffing and Puffing" (1973)

From the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Futile Talk by a Trade Union leader

The president of the Mineworkers’ Union, Joe Gormley, is making stroppy noises about the Government. He says: “The time for huffing and puffing is over” . . . "The Unions must put their feet where their mouth is” . . . “If you can’t abide the Government’s policies, then you must change the Government” — and that, he says, “Must mean the Trade Union Congress calling a General Strike”.

All this in the News of the World (18 February), which is appalled and calls on responsible trade-union leaders to “drag Mr. Gormley back from the brink”. He doesn’t think the Tories will win the next election, although he carefully avoids mentioning which party might win in the event of a Tory defeat.

The election (to be forced by a General Strike) will be about “rising prices”, “land speculation” and “property racketeers”. Obviously, Mr. Gormley had an election programme along these lines in mind. One wonders why the vociferous Gormley, who prides himself on his outspokenness and says it sometimes makes him unpopular, is so coy about this.

It is patently obvious that the only possible outcome of a Tory election defeat is a Labour Party victory and a Labour government. If Gormley is under the mistaken impression that this will in any way improve the lot of the workers, or increase the freedom of the trade unions, we must remind him that it was the postwar Labour government which prosecuted gas workers (who are on strike today under Tory rule without being prosecuted). The gasworkers were sentenced to a month’s imprisonment, later changed to a fine of £50 each.

Another of the ineffable Joe’s pipe-dreams is the notion that a Tory election defeat (and therefore Labour victory) can satisfactorily deal with rising prices, land speculation, and property racketeers. It was a Labour government which in addition to printing too many bank-notes, like the Tories, deliberately devalued the pound, or inflated the currency, increasing prices.

That a responsible official of a very large Union can so try to deflect attention from the Union’s real business (getting an increase in wages) shows how much they still have to learn of the economics of capitalism. Wages are also a price, and every trade-unionist wants this price to rise. The stupid folly of the TUC in allowing the Government to kid them that higher prices are the result of wage increases is doing much harm to the trade union movement.

As an organized political party seeking political power through the ballot, the Socialist Party of Great Britain have this to say to Gormley. Your talk about General Strikes to bring down governments is a counsel of folly and despair. If the organized trade-unionists made up a majority of the electorate (which they do not) then they could do this constitutionally anyway, but if they did it as an organized group they would be acting as a political party, not a trade union. But trade unions are not organized on political principles, but on trade or job qualifications.

Having defeated the Tories and returned a Labour (or TUC) government, they would then be faced with the job of all governments — running the country; and we have forty years of experience and six previous Labour governments to tell us exactly what they would do. Even if Joe Gormley himself were appointed Prime Minister, he would do what every PM does: protect capitalism, because he would not have been elected and have had no mandate to do anything else. He would have been elected to patch up capitalism (rising prices, etc., etc.).

As Mr. Wilson told the TUC once: "The job of a Government is to govern.” How much more money and time is the Mineworkers’ Union going to pour into the futile and useless Labour Party? For more than forty years they backed nationalization of the coal mines. This was eventually implemented, and notices were stuck up outside coal-pits saying: “These mines now belong to the People.” And organizations like “Age-Concern” now say that more elderly people are dying of cold than ever, because they cannot obtain enough of “their own” coal. Miners are still striking for increases in wages, as they did when the pits were privately owned.

Finally, about the General Strike. A General Strike, like all strikes, is a merely negative action. It is workers refusing to work, sitting down, or going home. It may remove or bring down a government. If the general-strikers (as in Italy now) are not Socialists, they will re-elect a non-Socialist — that is, a capitalist — government and the whole daft business starts all over again. For this reason, we have always consistently opposed the idea that capitalism can be damaged by political strikes. No mere strike action can help the establishment of Socialism, which is a positive measure where everybody does something to help. Of course, trade unions will have a hand in this.

The General Council of the TUC has given the answer to Gormley: “A total and continuous stoppage was ruled out because it would not be possible.” (Guardian, 28 Feb. 1973). Perhaps Joe Gormley will now stop “huffing and puffing” about political general strikes.

Horatio.

