Party News: Durham Miners Gala - Part 1 (2026)

Party News from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘It’s not bloody ‘gah-la’, they call it ‘gay-la’ round here.’

‘No it’s not, it’s ‘gah-la’, I’ve heard people say that.’

‘For cryin’ out loud, it’s both. And it’s your round.’

The important thing you learn from the Durham Miners Gala is that, contrary to dismal impressions, radical left politics in the UK is not dead, but alive and well and willing to celebrate the fact every July. The Gala has been going since 1871, and attracts around 200,000 people, making it the world’s biggest such event, and jamming Durham’s small historic streets with crowds, performers, party-heads and the inevitable brass bands.

The enormous Gala field looked like a rock festival, with marquees, food kiosks, a bar with a very long queue, and a funfair. Pop and folk acoustic bands played on a big sound stage, in between impassioned speeches about union solidarity, including the fact that when the Reform-controlled council defunded Durham Pride, Durham Miners stepped up to support the event, recalling the support given to them by Pride members in 1984.

Our members were everywhere, discussing politics at our marquee stall, or out in the field, or on the way in. We dished out hundreds of leaflets, and distributed a lot of books and pamphlets, though we underestimated how much material we needed, forgetting that last year our stall was cleaned out.

All in all, a terrific event and one worth getting involved in for any member who can make the time to come along. We’ll be doing it again next year, for certain!

PJS

Beyond trade unionism (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The poor workers whose job is to paint the Forth Bridge: no sooner have they finished putting fresh paint on to one end than the paint is peeling at the other. It is a never-ending exercise in human frustration. Watching Norman Willis plodding and nodding and huffing and bluffing his way through the Trade Union Congress's annual conference evokes vivid images of those painters.

It is not because trade unions are wickedly corrupt that they achieve so very little. Compared with most institutions under capitalism the unions are remarkably democratic. They do their best. They win a wage increase here; they stop some new. intolerable conditions being introduced into the workplace there, they provide lawyers for the persecuted wage slave; they pick up as many crumbs as they can from the cake which the working class has baked. Without such defensive action the workers would be exploited entirely at the bosses' will. Of course, workers need trade unions.

What unions can do is dictated by capitalism. Indeed, trade unions, far from being something to do with socialism, as the ill-informed believe, are features of the capitalist system. Only where there are two classes — the buyers and sellers of labour power — are unions needed to defend the sale of the workers' sole possession: our ability to work. Wages and salaries are the price which workers are paid for being turned into human commodities, there to form the basis of the affluence which the capitalists derive from profit. Where does profit come from? It comes from the legalised robbery of the working class. It comes from the payment of workers less than the value of what we produce. Trade unions are there to negotiate the rate of exploitation; they exist to preside over the act of robbery and ensure that it is not too vicious, to see that the exploiting minority leave the unexploited wealth producers with enough crumbs to nibble on.

Trade unions cannot bring about ''fairness". Capitalism is fair, insofar as it determines what justice is to mean. What would happen to a trade union official who went to the boss and said. "Look, my members are being paid £130 each a week; by 5pm every Wednesday they have each produced goods worth well over £130 for you; they have even covered your costs of machinery and electricity; why should they work Thursdays and Fridays. Be fair and let them work for what they are paid and no more." The boss would look at the trade unionist as if he had just arrived from the kindergarten and would explain that in this world (under this system) workers are not employed to make them happy but to make profits. Profits come from the workers' unpaid labour. The trade unionist is not entitled to question the employer's right to rob the workers, only to haggle over the rate of robbery.

The Left entertain huge illusions about the power of trade unionism. A picket line to a Trotskyist is like a bone to a dog. It's where things are happening. Picketing is a necessary activity by workers who, when on strike, have a class interest in ensuring that other workers do not take over their jobs. The scab provides safety for the boss and undermines what combined strength the workers can muster. For the Left picket lines are where the class struggle takes place. It is where the horny-handed sons and daughters of toil are to be found. It is where the student-vanguards. equipped with the collected works of Trotsky and a few scraps of Gramsci and the odd Sun article by Derek Hatton, can find proletarian recruits for their Bolshevik fantasies. That is why the Left enthuse about strikes. Sadly, many strikes end in dismal failure. The workers go back defeated, or winning victories which are cancelled by the losses incurred while striking. Even when real victories are won — and trade unions do win real victories more often than is usually realised — all that it amounts to is a return to wage slavery on new terms. There is nothing glorious about strikes or pickets. These are the actions of workers driven to fight for survival. Socialism, which the Left falsely claims to stand for, is about rather more than mere survival.

The "workerism" of the Left, which sees workers only where it sees blue collars and struggle only where it sees strikes, misses the crucial point that the working class comprises not only those men and women who work in factories or offices. The working class are all those who are forced to work to live, including millions who are non-unionised and vast numbers who are self-employed. The Leftist caricature of the cloth-capped, machine-operating worker excludes from its vision workers who look after homes, rear children, are children, are retired, are disabled. are unemployed. . . In other words the working class is far more than what Ron Todd contemptuously calls "our people".

Karl Marx, whom the Daily Express no doubt thinks was an adviser to the NUM, expressed the view that workers must not overstate to themselves the importance of trade unions. At best, trade unionism is a struggle to prevent their living standards being pushed down: "They ought, therefore, not be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. "Instead of confining themselves to the futile demand for fair wages, which Marx called a conservative demand, they should advocate the abolition of the wages system. (Marx, Value, Price and Profit) That advice is over a century old but it is as valid now as it was when it was written. What point is there in workers endlessly running breathlessly in order to stand still when, with no greater energy, we could demand not a better price for selling ourselves but the right to be free from selling ourselves?

When workers establish socialism all the means of wealth production and distribution will belong to everyone. Instead of working for a boss we will work for ourselves, for the community. Instead of the coercion of the wages system, we shall have a society in which each will work according to his or her ability and take according to his or her needs. Wages will not exist. And without wages to negotiate or bosses to fight, why would there be any need for trade unions to protect us from ourselves? As the owners and controllers of society the people of a socialist community will require no bodies to defend them against the rival interests of a ruling class. There will be no rulers or ruled. Trade unionism will have no role to play.

The Left are of the view that to speak to workers — "ordinary" workers — about such big ideas as abolishing the wages system and creating a society in which trade unionism will have no function is all too much for our little minds. Instead, run campaigns to replace Union Leader A with Union Leader B; spend endless hours manipulating committees and getting Red Ron put in the chair instead of Pink Pete. Instead of organising to remove the system which causes the workers' misery, the Leftists applaud the windy rhetoric of posers who make vague, rhetorical noises against profiteering and "bad" employers. In other words, the Left perpetuate the illusions of trade unionism. Just as at election time they throw aside their revolutionary outfits in favour of a Labour government to run British capitalism, so on the economic field they cannot see further than a bit of pushing and shoving within the wages system.

When workers' consciousness of the need for socialism grows, the form which trade unions take will change. As millions of workers begin to think beyond the limits of the profit system they will ensure that the unions are there to back up the majority will for socialism when it is expressed. Unions whose members are committed to the revolutionary objective of abolishing the system which created them will be able to make plans for how their particular industry or service will be run (or disbanded in the case of useless areas of work, such as banking or ticket collecting) once production for use is introduced; trade unions can be units of planning for socialist society.

It is up to the socialists in their trade unions to constantly urge their fellow workers to look beyond the narrow horizons of wage or salary slavery. To see that beyond the crumbs there is the whole cake and beyond that there is the bakery itself which we should take into our common possession. In the meantime painters will gloomily set about the ceaseless task of painting the Forth Bridge. Norman Willis will complete his apprenticeship for the House of Lords and many, many workers will wonder why they are struggling so much for so very, very little.

Steve Coleman

Action Replay: Net income (2025)

The Action Replay column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the August 2024 Action Replay we wrote about the struggles of players in the lower reaches of professional tennis.

But it’s not just those below the top echelons who need support. The Professional Tennis Players Association (www.ptpaplayers.com) aims to ‘Provide protection and support for players and advocate for their best interests’. It focuses on the top 250 singles players and the top 100 doubles players (men and women in both cases), but claims to service players of all rankings, and aims to extend this to cover junior and retired players too. Mind you, it is probably lower-ranked players who would be most in need of the association’s support.

Among other things, PTPA offers free legal aid to players involved in anti-doping and anti-corruption cases, provides medical opinions and recommendations, offers resources to support players’ mental health and (most importantly, no doubt) enables players to receive discounts at Hilton hotels.

