"If hard factual evidence was really needed to confirm that industrial relations remain in a parlous state at a time of acute economic difficulty, no thinking person could do better than study the official returns on stoppages of work through labour disputes, published today... More than 1m. workers are involved in stoppages in the first seven months of 1970, representing the loss of over 6m. working days, more than double the level of 1969... "The Times Business News, August 28th, 1970. "The trade unions hitherto concentrated their attention too exclusively on the local and direct struggle against capital. They have not yet completely realised their power to attack the very system of wage slavery and present-day methods of production..." From a resolution passed on trade unions by the First International, Geneva, 1866.
According to the press Britain is in the midst of an unprecedented strike wave (the number of strikes being the highest on record) combined with a wages explosion (E9.84m. up per week in the first seven months of this year as against £1.75m. in the same period last year, according to DEP figures).
We don't intend to counter capitalist propaganda by explaining that actually the unofficial strikers aren't really holding the country to ransom-on the contrary; in fact one of our complaints is that the trade union movement isn't doing just that.
It is more important to consider some of the problems facing trade unionists, and how revolutionary socialists should relate to them. We have a situation in which very large numbers of workers are willing to go into militant action against the employers, the state, and very often, their own union leaderships; however, all this militancy is doing little more than maintaining their present standard of living. Such a consideration will involve taking a look at the history of trade unions, their leadership, their role today. the problems they face and, most important, what revolutionary socialists should do.
Trade Unions Yesterday and Today Trade unions are the basic organisation of the working class. They arise from the first steps in working class consciousness. The proletariat (i.e. whose whose sole and normal method of gaining their livelihood is selling their labour power) face the bourgeoisie as atomised units. Dispossessed of the ownership of the means of production, they face a class, the bourgeoisie, which has the monoply of their means of livelihood. For most of the proletariat's history it has faced the additional pressure of the reserve army of unemployed. In the elemental class struggle (directly over the rate of exploitation) workers would have been in an absolutely hopeless position but for their power of combination. Trade unions represented, in their origin, the placing on a permanent basis of those powers of combination and unity.
At first the British bourgeoisie responded by trying to break up and smash these organisations. The most dramatic and heroic episodes in the history of the British working class were concerned with the struggle to maintain the unions. Once the employers had learned that it was impossible to destroy the unions without provoking a permanent civil war, they sought to come to terms with them. This change of attitude encompassed many years and was accompanied by a continual tug-of-war in which the employets sought to restrict and emasculate the unions. The capitalists were only prepared to grant full legalisation to the unions when they were certain that by a combination of bribery of strata of workers (the so-called aristocracy of labour) and integration of the leadership of the unions into bourgeois society they could contain them.
The change in outlook is well illustrated historically: Ken Coates in Trade Union Register 1969 compares the 100th Congress of the TUC:
"A solemn and vast concourse, it followed a series of gargantum celebrations in which, it seemed, practically all the English Establishment were ready to join. Her Majesty, flanked on all sides by the responsible statesmen of the General Council whom she had ennobled, dined before television cameras to greater honour of labour... win une tirst congress, a micagre gathering of 34 virtually unknown men, convoked...with difficuly to meet an unprecedented offensive against the unions...
One could add that the 1968 circus was a far The Red Mole 15th September 1970 Page 6 cry from the TUC resolution of 1868 which recommended the First International "to the support of the working men of the United Kingdom, especially of all organised bodies, and strongly urges them to become affiliated to that body.
Since the development of mass trade unions in the advanced capitalist states, the bourgeoisie has followed this unceasing policy of trying to integrate the trade unions into bourgeois society -aided and abetted in most countries by social democratic leaders. At the height of imperialism's power. this policy was intricately woven into the process of granting reforms-legal, negotiating rights, etc.—which ensured a "place " for the trade unions. In social terms this meant institutionalising the social role of the trade union bureaucrat.
The Trade Union Bureaucrat The trade union bureaucrat is grateful for his enshrinement-he is always ready and willing to stop or moderate rank-and-file struggles. In time of full employment he restrains the workers from taking full advantage of the shortage of labour. In time of war, from his office desk, he assists in the raising of cannon fodder, and he does his best to replenish the depleted labour force from women, the young, the old, and the untrained. In time of capitalist decline he persuades the workers to accept sacrifices "in the national interest". The trade union bureaucrat can be relied upon to discipline wild-cat" strikers. As the Donovan Report noted:
"Many trade union leaders have gone on record unequivocally as being opposed to such breaches (of negotiating procedures), and we have no doubt of their sincerity in the matter. On occasions when their active intervention in an unconstitutional dispute has become necessary, they have almost inevitably sought to persuade strikers to go back to work...