Strikes — and General Strikes (1973)

From the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day has been chosen as a day of trade-union protest, arising out of a decision reached at a special Trades Union Congress held on 5th March. Some unions are making it a one-day strike, others are limiting it to shorter walk-outs and others again are merely holding protest meetings, or standing aloof. The strikers may number several millions and the event was widely reported in the press as a TUC General Strike.

In fact it bears hardly any resemblance to the planned and purposeful organizing that a serious General Strike would call for. Its timing alone shows that the General Council of the TUC is well aware of how little effect it will have on the Government, whose wage policy it is designed to change. The resolution carried on 5th March reads:

Congress calls upon the General Council . . .  to invite affiliated unions to join in a day of national protest and stoppages against the wage control policy and increase of food prices.

It also called upon the General Council to organize this “as quickly as possible”.

On 5th March the government’s wage policy (The Counter-Inflation Bill) had not become law; it was still  being debated in Parliament. If they believed in the effectiveness of the day of protest as a means of forcing the Government to drop its policy, the TUC could have organized it without delay. Instead, they waited until after the Bill became law at the end of March and then chose May Day. Had they chosen a date before the Bill was passed their bluff would immediately have been called — because it would have been demonstrated at once that the Government had not been deflected from its intention to enact the new law, any more than the Government was deterred from going on with the Industrial Relations Bill against which the TUC organized a similar day of protest on 12th January 1971.

Compromise

Discretion has been the order of the day for the TUC, and with some reason. In nearly two centuries of trade-union history it is impossible to find a single occasion on which a government and Parliament have been prevented by strike confrontation from passing a law they were set on. The reason for this is a simple one. Governments calculate that their legislation has the backing of a majority of the electorate, or at least will be accepted by them at the next election; and nearly three-quarters of the electorate are not trade-unionists.

While the unions have not been able to use confrontation to prevent laws being passed, they have been able to influence the laws in which they are particularly interested in another way. The workers need trade unions, but so also do the employers: under modern conditions the relatively orderly functioning of industry without organizations with which employers can negotiate pay and conditions is unthinkable. The government and the employers need trade-union law. But so also do the unions, if only to give them access to the courts to protect their £140 million funds. (In the early days and again from 1859 to 1871 this protection did not exist and the unions were at the mercy of those who misappropriated their funds.)

So, on numerous occasions, the unions have been able to “do a deal” with government or opposition, Tory, Liberal or Labour, for relaxations of the laws in return for the offer of trade-union concessions or support at elections. The last occasion was in 1969 with the Wilson government. The bargain then was that the Government, while not dropping their intention to go on with their Industrial Relations Bill, cut out certain clauses offensive to the unions in return for a TUC pledge to deal with “unofficial strikes”; at Wilson’s insistence this was written into the TUC Constitution.

The latest move of this kind is the suggestion by Scanlon of the Engineering Union that if the Government would amend the Industrial Relations Act the way would be open for the TUC to seek agreement with the Government on inflation and wages policy. He expressly disclaimed any intention to challenge Parliament.

More Effective Ways

All of this is a far cry from the idea of a serious General Strike. The purpose of such a strike, as with any other strike, should be to use the stoppage of work to hit the employers financially by stopping the production of wealth and profits. Its method would not be to create chaos by bringing all workers out but to bring out the smallest number that would be effective in the industries where the impact would be greatest. (In the 1926 General Strike the strikers called out to help the miners numbered under 2 million.)

As Marx showed and as experience supports, strikes are most effective when capitalism is expanding, factories are working to capacity and profit prospects are good — for it is at such times that the employers least want to interrupt production and are most likely to make concessions. Indeed, provided that the employers know the threat is a serious one, the concessions may be forthcoming without a strike or with one of very short duration. It was the weakness of the 1926 Strike that government and employers looked at the TUC General Council and decided that the threat was bluff. The same is true of the TUC decision of 5th March, which was so little regarded that it caused hardly a ripple on the Stock Exchange. It would have been very different if the threat had been taken seriously.