Recently, the PTPA began legal action against the sport’s various governing bodies (BBC Sport, 18 March). There are allegedly too many tournaments, which many players are effectively forced to enter. Moreover, players do not receive a large enough percentage of the revenue generated by the top tournaments. According to the PTPA Executive Director, ‘players are trapped in an unfair system that exploits their talent, suppresses their earnings, and jeopardises their health and safety.’

The top twenty men’s and women’s players recently asked for more prize money in the four biggest tournaments, the Grand Slams. Losing in the first round at Wimbledon earns a player £60,000, but many lower-ranked players still struggle to get by. In the year to July 2023, the All England Club (which runs Wimbledon) had an operating profit of just under £54m, but ninety percent of that was paid to the governing body, the Lawn Tennis Association. Zheng Qinwen, the world number eight, said ‘increased prize money would be particularly welcomed by lower-ranked players, who can struggle to make ends meet at other times of the year.’

PTPA is rather different from most trade unions, and many professional sports have unions for players; for instance, the International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIFPRO) consists of sixty-six national players’ associations. All of which shows that even those better off than most people still need to have their interests protected against the powers-that-be of one kind and another.

Paul Bennett

Answers to Correspondents. (1933)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. W. Rimmington (West Ham).—If you had read the whole of the article instead of only part of it (as you state is the case), you would not have supposed that it was an attack on the character of Sir John Ellerman.

Your suggestion that the railwaymen should pay £40-millions a year into the funds of their union, and use this money for houses, pensions, unemployment insurance, etc., for themselves, is fantastic. You propose that the railwaymen shall obtain the necessary money by demanding higher wages, but you do not explain how the railwaymen or any other body of workers are going to compel the employers to pay these higher wages. Trade unions have been trying to do this for generations.

The fact that a few workers climb into the ranks of the capitalists and that some capitalists are forced down into the ranks of the workers, does not alter the subject position of the working class as a whole. The only way out is for the workers to conquer political power and make the means of production and distribution the property of society as a whole.

Ed. Comm.

A Look Round. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Trades Dispute Act, passed by a Government “having something of a Labour Party force behind it” as one jubilant Trade Unionist has expressed it, legalised peaceful picketing. That is to say it made it quite lawful for “one or more persons acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a Trade Union or of an individual employer or firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working.”

* * *

But the question of what is peaceful picketing is of course one for the Magistrates and the Judges. In the course of a strike or lock-out, it is hardly to be expected that strikers or locked-out workers will be able to control their feelings altogether when they see their places being taken by others. The moment they get excited they can be charged under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, as was the case at the Old Street Police Court on June 6th, when two men were each fined £10 and ordered to pay six guineas costs between them.

* * *

Another Act of the present Government, the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1906, comes into force on July 1st. If a workman, after that date, meet with a fatal accident, and his relatives can afford to employ lawyers, or make a bargain with them on the “no win, no pay” system, they may get a verdict of £300 against the employer. And if the latter has not insured and cannot pay, he can make himself a bankrupt, and clear himself of all obligations. No wonder the Act has been described as one for the benefit of insurance companies and lawyers more than for workmen.

* * *

Probably many of the smaller employers will regard a fatal accident to one of their workmen as a blessing in disguise if it enables them, by means of the Bankruptcy Court, to disentangle themselves from the difficult position in which they have been forced under this competitive system.

* * *

The Stringertype is the name of a new matrix composing and casting machine recently invented by Mr. H. J. S. Culbert-Stringer. After a close inspection by a number of experts, the machine has been found to thoroughly justify the many important advantages claimed for it by the inventor.

* * *

Another factor in the problem of men v. machinery !

* * *

The chairman of Barclay, Perkins & Company, Ltd., is much afraid that “after legislation has finished with the Breweries,” the “Socialists” would turn their attention to other so-called monopolies, and the property of the Church itself will be in danger ! This twaddle about the wicked Socialists who would destroy property is part of the game played by the capitalist class. But Barclay, Perkins’ “property,” like that of other sections of the master class, may be depreciated and even destroyed in the ordinary course of capitalist development, without any “Socialist” agitation or action.

* * *

Thus at the meeting of William Cory & Son, Ltd., held on June 11th, Sir Francis Cory-Wright said they ought to put large sums to depreciation and reserve, because they could not say what in the future might take the place of coal, and render much of their assets valueless.

* * *

He went on to refer to the new invention “Coalite,” to exploit which a new company was being formed. Mr. Parker, of Wolverhampton, claimed that it was absolutely smokeless, and that its use would put an end to thick fogs, which were solely due to the smoke emitted from domestic and factory chimneys. There were good grounds for this claim, and if “Coalite” proved successful it would have a great future.

* * *

As I understand it, “Coalite” is obtained by treating ordinary coal in a particular manner. But surely it is within the region of possibility that a fuel may one day be discovered superior to coal in every respect, which would at once depreciate the value of coal mines and allied industries. Then the coal mine owners would agitate for the nationalisation of coal mines and some alleged Socialists would be jubilant at the rate of progress of their ideas.

* * *

On June 12th Mr. Bicknell presided at the meeting of J. C. & J. Field, Ltd., Soap and Candle Manufacturers. He said the year had been a disappointing one. For some years the profits had been steadily growing less, owing to heavy taxation, the increased price of raw materials, in addition to excessive competition.

* * *

When the Soap Trust was operating here, Field's was one of the firms which remained outside. And when the retailers talked of forming a co-operative concern to manufacture soap against the Trust, Field’s advised them not to erect a factory or to put down new plant, but, if they would subscribe £50,000 Capital, Field’s plant could be utilised, etc. All this, of course, was disinterested. Field’s sole desire, as everybody knew, was to help the people fight the awful Trust.

* * *

It is stated that the cause of the trouble at Vickers, Sons & Maxim’s Engineering Works at Erith, was primarily the introduction of a premium bonus system, similar in many respects to the “Rowan” system. In this connection the following extract from The Engineer-in-Charge and Works Manager for May will be interesting to readers.

* * *

Piecework.—Each engineer must decide for himself as to whether any of the work undertaken in his department can be more cheaply turned out on a piecework basis. Many engineers have to manufacture spare parts in considerable quantities, and in these cases the work can often be done more cheaply by the piece; the workman possibly earns more money, but the total cost will be less when establishment charges have been added.

The chief objection to piecework is the difficulty of fixing a fair rate ; if too high, the workman earns very large wages and the rate has to be cut down, with the result that next time a man is given a job at a high rate he takes care not to work too quickly. To avoid this system the premium system has been introduced, which has the effect of giving part of the additional earnings to the employer and part to the workmen. The method introduced by the late Mr. James Rowan has been more used than perhaps any other : by this system a man is allowed, say eight hours in which to do a certain job, and his rate is 8d. per hour ; if he does the work in six hours he will be paid his ordinary rate plus 2-8ths—2d.; therefore, in this case he will get 10d. per hour. It is obviously impossible, with this method, for a man to be paid double his ordinary rate, and the effect is to increase the man’s bonus for small savings in time and to decrease it for large, that is compared with ordinary piecework ; hence, it is unnecessary ever to cut the rate after it has once been fixed, and this system is undoubtedly useful for work for which the rate is difficult to compute.

* * *

There are no flies on the employers who adopt this system !

* * *

In the current issue of The Contemporary Review, Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., deals with the Investments of the Masses. He estimates the total wealth of the United Kingdom at £11,500,000,000, of which £10,900,000,00 is owned by 5,000,000 people, and £600,000,000 by 39,000,000 of the population. Thus about 95 per cent. of the entire wealth of the United Kingdom is owned by about one-ninth of its population. It could easily be shown, he added, that of the 5,000,000 of people above the income tax line a small proportion, about one-fifth or say, 1,000,000 people (about 200,000 or 250,000 families) own nearly the whole of the accumulated wealth of the Kingdom, and that this small group exercise the effective government of the nation by its control of the means of production. “THOSE RULE WHO OWN.”

* * *

Those rule who own. That is the position. Whatever political reforms may be secured will be useless so long as the means of wealth production are private property. Therefore the efforts of the workers for political supremacy must be directed with the object of using the power thus obtained to effect the social revolution. Private ownership of the means of wealth production must give place to social ownership.

* * *

Some societies of working men have been led into supporting the Workers’ Educational Association, which exists for the purpose of encouraging boys and girls to continue their education (of a kind agreeable to their masters) by attendance at evening schools after they have commenced to work. Last month a Conference took place between the Association and employers of labour at Birmingham, at which a committee, with the Lord Mayor as chairman, was appointed to carry out the work. The true inwardness of the movement may be gathered from the Press reports of this meeting, which conclude thus : “It was stated that the decay of the apprenticeship system had caused employers to lose that control of young people which they formerly possessed.” And, of course, by the help of Mr. Albert Mansbridge and his W.E.A., they hope to get it back.