Indeed, the trade union bureaucrat is obliged to attack any rank-and-file action outside his control. His whole social position depends upon him being able to "deliver the goods". If he cannot control the rank and file, he is no use to the bourgeoisie. But this very need to control the rank and file means that he must also "deliver some goods" to the workers as well. Inus une trade union bureaucrat's manoevres are determined by his social position.
But we have to face the fact that most people who end up as trade union bureaucrats commence their career as militants (in fact the most effective ones from the point of view of the bourgeoisie very often started out as socialists or even revolutionaries). What goes wrong?
As noted in Rakovsky's famous essay on the dangers of professionalism in the workers' orga nisations, there is a built-in tendency for the emergence of "professional" or "bureaucratic" interests in the workers movement which are in contradiction to those of the rank and file membership. This is especially the case in times of comparative class peace and the corollary: low participation by the membership.
Trade unions in advanced capitalist countries are especially prone to this danger. Continous contact with employers (who turn out to be quite pleasant personally), accompanied by a middle-class standard and style of life, psycho logical pressures such as praise from both employers and government, make a powerful impact on full-time trade union officials. And, of course, unofficial rank-and-file action is in direct conflict with the routinism of a trade union office, disrupting the possibility of a quiet, smooth life.
The best of left-wingers find these pressures extremely difficult to resist. Only a revolutionary ideology, backed by a revolutionary organisation and revolutionary discipline, can enable people to resist integration in such circumstances This situation makes doubly criminal the action of those tendencies (starting with the Communist Party)(1) which concentrate upon winning union positions as a strategy against the right wing. This policy is "rewarded" by sensational renegacies: witness Will Paynter and Dave Bowman, who chose precisely the time of sharpened class struggle to resign from the Communist Party and openly ally themselves with the right wing.
The answer is not, of course, to refuse to stand for union positions-such a policy would severely inhibit the chances of influencing large numbers of workers once a firm trade union base has been formed. On the contrary, the answer is to go for union positions (when there is rank-and-file backing) but to demonstratively refuse to be integrated into the middle-class style of life union officials enjoy. A revolutio nary trade union official should openly donate large sums of money (all his wages above that of the average member he represents) to left organisations. He should campaign constantly -even to the point of resigning his position should this be a positive step-for regular elec tion of officials, the reduction of trade union officials' wages, and the right of recall by those who elected him. Failure to do this, even on the grounds of preserving a base to "do constructive work", will inevitably begin a process which will end in degeneration.
Shop Stewards Shop stewards have been the target of the hatred of the capitalist press which is a sure indication that they are more in tune with the rank and file than the trade union bureaucrats. In general they can be distinguished from trade union orricials by une tact unat uney are lay members and in practice are usually directly elected and even often recallable. Because of the relative increase in the importance of shopfloor bargaining the role of shop stewards has become more and more decisive. In much capitalist propaganda the shop steward is pictured as a wild militant. This propaganda effects some on the left, particularly middle-class students and lecturers who tend to romanticise the working class as compensation for their own guilt feelings about their class origins. The truth is much more complex. The Donovan Report had this to say about management's attitude towards shop stewards:
"Only 2% of managers held that shop stewards were unreasonable, 95% taking the view that they were either very reasonable or fairly reasonable. Four managers out of five thought that shop stewards were either very efficient or fairly efficient at their job. Nearly a third of them thought that shop stewards were a lot of help to management, and most of the remainder that shop stewards were of some nerd..
The objective position of shop steward mak es them much more responsive to ra k-andThe control than Tace union orcas OUTE would be a big mistake to assume that they will, because of this. automatically and spontaneous ly become militants, let alone revolutionary socialists. On the contrary, the best shop stewards will be the politically formed ones and even shop stewards are subject to tremendous pressure in tel tunctioning Revolutionaries must explain that the present offensive against shop stewards is designed to weaken rank-and-file control over bargaining and union organisation. The left in the trade union movement must fight tooth and nail against moves to integrate shop stewards into the union apparatus (by making them full-time, for instance). It must explain that the obsession of the capitalist press with "unofficial" strikes is because these strikes are the ones which enable workers to directly respond to changes in their situation quickly and decisively. They are the strikes least controllable by the trade union bureaucrats.