The 1926 General Strike has another warning: the absurdity of leaving such matters to the TUC General Council. The TUC General Council (unlike the central body in Denmark, where a General Strike recently took place) is not a trade union, does not engage in the ordinary wage-negotiating functions of a union, and is rather a kind of political organization for the big trade-union supporters of the Labour Party. Action by, say, half a dozen unions, under rank-and-file control, would be the appropriate way.

Careful Decision

The approach of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to strikes has always been based on the facts of capitalism on which our whole principles are framed. Those who control the machinery of government, including the armed forces, dominate society — hence the necessity for a Socialist working class to use the vote to gain that control for the purpose of achieving Socialism. It follows that the employers with their wealth and the backing of the State can always win against strikes if they think the issue important enough. As it was put in the Socialist Standard in April 1919:

   On the economic field the masters are in a far stronger position than the workers and can beat them any time they decide to fight to a finish.

It is for the unions therefore to weigh up carefully at a given time whether the employers will be likely to make concessions in order to prevent production being interrupted. Strikes should not be "on principle” and fought to a finish, but for what in the circumstances appear to be attainable objects.

The "illegality” of strikes is not itself a deciding factor. The unions, in their two hundred years, have often been expressly illegal or outside the law and have often been able to ignore laws which are on the statute book but which employers and the government tacitly allow to be ignored. It is, however, essential for unions when weighing up a situation to decide whether in the particular circumstances the government will actively intervene and decide to carry the fight to a finish against the unions, with their certain defeat.

Edgar Hardcastle 

Letters to the Editors: Destructive Savagery (1989)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Destructive Savagery

Dear Comrades,

I daresay quite a few readers were puzzled by the figure of 15 million dead in the Second World War in the article The Economic Roots in the September Socialist Standard.

This figure was based on one of the estimates for the military casualties on all sides. An estimate of the total number killed by the war, in one way or another, would be at least four times as much; some go as high as 200 million.

I am sorry if I misled anyone into thinking that we underestimate capitalism’s destructive savagery.

Ivan.

Ideas and Struggle

Dear Comrades,

I found an old copy of your magazine Socialist Standard at a friend's place. I was very interested to read it and there were several thought-provoking articles.

Have you got anything on Trotskyism? Several of my friends have very nearly joined such parties as the SWP. Militant and the RCP. A few years ago, I was on the periphery of the RCP, but their ruthless party building (and total rejection of real working class issues) turned me off . . . fortunately. I find that the Trotskyists have a very patronising attitude to the working class that I presume results from Lenin's theory that, on their own, workers can only reach a trade union consciousness and thus, hey presto, the need for the guiding light of a revolutionary party—it does not seem to have done that much guiding so far! And what do you think of anarchism? I have occasionally read anarchist papers—some of them are nothing more than liberal rubbish (such as Freedom), but others do have more sense (e.g. Direct Action) in that they emphasise the class rather than the culture!

I must say that I do have my differences with the SPGB analysis, particularly over how socialism will be achieved. I completely agree with you that a majority of the working class needs to be fighting for socialism, but. as Marx said, "ideas change in struggle". To me this means that at any time there is a possibility of real change because in mass struggle the ideas of the working class do change. For example, if the miners strike had spread to other sectors (as it had to in order to avoid defeat), then we might have seen a possible revolution. I think that it is very Leninist to underestimate the abilities and potential of the working class. You say "the democratic conquest of political power”— what about the real power in this society, the economic structure? Thatcher is merely a puppet of the bosses' interests. To talk of revolution in such mild terms makes me think of naivety such as what would you do if there was a military uprising against the new socialist government?

I also think that you emphasise educational activities far too much. I would never deny the importance of propaganda, but getting back to that original quote from Marx: “ideas change in struggle” . . . not through passive book reading. So I would argue that socialists should be fighting back against this rotten system in their own lives in the here and now (for example, agitating for a strike in their workplace, leafletting their community about the Poll Tax and helping to set up Anti-Poll Tax Unions) and supporting all other working class people in their struggles against class society. I think that it is only through such a movement as this that society will be changed—but I am very interested to hear what you have to say