* * *

An instance of the fallacy that only unskilled workers need lack employment in this happy land arose at the City Coroner’s Court on June 6th, when an inquest was held concerning the death of Harry G. Burrell, aged 59, a brass finisher, who dropped dead the previous Sunday evening in Whitecross-st. It was stated that the deceased was a capital workman, but had been unable to find regular employment for the past five years. One witness stated that he had known deceased since January and frequently during the bitter nights of February and March they would lie sodden with rain on one of the seats of the Embankment, only to be moved on and made to walk by the first constable who came across them. Between two and three thousand homeless “heirs to glory” went to the Embankment at night.

* * *

Of course, the jury, being “practical” men, passed the usual verdict: “Death from natural causes.” It is quite recognised by the capitalist class that it is perfectly “natural” for men, able and willing to work, to die of starvation in the midst of plenty.

J. Kay.

Books Received: Trade Union Law. (1907)

Book Review from the May 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade Union Law, by Herman Cohen of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law. 2nd edition, Cloth, 6s. net. (Publishers, Sweet and Maxwell, Chancery Lane, W.C.)

Mr. Cohen endeavours to make plain the state of the law regarding trade unions, and shows, incidentally, that the meaning of several sections of the new Act is open to question. To us the ambiguity of the law appears calculated ; indeed, the law has yet to be passed through which, in a technical sense, it is impossible for a coach and four to be driven.

Many of the “labour leaders” fondly imagine that if a capitalist government could but be induced to pass certain laws all would be well. They are, however, oblivious of the fact that all capitalist laws (so far as the workers are concerned) are doubly damned ; damned by ambiguity in the making, and damned by capitalist interests and control in the administration.

The ruling class are past masters in the art of bluff, and even if they, as a working-class soporific, pass any law they know that their political control enables them by judicious administration to make every such law serve capitalist interests.

The book before us (which can be obtained at greatly reduced rates through the London Trades Council) consists of 200 well printed pages and gives the text of the Trades Disputes Act, 1900, and of the various other Acts of Parliament directly affecting Trade Unions, together with explanations, comments, and the citation of cases in point. A useful book for the social student.

Organization and Socialism (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the nineteenth century the capitalist world has been swamped with organizations. Political parties, trade unions, religious sects and nationalist groups have gained mass membership or support. All these organizations have been expressions of conflict, dissatisfaction or grievances among sections of the population. Trade unions were formed to try to safeguard the interests of groups of workers against pressure on wages by the employers. As capitalism brought under its sway more and more of the population, so did the belief spread among these workers that organizations like trade unions were necessary to protect their interests. Consequently these organizations grew, both in number and support.

But the workers were wrong in believing that these organizations could solve their problems. Because the organizations were based on attempts to solve economic problems only within the existing capitalist system, they took on the character of that social system. They lost democratic intentions which existed at their origin and became bureaucratic. Leaders arose to control them. Workers found that they had to accept organizational structures which reflected the class society they lived in.

In Germany, the Social Democratic Party gradually dropped the pretensions which a small number of members had for changing society. It adopted the objectives of the German trade unions, which were to gain immediate benefits for their working-class supporters within the capitalist system. The consequence of this was that the class nature of capitalism with its division of society into capital and wage-labour, owners and producers, leaders and led, was reflected in the structure of the Social Democratic Party. A large bureaucracy arose to control the organization.

Some theorists, like Michels in his work Political Parties have seen this development as an inevitable result of organization. But in arriving at this view he neglected the type of society in which the organizations have arisen. He saw their structure as reflecting the nature of man rather than the nature of the particular society. In looking at them without accounting for either the capitalist basis of society or the reformist objectives which the organizations had, he neglected those factors which determine their fundamental structure.

Many organizations have complained of apathy among the working class. Attendance at meetings of trade unions, political parties and other organizations has declined; “Leftists” and other reformists have declared that the lack of interest displays a lack of political consciousness among people. But all it shows is the absence of understanding. “Leftists” look to the odd clauses in the manifestos of reformist parties, like the Labour Party, to try and show that these parties are not reformist but have socialist origins. They fail to see that the original role of the organizations, and one they maintain, was as an expression of the wish for reforms of capitalism. They fail to see that the leadership nature of organizations was and is a reflection of these reformist aims.

What a decline in active involvement in these organizations shows is that numbers of the working class no longer believe that devoting their time to participation in reformism is worth while. Socialists agree with them. We have always advised the working class that involvement with these organizations can never solve the basic problems of society. At most, trade unions make gains which can quickly be eroded by developments like inflation. The reforms which political parties implement are introduced largely to facilitate the further development of capitalism. Even the National Health Service, that “sacred cow” of the Labour Party, has primarily served to ensure that the illnesses which workers have do not result in an excessive loss of labour-power from productive employment.

Socialists say that in the light of the failure of these organizations to solve the fundamental problems facing the working class, people should now take a further step and put an end to the capitalist system, which has been the cause of their problems throughout the period of mass organization. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has continuously and consistently put forward that those problems can only be solved by the establishment of Socialism. Throughout the SPGB’s existence it has opposed all other political organizations because it recognizes that the aims of these organizations were limited to obtaining reforms within capitalism. But unlike other organizations, the members of the SPGB do not see the political party and its structure as being maintained within a Socialist society. It exists solely to work for Socialism among the working class in order that they themselves can abolish capitalism. Consequently the organizational structures which reflect the class basis of capitalism will not be transferred to Socialism. Because it means that everybody will own and control the means of production, instead of a minority as in capitalism, the democratic structure of Socialism will reflect the very different purpose of the society. This is the aim of fulfilling human needs, as opposed to the aim of capitalism, which is to produce profits for a minority of the population.

M. D.

Finance and Industry: Trade Unions fears about funds (1963)

The Finance and Industry column from the August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade Unions fears about funds

We hear stories from time to time about the huge funds alleged to be held by the trade unions. There are jibes about the millions of pounds held in. capitalist stocks and shares, or reassurances about how nice it is to see workers' organisations with a stake in the country's wealth.

In fact, its all a lot of irrelevant bunkum. Take the National Union of Railwaymen as an example.

At their recent annual conference the railwaymen heard some hard words from their auditor. He told them that although their total funds increased by £250,000 to £6½ million, this did not mean a thing. All this money, he said, could be wiped out “literally overnight." Most of it was locked up in investments anyway and even if these could be realised at their full value, which, of course, would be highly unlikely, it would only be enough to provide each member with less than £10.

Strike pay works out at £1 per day, hardly enough to keep a worker and his family in luxury. Ten days on strike and they would blue the lot. No wonder there were no die-hard resolutions about fighting Beeching to the last penny of N.U.R. funds!

Thus is demolished yet another of the myths about workers’ affluence. Given favourable economic circumstances under capitalism, the trade unions may be able to bargain rather more effectively. But immediately the economic climate changes for the worse, the shakiness of their bargaining position is ruthlessly exposed.

If the N.U.R. do ever decide to make a do-or-die stand against Beeching, they will need to rely upon more than their £6½ million reserves. They will find their “stake in capitalism” small and transient indeed.

Agricultural exodus

In this country agriculture has become so mechanised that now only 5 per cent. of the British population depend on the land for their living. In Germany the proportion is 15 per cent., in France, 25 per cent., and in Italy it is as high as 44 per cent.

Even in Britain agricultural workers continue to drift into the towns. Year by year the number of machines increases at the expense of men, and more and more small farmers are forced off their holdings. But in other countries, the flow is even faster, the State actively encouraging this movement by paying small farmers to leave their land or by paying grants towards the amalgamation of smallholdings into bigger farms. But it is the basic economic forces within capitalism itself, in all countries, that provide the main impetus; the peasants are forced inexorably off the land and into the towns and factories.

France is a perfect example. A few years ago it was calculated that about 100,000 people were destined to leave the land every year. Many observers thought this an exaggeration. But now the recent census has shown that this figure, far from being an exaggeration, was in fact a hopeless understatement- no less than a quarter of a million of the rural population are apparently pouring into the towns every year.

At the same time, French agriculture, like the British, is becoming more and more industrialised. Within a few years the number of tractors in the country will be the highest in the world, after the United States and Russia. Inevitably, output continues to rise, to the point where surpluses have already become a grave problem. Equally inevitably, it seems, the problem will get worse, in spite of all the French government can do to find outlets for the increased output.