Still Workers' Organisations?
Certain people have argued that just as the Labour Party is in its essential function a bourgeois formation so are trade unions basically props for the status quo. Of course trade unions have gone far from their original role-it is not now a question of workers creating trade unions to meet the bourgeoisie, the worker now finds the trade union already in existence with its own apparatus and bureaucracy. In many cases a worker will be unable to find employment unless he is a member of the appropriate trade union. In some unions, this is used to control militants, e.g. the ETU. The example of Pilkingtons and the way the GMWU collaborated with the bosses in trying to smash the newly formed General and Glass Workers' Union, is fresh in all our minds.
One can have considerable sympathy with these views but they are extremely mistaken. Whilst the trade union bureaucrats have control of the unions they still have to be responsive to rank-and-file wishes. In many trade unions there is a polarisation between "left" and right in the bureaucracy and real battles are fought out. Whilst we must not create illusions in the Jones's and Scanlons, it must be noted that the victory of the tendencies around them in the two largest unions in the country was a big blow to the plans for integrating unions into capitalist planning. Their verbal militancy, furthermore, helps to make for greater rank-and-file action. Undoubtedly one of the big factors in the present strike wave is the fact that millions of workers believe that their union leaders favour militancy. Thus in a distorted way workers exercise control over their organisation.(2)
A further test of the essential differences between the Labour Party and the trade unions is shown by a simple fact: no one anywhere in the political spectrum, no matter how right wing, has suggested legal sanctions against the Labour Party. Why? Because it presents no challenge whatsoever to capitalism (instead it is propping it up) and is in no way an obstacle to British monopoly capital's attempts to moder nise itself (on the contrary, it attempted to do the job for capitalism). The main social role of unions today remains defending workers' interests.
Some Structural Problems Trade unionists face many particular problems today: 1. The growth of unemployment which seems certain to increase still further even in the absence of a recession. Unemployment is now rouchly double what it was before Labour came to swer-one of the few lasting monuments to Wils in's term of office!! Because the economy is so stagnant, unemployment will tend to incre se (if production does not increase at least .: Tast as productive potential unemploy ment • il increase). 2. Whit year-to-year figures vary, there is a built-in tendency for the proportion of trades unionists in the total labour force to drop. The main explanation of this is that many of those sect rs which have been traditional strongholds of trade unionism have tended to declinemining, railways, shipbuilding, etc.-whilst many of the new industries which have replacec them are more difficult to organise. This factor has outweighed the growth of white-collar trade unionism and the tendency for more 3. Whilst there has been a huge concentration of capital and growth of monopolies, union organisation still corresponds to the old employer/employee relationship. The growth of international monopolies and especially the developments likely should Britain join the Common Market have had no corresponding response whatsoever from the trade unions.
In general, trade union militants should respond to these problems by fighting for a bold and militant policy of: (a) total opposition to redundancies. End haggling about redundancy compensation rates and instead demand no sackings, but work sharing. Every worker sacked is one more unemployed, every trade unionist "on the stones" is a blow to trade unionism (b) a large-scale recruiting campaign especially directed at the young, women, white-collar and new industry sectors. Trades Councils would be the ideal local bases for such a campaign. It goe without saying that such a campaign would be a formality unless the unions can demonstrate by their militancy that unions are worthwhile La campaign to link up trade unionists in combines, industries and internationally. There should be a call for a European rank and file conference to work out a unified response to the attacks of international capital upon workers conditions. (d) a campaign for the social ownership of the "commanding heights" of industry under workers control.
Present-Day Attacks on the Trade Union The bourgeoisie has always, of course, sought to limit the role of trade unions either directly by legal sanctions, victimisation of militants, etc., or indirectly, by persuading trade union leaders to collaborate with them. However, there are a number of special reasons why capitalism is at this stage trying to directly con trol and shackle the unions.
Firstly, we live in an era of sharpened international competition, and victory in this struggle will go to those who can use the most up-to-date techniques. This means bigger and bigger units, round the clock shift working, rationalised division of labour, the sweeping aside of all obstacles to the introduction of new techniques and methods, the more and more rapid replacement of plant and machinery. The normal functioning of "free" trade union bar gaining and especially workshop negotiations over the control of conditions is a major obsta cle to this process.