Norman Davis

London, N16

REPLY
1. Yes, as Marx said, ideas change in struggle. But this does not mean to say that ideas change suddenly. In fact, the process of overcoming the overwhelming conditioning of capitalism is itself a long hard struggle. We do not underestimate the potential of the working class, as the Leninists do, when we say that the majority of workers are at present imbued with support for capitalism. There is a great potential for workers to make the transition to understand and want socialism instead, but we would be kidding ourselves and others if we accepted, for example, that if the miners' strike had spread "then we might have seen a possible revolution". The key precondition for a socialist revolution is that a majority should be socialists, fully conscious of their class position and their interests as workers in ending capitalism. If the miners' strike had benefited from greater solidarity amongst other workers, it would have improved the miners' position, and would have been a sign that class consciousness was growing. But that simple condition, of a majority of genuine socialists, still stands as an indispensable precondition for the revolutionary change we seek, and we continue to work with great determination to build up such a majority.

2. Yes, Thatcher is a puppet of the bosses' interests. But political power within capitalism cannot be overestimated—the bosses spend millions through their parties securing and organising political power. In Britain today, the state forces including the military are, as a matter of concrete fact, under the control of a parliamentary government which is given electoral support by the very workers whose interests it opposes. Many on the Left find it hard to face up to the harsh fact that capitalism, in all of its forms, does depend on the acquiescence and/or apathy of a majority of workers themselves. With the growth of a socialist majority, determined to end capitalism, the notion of a military uprising to prevent this is nonsensical. How would such a military force even exist or survive against the solid and hostile opposition of a socialist majority throughout society? The greater degree of class consciousness which that would entail on the part of the majority would make it more than likely that such a military sect would be starved of food, of power and electricity supplies, of uniforms, of weapons and of credibility.

3. You say that "passive book reading” and educational work are not enough on their own, but must be combined with active campaigning, e.g. against the poll tax, or for strikes at work, as, going back once again to Marx, "ideas change in struggle”. It is false to make such a rigid division between passive reading and active action. Reading and learning is itself an activity. Furthermore, the substance and subject matter of what socialists write and read about is, of course, the subject matter of the class struggle itself. And, on the other hand, a lot of so-called radical actions are actually nothing more than feeble attempts to reform and modify capitalism, to dress up oppression in a new guise. But, as far as trade union and strike action are concerned, or democratic efforts by workers to combine and improve (or just maintain) their wages and conditions of work, the Socialist Party fully supports such action. As active members of a whole range of trade unions, many of our members have worked very long and hard at such active struggle. But as a political party standing unequivocally for socialist revolution our role, which we carry out to the best of our abilities, is to put to our fellow workers the most urgent choice facing the entire human race now in 1989: are we. the deprived majority, going to allow the world's resources to remain harmfully in the hands of about 1-5 per cent of the population, or are we at last going to act on our true interests. and organise politically, consciously and democratically for the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of world socialism?

Editors.

Running Commentary: Through the looking glass (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Through the looking glass

One achievement the Polish strikers could not have expected was to bring about an apparent reversal in English political attitudes, almost as if events were being looked at through a looking glass.

The strikes broke out against a background of serious crisis for the Polish economy—massive foreign debts, shortages, falling production and so on. Even so, the strikers pressed home their campaign and, at least as far as the written agreement goes, won their point. A side effect of the strike was to topple the Polish leader Edward Gierek, who suffered a fate similar to that of Wladyslaw Gomulka in 1970 who also resigned after a “heart attack”.

Now a naive observer of the strike, remembering what happened in England in 1973 and during Callaghan's infamous “winter of discontent”, might have expected Tory and Labour leaders to denounce the strikers. After all, were they not, like the British miners in 1973, said to be striking for a political object? Were they not responsible for the downfall of a political leader—as the miners were supposed to be over Heath in 1974? And, like the engineers and the hospital workers in this country in 1978, were the Polish miners and shipyard workers not striking in disregard of the country’s ailing economy and careless of the welfare of the old, the sick, the needy?