There have already been many violent peasant demonstrations; this year, it looks as though there will be even more. In Brittany, there have been protests at the entry of North African potatoes whilst the home farmer has been struggling to dispose of his own production (ironically, the British farmers have been making the same bitter complaints about Breton potatoes undercutting their produce).

In the South of France, there are similar troubles over fruit and tomatoes; the production of peaches, apricots, and tomatoes promises to be higher than ever. At the same time, British farmers are already disquieted about how the French are going to dispose of their forthcoming cereals crop. They feat dumping on a large scale.

All this explains why the French government seem to be taking an easier line over Britain and the Common Market. French agriculture wants freer access to the German market and Germany refuses to budge until France takes an easier line over Britain's eventual entry into the Common Market.

We are going to hear a lot about agriculture in the months to come.

Taxation without tears

We have often commented in these columns about the folly of making wealth comparisons under present day capitalism, without taking taxation into account. Thus, although one-tenth of the population of the country still owns about nine-tenths of its wealth, the gulf seems not half so glaring if one compares incomes, and even less glaring when one compares incomes after tax.

But what is always forgotten when this argument is used to bolster up the idea of the affluent society, and of how much better off the workers are relatively in comparison with the capitalists, is the way in which our capitalists make use of the tax system to add all sorts of hidden emoluments and “perks” to their incomes. Expense accounts on the firm are only the most publicised means they have of achieving this; there are many others, all quite legal and often more rewarding.

The Sunday Times recently ran an article which showed wonderfully well what scope there is, and all above board, for this type of operation.

At the moment, there is a nice market for selling “executive aircraft” to the bigger firms. One such plane is the Hawker Siddeley H.S.125, selling at £200,000, which is hardly a bagatelle even for our bigger capitalists. But so generous are the Inland Revenue with their allowances that, over five years flying, the firm buying one of these aircraft needs actually to pay out only £35,000 for it.

Ostensibly, of course, these planes are for transporting our businessmen quickly from place to place so that they can transact their big deals and be back at their big desks the next morning. But if they alternate their business trips with the odd flip to Paris or the South of France, in company with their wives, friends, and families, who is to know? Plus the usual hotels, good food, the best wines, and any other expenses on the firm, it all works out very nicely and makes a useful tax-free addition to the annual income.

Its an affluent society alright—for those for whom it has always been affluent, the capitalist class.

Stan Hampson

Letter: The Socialist Attitude to Trade Unions (1952)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent sends us the following letter of criticism:

S.E.19.

Dear Sir,

In dealing with the question of “Trade Unionism” in the July issue of the S.S., you state that the S.P.G.B. supports T.U. action, whilst pointing out that such action can only be defensive in character.

I take it that you are opposed to reformist activity on the ground that reforms cannot achieve Socialism.

There seems to be something faulty in your reasoning here.

If your support of Trade Unionism is for the reason you give, why not support reformist activity for precisely the same reason? On the other hand your statement implies that you would oppose T.U. action if such action were offensive in character. This is of course absurd.

Again, are not Trade Unions reformist? If so, why not oppose them as you apparently oppose reformist action?

It seems that you have placed yourself in an impossible position. Is there a way out of the dilemma?

Or could it be that T.U.s are after all not reformist bodies? And that your support of them is upon grounds other than those stated by you. If so I would like to know what these grounds are.

Yours sincerely,

D. Smith.

Reply:

The statement to which the above letter refers was on page 110 of the July issue:—

“We support trade union activity that is genuinely in the interest of the working class. But we recognise that such action can only be defensive. It is only organisation on the political field that will enable the class system to be abolished."

We support the efforts of the workers through trade union organisation to defend and improve their wages and conditions of work. If they did not struggle they would be worse off. As Marx phrased it in “Value, Price and Profit,” if the workers abandon the struggle “they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. . . . By cowardly giving way in their every-day conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any large movement.”

But trade union action is action against the effects of the capitalist system. It cannot achieve the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. Trade unions have to take the workers as they are and most of them are not socialists and therefore are not in favour of establishing Socialism.

The establishment of Socialism requires political action, but not just any political action. Political organisation to secure reform of Capitalism can no more achieve Socialism than can strikes for higher wages.

What is required is political organisation and action by socialists, to gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of introducing Socialism.

Some reforms of Capitalism may be of limited use to the working class or sections of the working class, though most reforms are not, but organisations that advocate reforming Capitalism are of no use whatever for the task of establishing Socialism. Such organisations can only maintain themselves by encouraging the delusion that the basic evils of Capitalism can be reformed, out of existence. Such an organisation must attract reformists and seek the support and votes of reformists, and when its support among the non-socialist electorate becomes big enough it has to take on the task of forming a government and carrying on Capitalism and waging its wars.

Organisation and propaganda for Socialism can only be carried on by a party whose members are socialists. If a party aiming at Socialism were to diverge from that aim by advocating reforms it would likewise attract non-socialists. It would be submerged by them and the socialist message would be lost.

That is why the Socialist Party does not advocate reforms, and why it tells the working class that trade union struggles against the employers are useful, but the creation of reformist political organisations which just serve to perpetuate Capitalism is useless.

Editorial Committee.

Editorial: Trade Unions in Wartime—and After (1943)

Editorial from the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Judged by membership figures, war, with its busy factories, absence of unemployment, and rising prices, is a good time for trade unions. Total membership increased from 6 millions in 1938 to 7 millions at the end of 1941. The current total will he about 8 millions, of whom 1½ millions are women. Thus the British trade union movement touches again the peak membership reached in 1920, but lost in the depression years that followed. These are imposing figures, though it should be remembered that huge areas of industry are still little touched by organisation, as can be seen from a comparison with the much larger number of men and women insured under the Unemployment scheme. Insured workers totalled over 14 millions before the war, and the number of workers in employment has been increased since the war broke out, in spite of the millions withdrawn for the armed forces

Comparison with the position at the time of the last world war brings out a number of changes. One of these is the growing concentration of trade union membership in a small number of large unions—a development forced on by the concentration of capitalist industry. In 1913, when membership was 4 millions, the number of separate unions was 1,269. Now, with twice the membership, the number of unions has fallen to 983. These figures, however, do not bring out the full extent to which concentration has gone on, for over half the total membership is now to be found in just over a dozen unions, each of which has a membership of 100,000 or more. These include the Transport and General Workers’ Union with about 1,000,000, and several unions with upwards of 500,000. Over 6 million trade unionists are in the 50 unions which have a membership of 25,000 or more. This concentration, which was hastened by the last war, may go further still with such developments as the decision of the Amalgamated Engineering Union to recruit women and the tentative movements towards amalgamation of separate unions on the railways and in retail distributive and other industries. “Big unionism,” however, has not fulfilled all the high hopes of those who sponsored it, and the fear is often expressed that the, race for big membership has been accompanied by a slackening of zeal in the struggle against the employers. This fear has been increased by the close war-time association of the unions with the employers, and of the Trades Union Congress with the Government. The danger has been voiced that the trade unions may become permanently imbued with the idea of collaboration, so that they degenerate into little more than subsidiary organs of capitalist industry and of the Government. This reading of the situation fails to take account of evidence that, although the workers are more or less ready to accept collaboration now, they will strongly react against it when the war is over, if not before. It assumes that the workers can be permanently persuaded to ignore the stark reality of the class struggle based on the fact of capitalist ownership and control, and swallow the illusion of class unity. Sir Stafford Cripps may now address the workers on the Joint Production Committees as “comrades,” but this will soon be forgotten when the struggle resumes its normal intensity in the scramble for markers and profits after the war. In spite of all the official hopes of industrial peace, backed up by the powers of the Government under the various Orders imposing industrial conscription and banning strikes, the number of trade disputes increased from 875 in 1938 to 940 in 1939, 922 in 1940, 1,251 in 1941, and 1,281 in 1942. The number of disputes is actually larger than in the last war, though the number of workers involved, and the number of days lost, are smaller—due to the fact that “the great majority of the stoppages affected only individual establishments and were of short duration” (Ministry of Labour Gazette, January, 1943). In spite of the elaborate arrangements to secure the reference of disputes to arbitration, there is ample evidence that trade unionists have not accepted the defeatist view that they can afford to renounce what is in the last resort their main if not their sole weapon, the strike.

In a different direction, the decision of the Post Office Workers to ignore the 1927 Trade Union Act, which forbids their affiliation to Trades Councils and the Trades Union Congress, may be regarded as a sign of a widespread, if at present obscured, determination among trade unionists to retain their independence after the war.

Editorial: An orderly society (1979)

Editorial from the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great deal of what is called education is nothing more than the forcing into impressionable minds of the idea that capitalism is the most benign, efficient and sensible social system ever conceived by the human race. A natural extension of that idea is that capitalism should also be seen as eternal and as the correction of centuries of muddle, mistakes, cruelties . . . On this theory, all history was no more than a preparation for the great day when capitalism dawned upon the world, the society of reason.

That version of history — and of society today — obscures and ignores many of the most obvious facts of our lives. How can a society of reason explain away the millions who are undernourished and who starve while food is left rotting in store or is destroyed? Is it logical that a small minority of people should be able to live in unproductive opulence while the vast majority, who produce all the wealth, should endure poverty varying from a genteel but persistent downward pressure to vagrancy?

Can we describe as benign a system which devotes so much of its material resources and its intellectual energy to the design and use of ever-developing methods of killing people and of destroying where they live? Did the inhumanities of former societies teach us so little that we replaced them with one which subjects most of its people to the indignities of a lifetime’s depersonalising exploitation? Do we have no more to show for history than a world which cannot satisfy its people’s needs?

It is the work of socialists to ask such questions — to attack the justification for capitalism. For example, this issue of the Socialist Standard, in the light of the Conservative government’s avowed policy, has something to say about the law as it affects the interests of trade unionists. This is an important matter, for nowhere does capitalism’s propaganda work harder than in its attempts to justify what is known as Law and Order.

This justification argues that the law is as eternal and as firmly based on human verities as it assumes capitalism is itself. It encourages us to believe that the law is a painstakingly constructed code of conduct which protects us all — our possessions, our ability to walk the streets in safety.

To sustain this argument it is necessary to view capitalism rather as through the wrong end of a telescope. Workers suffer a great deal through crime burglary of a working class home which carries off the colour TV, the stereo, some money — or the taking away of a worker’s car from the kerb outside. When this sort of thing happens a policeman will turn up and, with varying degrees of interest, ‘investigate’, which may convince the victim that the law is on his side.

The same may happen when a worker is subjected to illegal violence — when someone is mugged for what is in their purse, or when they are assaulted or even killed during an armed robbery. Again, the law may be seen as aiming to deter and to prevent such things, and the police as the agency to carry out that policy.

This might be more convincing if breaking into a council house and emptying the gas meter carried the same scale of penalty as holding up a Security Express van and taking thousands of pounds. Capitalism reserves its harshest penalties for those who offer the greatest threat to the orderly conduct of its business of exploitation, commodity production and the accumulation of capital. It is that threat the law is intended to resist; it is the interests involved in that, which the state machinery of Law and Order exists to protect.

Whatever the working class suffer as a result of crime is of comparatively little account to the law makers; workers have no property, in any sense of the term, to protect. The subject class in society, they have no position of privilege to be upheld by a coercive state machine. These facts should persuade them to look at the matter with different eyes, and to view the claims of capitalism’s propagandists with suspicion.

While Law and Order professes to work for an orderly society, it licenses massive acts of socially organised murder, destruction, pillage and repression such as the most hardened of criminals could not dream of. Even more — it exists precisely to ensure that those acts continue and are carried out in the most effective manner.

The laws of any social system rest upon the social relationships arising from its mode of wealth production. A class society — where the means of wealth production are owned by a class — will write its laws so as to defend the privilege of the owning class against all threats. Thus the morals of class society are coercive and defensive; in defence of class privilege they will condone any acts, if need be to the very limits of violence. In many ways this is the explanation of a human history spotted with sickening barbarity — all of it perfectly within the law.

How then should trade unionists act when they find themselves in conflict with the law? Do we encourage workers to disregard or to break capitalism’s laws? If in some cases there is no other way, this should not obscure the fact that the problem cannot be removed by our becoming outlaws. Capitalism is not eternal; it can be abolished in a way which the most powerful state machine will not be able to resist. When the working class come to an understanding of socialism, their will to establish the new society will be all-powerful. And socialism will be a world whose morality is that of freedom and human interests, where the coercion and the barbarities of capitalism will be seen as a curiously wasteful episode in human experience.

Letters: Progress and Socialism (1978)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Progress and Socialism

In reply to my letter, “Technology and Socialism" (March SS), you give some evidence to support your contention of scientific progress making men happier in regards to medical science making the many diseases which were once rife to be things of the past, but you forget that this is a very fleeting sort of happiness in form and content, as it very quickly vanishes due to a host of other serious diseases which arise in society to cancel this ephemeral happiness out of men’s minds, and by doing so add to men’s miseries.

And even though the human lifespan is about twice as long on average as it was in Marx’s day this prolongation of life has not in the main added to man’s happiness on earth, nor has it in any manner or form motivated the workers develop Socialist ideas.

And if man has doubled his life-span since Marx’s day he certainly has not doubled his drive to attain Socialist ideas since Marx’s day. For even in 1848 Marx tells us that a spectre of communism is haunting Europe, but even today with the worker’s life-span being doubled the spectre of communism is virtually non-existent in Europe. It would be interesting to know what the historical materialists have to say about that, for this seems to be regress rather than progress, that is, of course assuming Marx’s Communist Manifesto was correct about the spectre of communism haunting Europe.

My letter never mentioned anything about the expense of technological inventions in regard to the workers, so I do not know where you got that idea from. And you certainly did not try to explain what you meant by progress, in regards to a change from hand mills to steam mills, for it is only too obvious that the steam mills did not motivate the working class to attain Socialist ideas, but rather on the contrary, dehumanised the workers by soul destroying work which turned them into robots, so where is the progress here? You disagree with this view of course, but 130 years of capitalistic technological dehumanisation is against you, plus the fact in our age of 1978 Socialism is a non-existent drive in working class politics. And also historical materialism which is supposed to operate independent of man’s will and consciousness has done virtually nothing from the steam mill in Marx’s day to the present atomic technological age to bring about any great progress towards Socialism, which, of course, you say is the only real progress, although no real evidence exists in society, to make this real progress a reality.

I would like so much to hear your comments on all that.

Ian Campbell

Dundee, Scotland

Reply:

There are two conditions necessary for the establishment of Socialism; the development of the productive forces to the point where they can provide an abundance, and acceptance by the world’s working class of the case for Socialism. Technological and scientific progress has for some decades now ensured the attainment of the first condition. Under capitalism these developments and inventions are not utilised for the good of mankind. However, in a Socialist society the fruits of human ingenuity will be able to benefit everybody. Technological progress will mean social and individual advancement. The 'soul-destroying work’ you mention has not turned the workers into robots— that is, unthinking machines which simply respond to instructions. As we said in our reply to your first letter, “Society is too complex to be operated by robots; instead it is living, feeling and thinking workers who run society.’’ The very existence of the Socialist Party shows that Socialism is by no means “ a non-existent drive in working class politics". It is no good looking to historical materialism to bring about progress towards Socialism; it is people, not history, who will carry out the revolution. The second condition for the establishment of Socialism means a world-wide majority of convinced Socialists, and this is what Socialist propaganda aims at achieving. Rather than worrying about the meaning and nature of progress, you should take a step forward yourself and join the Socialist movement.

Editors.

Facets of Trade Unionism

I recently attended the Civil and Public Services Association annual conference as a delegate for our local Branch. All facets of Trade Unionism were covered; pay, hours and leave. Conditions cf service (including superannuation), welfare, safety, "industrial democracy", racism, relations with other unions, etc., etc.

It became evident to me that what we were doing, basically was trying to get the best possible deal for our union members under capitalism.

I am familiar with the ideas of the SPGB. I read the Socialist Standard each month and I have on rare occasions attended meetings.

The ideology of the SPGB is difficult to oppose and I found myself thinking: there are no solutions under capitalism, Socialism is the answer. It is a pity, I thought, that the energy devoted by delegates in trying to improve the conditions of their members under capitalism is not harnessed to establishing Socialism. And there’s the rub! The majority of the wage-earning class either do not understand Socialism or clearly they do not want it. The SPGB has, I understand, been campaigning for over seventy years! I accept that the SPGB have been hindered by the Labour Party and various left-wing groups, all purporting to be fighting for Socialism, clouding the issues, disillusioning people and making it hard for the SPGB to spread the work and create the majority understanding necessary for the establishment of Socialism.

You may ask why, if I sympathise with your views, I do not apply for membership and help the cause? Well, we all consider our time important and I am no exception. When I occasionally state the Socialist case they think I’m living in a dream world. What about human nature? Greed? or ‘look what’s happened in Russia!’ are the usual responses. It seems that people generally do not believe in the possibility of changing society, or they do not want to.