But of such denunciation we have heard not a word; indeed the Polish workers have been elevated to the status of heroes and their leader, Lech Walesa, is almost as popular as any football star. With one exception, no headlines have shrieked abuse at the reckless strikers of Gdansk and Sczezcin. The exception, on the other side of the looking glass, was the weary Stalinist line spewed up by the tedious hacks of the New Communist Party, who in their paper New Worker denounced the strikers as wreckers.

Neither of these sides was concerned with the truth of the matter—that the Polish workers were on strike in resistance to an attempted cut in their living standards. The demand for independent trade unions came from the bitter experience of previous struggles, which showed up the treachery of the Communist Party dominated “unions”.

Both sides were concerned with plugging a line favourable to the particular ruling class whose interests they try to represent. This meant that the Polish strikers, who were showing considerable courage in their struggle, were treated with a cynicism which, had it not become so familiar, would have been sickening. But too much was at stake for it to be otherwise and the workers, here and in Poland and all over the world, would do well to take the point; the interests of capitalism demand an obedience to something more urgent than the truth.

Dirty washing

How is British industry to survive the slump? Will anything be left of it, after the bankruptcies and the sackings and the cutbacks? As the news comes in of lay-offs, short time and redundancies, we are also told about the markets in Britain being flooded by fiercely competitive foreign products, like Japanese cars, Russian watches and French apples. One “remedy” for this, popular with both management and workers, is to restrict imports so that everyone is forced to buy British, eat British, wear British, sleep British . . . 

One industry which has been hard hit in the slump is the one producing washing machines and other domestic appliances. Hoover, once the market leader and an energetic exporter, has had to cut its work force by a thousand over the past two years, now has 8,000 on short time and, it is rumoured, is considering closing down the place where it all started—its factory in Perivale in Middlesex.

Hoover blames its decline partly upon foreign imports and is particularly worried about cheap washing machines from Italy, where there is a veritable slag heap of the things at the moment, worth some £60 million. If this slag heap ever descended on the British market it might well kill off firms like Hoover. So the industry’s trade organisation has been busily campaigning for government action to stop the “dumping” of these machines on the UK markets.

This might pass unnoticed were it not for the fact that Hoover, who once prided themselves on their briskly competitive export trade (which was not described as “dumping”), have themselves been importers of Italian washing machines which they have sold under their own name. Even more, Hoover have done the same for, among other products, refrigerators from Italy, electric toasters from Canada, electric shavers from Germany.

Even now, in the depths of their troubles, they have been negotiating with their big Italian rival, Indesit, to get the right price for a washing machine to be imported and sold on the UK market. Presumably, the Hoover people who went to Italy did not take any idea other than bargaining for the lowest possible price—for, in other words, the cheapest possible imports.

This is more than a simple case of double dealing. The Hoover management are acting in a perfectly sensible manner: they are running their business in conformity with the demands of capitalist production and commerce. If this illustrates the absurdity of trying to solve capitalism’s problems with makeshift patching here and there it is only because it is a typical example of the essential stupidity and anarchy of producing wealth for sale instead of for use.

Playing with fire

When the Labour government used troops to break the firemen’s strike during the winter of 1977/8 they did so with the support of the Tories, on the argument that an efficient fire fighting service is necessary to protect property and lives—which, they asserted, must be their major concern as the government.

Well the firemen lost and now we have a Tory government and we are being shown what all that concern for life and limb amounts to. Fire brigades are not immune from the cuts of the government’s free-swinging axe on public spending and in some areas they are being cut to, and beyond, the bone of safety.

This process began under the Callaghan government; since March 1979 nearly 700 firemen have been cut (by “natural wastage”) and almost 100 appliances have been removed from emergency work. The London brigade is applying to cut out another 42 appliances.

In Staffordshire the situation is, quite literally, threatening with the brigade, which is only just meeting the Home Office requirements, subject to even more reductions. It needs only one big fire, like the recent destruction of Alexander Palace in London, to stretch resources beyond their capacity and perhaps cause an avoidable loss of life.

All of this is quite acceptable to the government, whose recent Green Paper on fire policy talks airily about lowering standards without bringing about an “unacceptable rise in casualties”. (Is there such a thing in Whitehall as an ‘acceptable” rise?) and which insists that the measures needed to bring about an actual reduction in fire casualties are too expensive to contemplate.