The SPGB undoubtedly have experienced all this before and, hopefully, have the appropriate answers. Can you give me any heart to become more involved, and suggest ways of dealing with the prevailing attitudes of people?

K. Parkin

London, S.E.1

All industrial unionists now? (1999)

From the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the opening years of this century industrial unionism—the idea that all the workers in the same industry should be in a single union—was raised as a radical demand. Today it is being embraced by the leaders of the existing business unions. How come?

I recently attended a student union meeting about a fast food franchise employing students at ridiculously low wage rates over the night shift. The union “officials” had been optimistic, they felt they could get a result on this one, they felt that it was a strong issue; so, predictably, the meeting was inquorate. It was, at least, the biggest inquorate meeting for some while, but, it was inquorate nonetheless. The usual debates about student apathy began once more.

I was reminded, somewhat, of my old man, confidently telling me that “grass roots democracy is impossible”, and then regaling me with his story about his time as a union rep at ICI. “Out I would come,” he’d say, “after negotiating complex things with the management, and all me mates’d ask was ‘Well, man, did we get the pay rise?.'” As I sat there, surveying the empty wilderness of the meeting hall, I thought, sadly, that he was right.

It’s an unfortunate fact that the officials of most unions believe exactly as he did. Certainly it’s implied in the way they behave. We could take, for example, an interesting piece in the June issue of Labour Research about a growing demand for industrial unionism within the TUC. Industrial unionism, a familiar concept from the radical fringe across the Atlantic (specifically the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] and various “DeLeonist” factions there), is the idea that instead of “craft” or “trade” unions, representing workers of a particular skill/type, we have one union representing everyone in a specific industry (thus a Chemical Workers Union, or a Steel Workers Union), and thus avoid all the infighting and protectionism of one union poaching members from another in the same workplace, or demanding that a specific job be done by a specific union. Real solidarity.

It could be a sign of hope, a cause for inspiration, that workers are setting aside their factional disputes, and deciding to stand solidly together, in common interest against the capitalist foe. Except, it’s not. As it turns out, the call for industrial unions comes from the top of the TUC, General Secretary John Monks himself.

At the inaugural conference of the new banking union UNiFI (how appropriate) Monks described what he would like to see happen to unions in the 21st century. By 2010, he reckons, industrial unionism should be brought about, by merging more unions with a common interest in different sectors. The truth of the matter, however, is not a sudden conversion of union leaders to radical revolutionary unionism (oh, how that would please the Leftists, and how sorely disappoint), but rather is a response to a number of pragmatic concerns facing the union movement.

Competing for members 

The first, it appears, is that the TUC is anxious to avoid disputes being caused by the new union recognition laws instituted by the Labour Party as a reward for union electoral and financial support. According to Labour Research this presents the threat of “a new wave of competition between unions intent on gaining recognition” (emphasis added). To avoid that competition the TUC wants to change its internal structures in order to have the “active prompting of mergers by the TUC to create fewer unions. . . in key sectors like public services, education, transport . . .”

Once again the glorious leaders charge forth with presumptuousness, believing they actually are in charge, and that they can do as they say. However, obstacles await them. As the article further notes, “a substantial proportion of merger activity between 1988 and 1995 was purely expansionist, to compensate for declining memberships and finances” (emphasis added). Even where an “industrial” model has been followed, such as in the creation of UNISON (1,248,670 members), caveats remain. Most UNISON members are in local government (750,000), however “substantial numbers of manual workers in local government are organised by the general unions TGWU [881,625 members] and GMB [750,000].” This presents the almost insurmountable problem, acknowledged by the TUC that “some unions currently straddle two or more . . . sectors . . . it would be neither possible, nor desirable, to seek mass transfers of existing members.”

Of course, the leadership of each union has a vested interest in getting members. Members mean money—UNISON made £1 million “surplus” in 1997 and the T&GWU £11.2 millions. The UNISON General Secretary (Rodney Bickerstaffe) took home a salary of £68,840 + £19,129 “benefits”. Labour Research called that a “relatively modest” salary, and, indeed, it is, compared with similar positions in business—which is a fair comparison, because unions today are effectively a business, selling good labour relations. The emphasised sections in the quotes show this: when business is bad, firms merge to reduce running costs and open up markets; similarly, unions are competing for members and have a great deal in terms of money, investment and infrastructure to protect. Again, the leaders of the unions are as much not in charge as our beloved masters in Whitehall, and for the same reason—their plans are subject to the market, a market beyond their control.

Many leftists refuse to recognise this. Preferring to keep their dreams of leadership burning, they think it’s all a matter of the wrong people being in charge (generic Trotskyist quote, to be heard at almost any meeting: “The failure of the revolution in [insert country] in [insert year] was due to the lack of an adequate revolutionary leadership”). If pressure could be brought to bear, or the right people put in charge, then, oh then, the mass will to revolution of the working class can be unleashed.

The unions we deserve 

This is complete nonsense of course. The working class gets the unions, and the leadership, it deserves. Just as, according to Marx, a King is only a King because he is obeyed, so too are union leaders only union leaders because they are followed. To imagine they lead is to imbue them with mystical powers within themselves, and set up a phantasm of leadership that exactly mirror images the same phantasm as our masters believe. So long as the workers themselves are content to deal with such a union system, and its leaders, then such a union system and its leaders will remain, and will have to react to the expectations of the members.

The way to industrial unions, or socialist unions, or whatever, is not through the leadership of the unions. The unions will always reflect the nature of their memberships, and until their membership change, they will not change. So long as workers accept unions as another form of business, giving them insurance, then unions will have to behave like a business offering insurance, competing for members. Unions are neither inherently reactionary, nor inherently revolutionary; they are simply a means to an end for their membership.

The only way to change unions is not through seizing or pressurising the leadership, but through making sure that they have a committed membership, a socialist membership. And that is where the Socialist Party can come in, through making socialists, through that and that alone—making people committed heart and soul to working class interests, democracy and the establishment of socialism. Anything else is just abstractions and formalisms.

My father was, I’m happy to say, refuted by that student union meeting. Among those that did show, a great debate ensued—during the discussion of the sports facilities. People questioned the officials closely and carefully, determined to make sure that they knew what exactly was happening with their valued sports facilities. When folks have a strong emotional and practical commitment, they can make grass roots democracy work. It’s up to us to encourage that commitment.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: The Class Struggle. A Lesson from Germany. (1927)

Editorial from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are large numbers of people who believe that discontent and social upheavals are caused by the propaganda of “agitators,” and conversely that they can be prevented by counter propaganda. For them Czarism was overthrown by Lenin, the miners’ strike was the work of Cook and the class struggle was created by Marx. They are unable to distinguish between the observation of facts and their causation. Marx did not preach the class war in the crude sense of desiring class hatred, either for its own sake or for any other purpose. What he did was to observe that in society as it existed before his eyes there was an employing, property-owning class and a propertyless employed class. No-one disputes this as the statement of an obvious truth, but for Marx it was not only interesting but also historically important. And having observed and examined the class division and consequent class struggle Marx rightly urged the need to apply this knowledge to current political movements. The workers must, he said, recognise that at bottom their movement, like the preceding movement by capitalists to establish and promote capitalism, is a class movement. It must eventually define clearly its class aim of transferring the means of production from private hands to the community. Marx never supposed that he, or other Socialists, “invented” the class struggle or the idea of Socialism. Socialism is the product of Capitalism in that the facts of the existing system gradually force themselves upon the notice of the workers. The task of the Socialist propagandist is to hasten recognition of the facts of social development by directing the workers’ attention to them.

The Socialist could not hope to propagate Socialist ideas outside of capitalist conditions or before the existence of capitalism. The propagandist with the Socialist idea is himself only the product of those conditions. A handful of Bolsheviks, intelligent and devoted though they may be, cannot build Socialist society in a country—Russia—which is overwhelmingly peasant in composition and organisation. They can and are doing the good work of speeding up development on modern industrial capitalist lines. Similarly unlimited capitalist propaganda in industrial Germany and England cannot prevent, it can only delay, the growth of Socialist ideas in the minds of the workers. It is with great pleasure that we read of an enquiry undertaken by the International Catholic Labour Unions “into the sentiments of those German workmen who are organised in the Roman Catholic ‘Christian Trade Unions’ which have a total membership of more than 600,000.” The enquiry is reported fully in the Manchester Guardian (January 1st, 1927) from which the following is reproduced :—

“INDUSTRIAL PEACE” IN GERMANY.

Views of Catholic Trade Unionists.

(From our Berlin Correspondent). 

“The idea of “industrial peace” and of “reconciliation between workmen and employers” has been promoted with as great energy, skill and sincerity in Germany as in any other country. Leading German industrialists, even when they themselves are Conservative, have publicly declared that Germany cannot be governed without the help of the working class, and that Germany should have a coalition Cabinet in which the Socialist party is represented.

What German workmen themselves think of “industrial peace” has been rather a mystery, to which the Labour Press has given no satisfactory clue. But members of the Roman Catholic Centre party have, on behalf of the International Catholic Labour Unions, made an inquiry into the sentiments of those German workmen who are organised in the Roman Catholic “Christian trade unions,” which have a total membership of more than 600,000.

The result is of extraordinary and universal interest. The Christian trade union, which have been criticised as “unrevolutionary,” as subservient to the Church, and as hostile to the class war, form the moderate right wing of the German Labour movement.

The inquiry has been conducted with that complete honesty which the German Centre party always shows when it tries to establish facts that are important to itself. Questionnaires were circulated amongst the Roman Catholic clergy throughout the industrial districts of Germany as well as amongst the officials of the Christian trade unions. The following is a brief summary of the main subjects of the questions, as well as of the answers that were returned. Many of the answers are detailed enough to fill a book, and many were after long discussions with the workmen. In every case the questions relate to Roman Catholic workmen organised in the Christian trade unions.

I. — RELATIONS BETWEEN WORKMEN AND EMPLOYER.

The general tendency of the answers is to record growing enmity. The mildest expression used is “cold neutrality.” Other answers mention “estrangement,” “distrust,” “opposition,” “tension,” or speak of downright hostility. One answer says that the employers “have no soul and no conscience,” and another that “the purely capitalist attitude of most employers does not allow trustful co-operation to grow up. . . . In the factory the workman feels that he is not treated like a human being. … In public and political life he sees that the employers are, for the most part, on the side of reaction, and hostile to democracy.” The possibility of any improvement is denied. Some of the answers show that the industrial peace overtures made by German employers have aroused nothing but suspicion. Those employers who are themselves Roman Catholics are criticised with special severity. One answer says that “there is bitterness over the fact that Roman Catholic employers limit their Catholic ethics to their private lives and are anxiously concerned not to allow these ethics to appear in their business activities.” Many complaints are made about the “soullessness” of the big industrial concerns. Complaints from smaller factories and workshops, where a more personal relationship between employer and employed is still possible, are, on the whole, less acrimonious.

II.— THE CLASS WAR.

Intellectually and as a Christian the Roman Catholic workman condemns the class war. But, as many of the answers show, hostility towards the possessing classes has a deep emotional influence upon him. Workmen who have no property of their own and are entirely dependent on their wages are filled with a sense of insecurity and dependence. They feel an ever-deepening resentment, “especially when wealth is displayed before their eyes by the propertied classes. It is their daily experience that the propertied treat the non-propertied classes as beings of a lower order — nothing, indeed, embitters a workman more than this.”

III. — THE INTELLECTUALS.

A common fate in the years of revolution and inflation created some fellow-feeling between workmen and intellectuals, but almost all traces of this have vanished. It is only “in an occasional priest or an occasional physician that the workman sees a true friend nowadays.” Generally speaking he likes and respects the clergy who are engaged in welfare work, but the clergy and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole are losing their hold upon him. An answer from the Rhineland states that “one must be blind in both eyes not to see that the authority of the clergy is dwindling.”

IV. — SOCIALISM.

There has been a great change; for whereas Roman Catholic workmen in Germany used to be hostile to Socialism, they are now no longer so, except in a purely theoretical manner. Almost all the answers agree on this point, although they vary in their attempts to explain it. In the economic struggle there is practically no difference between Socialist and Roman Catholic workmen. If the Church were to wage war on the Socialist movement, it could not, so the answers emphasise, expect the Roman Catholic workmen in Germany to show the slightest enthusiasm for such a war.

V.—COMMUNISM.

On the whole the prestige and the persuasive power of the Communist movement have diminished. It still takes a hold on those who think that Socialism is not coming quickly enough. Its influence on young and undeveloped workmen is considerable. The attempt to make Communism attractive to Roman Catholics by representing it as a kind of primitive Christianity has met with some success.

VI.—THE YOUNG GENERATION.

Youthful Roman Catholic workmen on the whole show great mental independence and an inclination towards Radicalism. They observe the formalities of the Catholic faith but without religious enthusiasm. There is a broad tendency amongst them to strive for a united trade union movement, irrespective of faith. Considerable numbers are attracted by the semi-military organisations of Fascist Right and Communist Left.”

Here we have extraordinary evidence of the truth of the materialist view of history. The highly organised, richly financed and skilful propaganda of the Roman Catholic Church is helpless against the educational effect of the actual conditions of working class life. Marx truly described religion as the “Opium of the People,” but to misquote a Biblical saying, “Man cannot live by opium alone.” In the long run he demands material comforts, and rejects the social system with the religious apologists for it, because they offer him the opium of religion when what he needs is bread.

Single union deals (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ford's decision not to go ahead with a new plant in Dundee was based, so most of the media would have us believe, on the controversy that surrounded the single union deal they had agreed with the AEU. The guilty party we were told was the TGWU who opposed the deal. So here we have the unlikely picture presented to us of the big bad TGWU scaring off the little Ford corporation who only had the good intentions of "creating employment" in the Dundee area. Of course the more likely truth is that Ford withdrew because investment in Dundee was less advantageous than it had previously seemed. What the issue did do was to bring the discussion of single union deals out into the open once again.

However as usual under capitalism, misrepresentation has replaced clear information and the debate surrounding this issue has tended to be distorted. To discuss single union deals in a clear light we need to look beneath the surface arguments. By doing this we will find that it is not so much single union deals that are in dispute as the contents of some of these agreements. Secondly we need to analyse the type of environment in which employers have found it more advantageous to sign agreements with a single union. The point here is that the issue cannot be isolated from conditions that exist within modern capitalism.

The first point to be made is that a single union having sole negotiating rights with a particular company is not something which is without precedent. Nevertheless it is true that in British industrial relations multi-union recognition, with each union representing a separate grade of workers, has been the norm. However in the past few years we have seen the growth of single union agreements and many of these have included provisions which have brought about a changed union-management relationship. Some of the earliest single union deals included the ones signed by the EETPU with Hitachi and Toshiba and the AEU's agreement with Nissan. More recently the EETPU have reached a similar agreement with Brother Industries, a Japanese-owned company based in North Wales, whilst the AEU have signed such a deal with Dunlop on Tyneside and the GMB have agreed to a single union deal with British Cable Services owned by Robert Maxwell. In 1985 the TGWU was manoeuvred into accepting a single union agreements at the Norsk Hydro Plant at Immingham on Humberside where the company had previously recognised the EETPU, AEU and ASTMS. [1] 

Ford in Dundee

The growth of single union deals is thus undeniable. But the controversy over them is not, as the media would have us believe, merely over the concept of single unionism but has more to do with the contents of some of these agreements and the way in which they are concluded. This fact stands out particularly in relation to the AEU's agreement with Ford at the proposed plant for Dundee. What precisely was it about the deal that the TGWU objected to? Whilst of course it could be pointed out that had the TGWU been the union chosen their attitude might have been different there is evidence to suggest that the TGWU would not have accepted the agreement as it stood. Firstly, the leadership of the two unions stand far apart on the issue of single union deals and also with the current balance on the TGWU national executive favouring the left it is unlikely that such an agreement could or would have been accepted. Secondly it seems likely that Ford chose the AEU because they were more likely to agree to a package that undercut the existing national agreement between the company and the unions covering pay and conditions for 44,000 workers at 22 plants. Furthermore the leadership of the AEU and the EETPU have been the most willing to organise plants and companies not by recruiting members but by approaching top management of the companies concerned. For example in the deal agreed to between the EETPU and Brother Industries, whilst the TGWU were attempting to recruit workers at that company the EETPU negotiated a deal with the company to gain sole negotiating rights for all employees at the company's electronic typewriter plant at Wrexham and its microwave oven plant at Ruabon, seemingly without the agreement of the employees concerned.

Certainly the TGWU's criticism of the AEU 's deal with Ford seems justified from a trade union point of view. Ron Todd, General Secretary of the TGWU, highlighted the dangers of the deal in the following way.

Ford planned to exploit Dundee's need for investment by setting up a low pay wedge there.

The point of this was to undermine the pay and conditions won through years of struggle. The danger was, Todd continued:

That the company would close down their plants and transfer their work to Dundee at sub standard wages.