This exercise in capitalist priorities—in which, let it be made clear, both Labour and Tory join—might not be expected to impress anyone waiting to be rescued from the fifth floor of a blazing building and who receives instead the equivalent of a note from Milo Minderbinder, that the fire services have been cut in the greater interests of the British ruling class, in whose prosperity we are all allegedly invited to join

As the flames lick higher, the luckless sufferer might reflect on the cynicism of politicians whose attitudes are formed with such a callous disregard for human safety and welfare. And if they ever do get rescued, let us hope that they do not forget the insights born amid the rising flames.

Ivan

"Gone are the days" - TU Leader in Distress (1973)

From the July 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Joe Gormley, the President of the Mineworkers' Union, has now had a dose of second thoughts. From being a dangerous and inflammatory militant intent on “wrecking the country” by a General Strike he has now become, according to the same News of the World, regarded “as a moderate”.

Gone are the days (only a few weeks ago) when nothing but “an immediate General Strike” to oust the Tory Government would suit him; and the Editor of the News of the World was calling on the General Council of the TUC to “drag him back from the brink”. So far from calling on trade unions to mount a General Strike, he is now calling on Ted Heath to “get back to free bargaining”. Which only goes to show how empty and meaningless all this fierce-sounding talk about General Strikes really is.

The point of his current piece in the News of the World (12th May) is to plead with Heath in the forthcoming round of talks with the TUC to “stop the rent increases and scrap the Industrial Relations Act”. If the Government will do this AND deal with inflation and “rising prices of basic foods like meat, bread, milk, butter and potatoes”, he is sure the unions “will deliver the goods”.

What a change of heart! No more “kick out the Tories”, “General Strikes to elect a new Government”, and so on, etc. He claims that the reason his own miner members voted against strike action this year is “because they were a wee bit tired from last year’s little effort”. The miners were not made tired by striking. Every worker engaged in heavy laborious manual work welcomes a strike as a short break or relief from physical exhaustion. The reason the miners voted against strike action this Spring was because they had not yet settled the debts the last strike landed them in.

In other words, the employers will always beat the workers at the strike game, if the situation is such that they are determined to. The miners showed that they are powerful enough industrially to paralyze industry and force the employers to concede. The employers will do so if they think it cheaper than a fight to a finish.

“All workers want”, Gormley writes, “is more money to meet the rise in the cost of living, plus a little extra on top to raise their living standards.” “Give us,” he whines, “the right to negotiate our pay increases. That way, we’ll have far less industrial trouble than with the Government ramming its pay policy dowN our throats.”

Five weeks previously he was shouting for the General Strike; now, less “industrial trouble”. As a cute and canny, experienced trade-unoin leader, he realizes, from the vote of his own members and the futility of the May 1st demonstration, that the practical possibility of political strikes is, at the moment, nil. He has backed away from “the brink”.

Regarding his presumption to speak for "all workers want”, we have only this to say. Probably he is right that the great majority of workers “only” want more money plus a little increase. Actually they would all prefer a big increase, but don’t dare to think of it.

Those trade unionists who are Socialists do not want merely wage increase, large or small, welcome though these may well be; but the abolition of the wages system. But here, unfortunately, Poor Old Joe, as a practical union leader, is a bit out of his depth. 

Horatio.

Editorial: The New Year Outlook. (1915)

Editorial from the January 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

We write on the eve of a New Year. It is no fault of ours that the strings we touch respond with doleful note. Only hypocrisy can furnish at such a time as this the light words which are considered seasonable and appropriate to the completion of another round of the calendar. Even the thoughtless mob, into whose pates it is so difficult to get an idea, take on the gloomy mental tone which the wholesale butchery now in progress everywhere impresses, and find escape in judicious circumspection from the obviously ridiculous. Thus by general consent the customary "Merry Christmas" of our greeting has been reduced to a "Happy," and we are wishing and being wished the ominously qualified "Brighter New Year."