Once Ford had been allowed to locate the plant without honouring national agreements how long would it be. Todd asked, before it "decides to try the same trick again?" The point is. then, that the content of the agreement is the stumbling block and not the fact that only a single union is involved. Furthermore one of the most important aspects is how the company or plant is organised. Is it to be on the basis of recruitment of the workers concerned or by negotiations with the company over the heads of the employees? The latter is no basis for solid trade union organisation.

No-strike agreements 

Several single union deals contain "no-strike" provisions. For example most, if not all, of the agreements involving the EETPU include no-strike clauses and several of these make use of pendulum arbitration. Under this method if the two sides reach deadlock on a certain issue then it is resolved by an outside and so-called independent arbitrator who is bound to decide in favour of either the company or the union there being no possibility of a compromise solution. The argument in favour of such a method is that the two sides will be encouraged to reach a negotiated settlement due to the danger that the arbitrator may decide against them. The problem from a trade union viewpoint is that being unable to take any industrial action they will be unable to put any pressure on the arbitrator. In a situation where the company is determined to force through a change it is unlikely that the arbitrator's decision will be reached on the basis of neutrality. Whilst this system may provide some benefit to workers' organisations when they are in a weak bargaining position, unions tied to such agreements will be unable to use their full might when they are in a stronger bargaining position. It is this longer term goal, the ability to constrain union bargaining power when it is at its height, that lies behind the desire of employers for no-strike agreements as part of single union deals. It could of course be pointed out that such agreements are not as yet legally binding but action could be taken against any employees who engage in industrial action on an individual basis in breach of contract.

Not all of the single union deals signed in recent years include no-strike provisions. For example the agreements between the GMB and British Cable Services and between Dunlop's Tyneside plant and the AEU do not include such a clause. The agreement involving the GMB stipulates that both sides should not take any industrial action while a dispute is in procedure. The AEU's deal with Dunlop states that if management and the union cannot resolve a dispute they will mutually accept ACAS conciliation. The agreement between the TGWU and Norsk includes a six stage procedure for the resolution of collective issues. Stage six. if reached, allows for the matter to be put to a secret ballot, with the wording on the ballot form subject to joint agreement. The clause relating to the overall dispute procedure states that during all stages of the procedure:

  It is clearly understood that there will be no deviation from normal working by way of coercion or disruptive action by individuals or groups etc. in any circumstances . . . The company in return will not invoke any form of lockout.

It goes on to warn workers that.

should any individual or group of employees wish to challenge this practice he/she or they will be severely disciplined 

Trade union representation 

Some single union deals also include the type of communication mechanisms that exist in many of the more sophisticated non-union companies. For example, in many of the EETPU deals and in the TGWU's agreement with Norsk, there exists a Company Advisory Board or in the latter case a council. The agreement between the EETPU and Toshiba includes a provision for the establishment of a Company Advisory Board (CoAB). In many ways the function of this body limits the traditional role of the trade unions. The CoAB at Toshiba includes the following provisions. Regarding the election of employee representatives to sit on this body it states that in areas where trade union representation exists the candidate may be either a unionist or non-unionist. Regarding the role of a CoAB member it stipulates that a person should come to a meeting with an open mind and should not be mandated. In addition the member must not be committed to a trade union line. Furthermore the rules accepted by the EETPU state:

  The EETPU. recognises that all collective issues will be raised at CoAB in the first instance and will only be taken up by the trade union if they cannot be resolved by CoAB advice. [3]

The CoAB thus reduces trade union involvement; union representation is not welcomed and where it has trade union representatives on it they are constrained in representing either the interests of their members or union policy.

New technology

The movement in recent years to single union deals is in many ways connected to the demands and possibilities that new technology makes on, and offers to, the representatives of capital. Implicit in the following is the limitations of trade unionism as it is pulled along with, and can only respond in a defensive manner to. the dictates of capital. Here we can also see how technology under capitalism is used not to free but to chain workers to the demands of capital. For one of the most important issues for management in the 1980s is the need to be able to use labour in a flexible way so as to keep expensive production systems flowing and to meet rapid changes in market demand. Many companies who have negotiated single union deals and many others who have pursued a non-union strategy, operate in high technology industries where the need to have a flexible labour force is especially important. Where a union does exist it is obviously easier to move people from job to job in an environment where there are not separate unions representing different crafts and occupations. A flexible labour force means workers being trained in a variety of skills (cross skill training) so they can be moved around as the productive needs of the company dictate. Thus, in many high technology companies, there is a movement to single status employment conditions, common wages and conditions for both blue and white collar workers. Flexibility of labour and single status objectives, two concepts that go hand in hand, are included in most single union deals. It has in fact been noted that one of the major reasons why Nissan rejected a multi-union deal was because it was felt that this would have led to an erosion of the company's flexibility and single status objectives.

The section in the agreement between Norsk and the TGWU on flexibility states that it is the company's policy that workers will have no rigid job demarcations. It goes on to state:

  The whole objective is to achieve a level of flexibility on site so that any employee will, when the need arises, be prepared and willing to do any job regardless of status, function or position provided that the work to be done is within the individual's ability and competence level. In order to achieve this degree of flexibility the company acknowledges the need for extra training to which all employees are expected to be committed, whether it be to be trained themselves or to train others. [4]

The above objective is obviously easier in a single union rather than a multi-union environment.

The point should also be made that new technology not only creates new demands on employers which are passed on to the workforce, it also creates new opportunities for the representatives of capital in their struggle with organised labour. In the environment of the 1980s changes in technology, combined with anti-union legislation and an economic recession, have enabled employers to curtail or even end craft control and to initiate procedures to curb union bargaining power. A prime example of this was the print industry. In this situation unions have been powerless to offer much resistance.

The socialist view

What should be the attitude of a socialist or trade unionist to the type of issues we have focused on here? Firstly a pessimistic view of the future of the trade union movement in Britain can be over-emphasised. As indicated. even if single union deals continue to grow as many argue they will, it is the content of the deal that needs to be examined. One vital feature is that trade union organisation needs to be based on recruitment of employees not on agreements with top management over workers' heads. Secondly such setbacks that have occurred for unions have taken place in a hostile environment that the history of capitalism indicates will not last forever. Thirdly the type of setbacks suffered by trade unions in America where trade union density has declined to somewhere around 18 per cent from a figure of over 35 per cent in 1945, seems unlikely to be repeated in Britain. Unions in Britain in many industries have become too deeply enmeshed in the collective bargaining mechanisms to be easily removed. This factor and the new found ability of well organised groups to use secret ballots to their own advantage was evident in the recent Ford dispute as well as in other recent disputes in the motor industry in particular.

On the other hand there are many problems to overcome. The anti-democratic antiunion laws of the present government are still causing major problems as the NUS's dispute with P&O has indicated. In response to changes in new technology, a change in union structure and tactics may be required. This could perhaps develop at workplace level. For example unions at Shell have accepted more flexible working arrangements but have been able to maintain a multi-union situation. To help achieve this they have reformed their shop steward representative constituencies.

Unions are, of course, necessary and vital organisations for the working class so long as capitalism remains in operation. Any member of the working class who believes that his or her interests can be served by company consultative committees or the like has little understanding of the class struggle that takes place daily within capitalism, based as it is on the irreconcilable interests of those who produce but do not possess and those who possess but do not produce. Certainly what makes a person a socialist is an understanding of the history of working class struggle against a class with opposing interests. A reading and understanding of that history shows us that the only solution is the building of a movement which is capable of creating a society which is not divided into employers and employed or state versus people. Furthermore the society that replaces capitalism will not be based on production for exchange by means of economically coerced labour, but on production for use through understanding and voluntary co-operation. The basis of such a society is the common ownership of the means of production which will replace private or state ownership. With no class divisions based on a clash of economic interest, trade unions will no longer be necessary.

However whilst current divisions remain it is in the interests of the working class to organise themselves in trade unions, become active in them and undertake the defensive struggle within capitalism. Furthermore trade unionists should campaign for a movement free from any attachments to a political party that stands for capitalism and this of course includes the Labour Party. But trade unions have their limitations — they can only react to capitalism; they cannot end it. So trade unionists, and indeed all members of the working class, need to go further and help build a movement capable of ending the capitalist system.

Ray Carr

[1] Details of this can be found in a pamphlet produced by Northern College in co-operation with TGWU Region 10 — I. Linn. Single Union Deals. This is a case study of the Norsk Hydro Plant, at Immingham. Humberside.

[2]  I. Linn — Single Union Deals, p. 16

[3] Agreement between EETPU and Toshiba on CoAB

[4]  Linn, op. cit. p. 16