Alas! the "vanity of human wishes"! Any discerning mind can see that, black and lowering as is the visage of the year departing, that of its successor is infinitely more threatening still. All the fighting and bloodshed of the past four months, terrible as it has been, has not in effect been a part of the main struggle, but only the fight for the field whereon the main conflict is to be decided. The real butchery us yet to come. Not for such preliminaries as have so far been worked out have the resources of nations been strained for half a century; not for such military child's-play as has comprised the war up to now has invention been added to invention in the making of the instruments of mechanical slaughter. For the full exploitation of these the ground had to be prepared by long and strenuous toil. The late fighting has been no more than a cover for this preparation It is left for the New Year to provide that appalling welter of blood in which the awful efficiency and progress of modern armaments are about to prove themselves.

On the eve of such a catastrophy every sound must he a note of mourning, and the very atmosphere must lie heavy and stifling with the presence of Doom. Tho air in charged with ruin for victor and vanquished alike and millions of working-class homes this unhappy Now Year will pay in blood and tears for capitalist greed and working-class ignorance.

To tho Socialist, however, every capitalist operation, however foul and bloody it may he, has some element of working-class good in it. The present tragedy is no exception to the rule. The workers will learn from the conflict many things which tho “fog of war,” together with tho fog of our pastors' and masters' lying and deceit, cannot obscure. Thoy will learn, for instance, just tho value of working class lives in tho estimation of those who have grabbed the world. They will learn— those who come through it alive, whose interests they hate really been fighting for. They will learn many other useful lessons also, which will readily suggest themselves to the mind of the initiated.

In a matter more directly connected with our propaganda, too, the war will certainly have the beneficial effect of clearing the atmosphere. It has for long been the habit of the Labourites and others in this country, and those occupying a similar position abroad, to boast that they held in their hands the instrument which would make it impossible for the ruling class of Europe to carry on a great war. This instrument was the General Strike. We all know how persistently it was stated that the organised workers of the various countries would, immediately on the outbreak of war, paralyze the war mongers by “downing tools"! Yet where is there to be found a single instance, in the whole vast war- stricken expanse, of this "heroic” policy coming to fruition ?

The "fog of war,” we are aware, hides many things from our view. Wo know, for instance, that we have not been told the truth with regard to the attitude of tho German Social-Democratic Party in relation to the war. Hence we are chary of criticism in cases where we may possibly not be in possession of all the facts. This, however, is obvious: If any attempt was made in Germany to put the policy of tho General Strike into operation, that attempt, in its utter failure to even so much as become an item of news, is as destructive to the theory as would be the failure to make the effort. But with regard to tho advocates of the General Strike as an anti war measure in this country we are not in tho dark. Mr. Keir Hardie, for example, one of the more prominent of those at home who have toyed with the idea, has written to tho Press denying that he has told the workers not to enlist, adding : “I know too well what is at stake.” It is not out of this frame of mind that anti-war strikes are developed.

In this direction, as in many others, events have proved the truth of what we have consistently contended, namely, that the political conquest is the essential preliminary to any action involving the defeat of the present controllers of tho political machinery. No wild words or frenzied ravings about "taking and holding” on the one hand, or “general striking” on the other, can replace political control. At the very outset this is shown in the adoption of martial law. more or less stringent according to the necessity of the case, by every country involved in the war. By this simple means the ruling class, through their servants the “heads of State” can deprive the people of every constitutional right if they so desire—can compel them, even, to go into the field of battle and there offer their bodies to the bayonets of tho "enemy.”

What sheer rubbish, then, the war has proved all this talk of anti-war strike to be. To its advocates the opportunity came, and it found thorn powerless to avert war. The reason of the failure is easily seen. No matter whether the proletariat proceed against the master class by way of General Strikes or political conquest this one condition is essential to the carrying out of the operations—knowledge of working class interests, or, as we say, class consciousness. Only this can save the workers from being swayed by national sentiment when war is let loose. For this reason it is impossible, quite apart from the question of whether the step could be successful, to initiate a General Strike against war.

The only thing that can undermine the power of the ruling class is working-class political knowledge; the only way in which the political control can be wrested from the ruling class is by political action based sternly upon sound working-class political knowledge. The spectacle of the impotence of the so-called Socialist parties of Germany, Austria, and France, has proved this, whatever splits and quarrels may be revealed with the passage of time, and it is for us to drive home this further lesson of the war.

Meanwhile, the capitalist Press is travestying the position of the Socialists. Aided by treacherous reactionaries of the M Beer type, our masters’ newspapers play tho game of pretending that the Macdonalds in this country, and the Vanderveldes and Bernsteins on the Continent, are the Socialists. We hope next month to issue a strong repudiation of the actions of these men.

Editorial: Does Heath want a general strike? (1970)

Editorial from the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the government trying to provoke a general strike in which the unions would be defeated and weakened for years to come? Have they decided that in the long run this might be the best way to hold wages in check?

For most of the time since the war unemployment has been relatively low and has not exerted its normal restraining influence on wages. The bargaining position of workers, in other words, and particularly of those organised in trade unions, has been strengthened. Employers, and hence governments, have had to face the problem of finding an alternative way to prevent wages eating into profits, the lifeblood of capitalism.

On paper governments have had a wide choice of policies. They could impose a wage freeze. .They could encourage employers to resist workers’ demands. They could try, by persuasion or threats, to get union leaders to restrain wage claims. They could pass or enforce anti-union laws. They could undermine real wages by depreciating the currency. This last has been the easiest, at least in the short run, and governments have been especially tempted to adopt it in elections years. But it only postpones the problem.

There are signs that the Conservative government may have calculated that the time has now come to stand up to the unions. Heath’s repeated rejection, both before and after the election, of any government-imposed wage freeze leaves him no alternative but to use the law against the unions if profits are to be protected. He has already openly declared that his government is ready to face even a general strike to make its Industrial Relations Bill law. This Bill, as we show elsewhere in this issue, is designed to weaken the bargaining position of workers and so to strengthen that of their employers.

This puts the TUC and the other unions in a difficult position. There is really nothing they can do to prevent the Bill becoming law if Heath is determined to do this, since the government has the necessary parliamentary majority. All they can do is to protest and perhaps call a one-day token strike to demonstrate their opposition. A prolonged political strike, given the level of political consciousness amongst workers generally, would be a, very risky enterprise. Even though nearly all the workers in the key industries are in unions, more than half of all workers in Britain are still unorganised and few even of those who are would be willing to take part in a strike over an issue which did not directly affect their wages or immediate working conditions. Many workers in fact mistakenly believe that trade unions are to blame for rising prices and would support a law to curb their power.

An attempted political strike against the Bill might play into Heath’s hands: he could cry “anti-democratic”, go to the polls and perhaps be returned with a bigger majority in an election fought specifically over the anti-union issue.

As for those who dream of using a general strike to overthrow the government and the whole capitalist system, they ought to ask themselves what it is that is going to make workers who have supported capitalism on the political field suddenly become ready to challenge it on the industrial field. The idea is absurd.

Let it not be forgotten that the 1926 General Strike was a failure. It led to the betrayal and defeat of the locked-out miners—even now the underground miner has to work longer hours than he did before 1926—and to the passing of the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, which severely hampered trade union activity.

In the end, this is a question of working class understanding. Capitalism is a class society where the means of production belong to a privileged few and where the rest have to work for them as factory and office workers. Built into capitalism is an irreconcilable conflict between these two classes over the ownership of society’s wealth, a conflict which can only be ended by the triumph of the working class and the establishment of Socialism. Strikes, wage freezes and anti-union laws are all aspects of this struggle.

Very few trade unionists are fully conscious of this. They are against low wages, but not the wages system. They condemn profiteering, hut not production for profit. They criticise governments, but do not realise that governments have to run capitalism in the interests of the capitalist class. Even the most militant of them are not free from sectionalism. In short they accept capitalism and try to work within it to better conditions.

This is the great weakness of trade unionism. Its role can only be defensive and its effectiveness even in this is limited not only by the advantages possessed by the employers and governments but also by the lack of understanding of its members.

As the Socialist Party of Great Britain has always pointed out, even to wage effectively the industrial struggle under capitalism a degree of Socialist understanding is required. Helping the growth of this understanding will be our contribution, as a party.