For Marxists, the comfortable coascational division between political power and Siodustrial relarions" is a meaningless one, since the key to palitical power lies in the control of the creation » of the wealth of a society, Indeed, the creación of the illusion of such a division is one of the main ideological props of capitalim. Trie reproduced by the hack worshies of the trade union bureaucracy, such as Victor Feather, and tion between economic and political action, To break down this division is one of the main tasks of Marxists.
SHOP-FLOOR NECOTTATIONS In Britain, this division was fostered by actual? conditions in a historical period now rapidly drawing to its end. Through the later fifties and carly sixcies the most aigniticant gains could be made. not by narion-wide union employer negaciation, nor by political action, even in ment, The main development of workers power was in shop stewards' committees, negotiating in local planes foe berser local wages and local conditions The piece-rate payment system fostered this localison, It cannot be said chac ic bus been very successful la comparative cerma The overwhelming emphasis was on wage increasos, and even in this respect continental workers were catching up on their British brothers in the whole perind, and love now overtaken them. But wage increases are quickly eliminated by inflation. The European emplaris on sorter hours, longer holdays. carlier retireseat and better pensions and securicy benefies involves gains worth a very large sum in cash retros, and in living quality.
Nevertheless, a shop stewards movement has grown, patchy in its distribution, bur with a considerable power and confidence, The correct approach of Marxiss to this mpvement at che time was clearly the development of a workers control movement, which offered the hope of developing and generalising the cootrol which militance were fighting for in the local work place Such a movement was developut around the workers control conferences, but political differences emerged benecen chose who wanted to develop a movement at the base, and chose who hoped to orient it in a direccion tinged wich academist and linked to the more radical noion. Leaderchips. The lacter won a considerable part of the resources becoming available and split off into the institute of Workers' Control, becoming increasingly irrelevant.
WORKERS UNDER AZTACK in the professional amateurism and caricature class arrogaace of the public school system, ensured that British econornic growth did not match that of its European dvals, even during the expansion peried. Britain this felt the present workhride chin carlier and more sharply chan the others, and the resuir ban been a three-fold attack on the workers, to mabitise profir margins as the expense of the share of wages in she nationaleconomy, The three spects: of this attack are productivity ideals, incomes. policies and anti anion legalition. Both Tory and Labour govertiments have encouraged the former, against a mounting resistance che Labour govern tient emphasised incomes policy. and the Tories, in che most determined onslaught of all, are intent on literally destroy ing the trade union movement as we know it by legislacion.
WHAT ARE ACTION COMMITTEES It is in this context chat committees of action become relevant. For localism, parochialism, and the divorce of economica from policies are quite meaningless in this period. A desperate rallying of the militant sectoes of the working class against che whielwind bas to take place. But the institutional fratewurk of the labour movement is largely ossified. Union branches are poorly arsended: most are stultified wich bureaucratic procedures and pecty office seekers, related to layers of time serving and unimagina tive district officials for whom anything more than run of tbe mill is the greatest and central enery. Most of all a union branch is limited ro its members; it divider che working classamong its unions.
Trades councils frequently suffer from similar burcancratisation. Wile some are militant, most are not. The chief concern of the officials of many of them appears to be to avoid entering into communication with any organisation not affiliated so the TUC. Above all they are delegate bodies, and are thus very mixed in their representation, reflecting the weaknesses of the local union branches, As for the political wing. of the mocement, the Labour Party bas no significant attraction for the militants in whom the strengch of the movement lies, and while they, and the rest of us. will no doubt vote for ir if che opportunicy arises, it is without any illusions chas a significane change can be effected, action in its struggle against the Bill. Fifthly, although such illusions do persist to some extent among broader maases of workers. This is why it is a policical mistake for tiny left groupings with no mass following to concepment with socialist policies. The militants with tively harmful in the Worken Priss. The actions Labour leaderships beliene wither of the Communit Party which, apart from the bour Pity, & the only P cal force of airy Ing lately concerned with place seeking in union machinery to the base. So its response to the current situation has been very ambivalent. While thered a recog sition of the exteeme danger, and an essential itical move in the development of the Culin Committees for the Defence of Trade Unice which have so far been the most significant fore in the campaign against the Ball these bodies ace themselves restrictive and bureaucratised, often composed almost exclusively of leading Com munist Party inton bureaboris and sympathetic bureaucrats, and as a result are inflexible and Lack dynamism ACTION COMMITTTES ARE INSTRUMENTS OF STRUGGLE Committees of action are thus becoming meaningful to more and more militants, JEwe had been able to develop the mockees! contro! movement in a different direction there might already have been a nuclees of organisations in existence a nich could have formed the basis of committees of action. As it is, they must be developed largely from scratch. They have many of crass mediocrities, char saything can be advantages Fircly, they can weite militants from different enions and industries in a locality, withoat restriction. Secondly they are not bareaucratised, and not limited as to what may be discussed or bow it can be discussed, whar actions may be taken or how they may be ralten, Thirdly chey are a location in which members of Marxis groupings and industrial milicents can interact, and chos deepen and broadeo the understanding of militants and problems of relating analysis to neaningful action, without which analysis itself becomes sterile and distorted. Fourchly, the best sections of the srudent body can be involved in action for and assistance to a coonmittee of action. Already ar least one university student federstion in Britain has overwhelmingly voted resources and assistance to a commictee of costumittees of action can revitalise some of the existing institutions of the labour movemen: by acting as pressure groups on crades councils, enion branches and bad officials. They are of course not alcernatives to or in opposition to PROPAGANDH CENTRES The deve al task of Marshots in t Itself, an aci to satisty the f have resources access to a duplicator and sot neglect of the development of a milican: political one wich typing skills are essentials. Secondly. it mse become knowa as the cenre io its area for propaganda against the attacks on the working class and the reasons for them, organis or union branches where!
Fourthly, it must be known as providing •sistance to workers in dispute, whether in the form of producing leaflets to publicive or inform warkers of the issues involved. helping with picketing, organising collections for strikers, attacking redundancies und assisting the unemployed far the Bill is Implemented, more and more militants themselves will be in this category, and the Committees can become importact in belping to prevent demoralisation).
Te seems nose unlikely now, in vier of che capitulation by the T.U.C. wich it leadership done to stop the Bil becoming law. THe sone shifts to the smuggle against its implementation. THe old localised tactics by which a factory committee was an island in itself, engaging in what were seen as purely etonomic struggles, are a recipe for cercain defeat. The Committees of Action are essential in developing strategies for defence, and for moving towards an offensive for socialism if struggles are won. This Is as true even if the help to develop the acasirivicy of Maraists to the atsempt to implement the Bill together with alt the other anti-working class queasures of the Tories generate sufficient power to force an election and the return of a Labour gorernme ps. for the same attack will only recur in ditferent forms and clotbed in a different rhetoric. Build the Committees of Action,
Dear Comrades, Your report that this journal and I myself are engaged in promoting a marriage between the Morning Star and Tribune is, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie. THe fact that if i a ridiculous lie mitigates it slightly, and harmonises it with a great pert of the rest of your content, but does not bring it nearer the truth. Moreover, this is not the first such lie you have told in recent months, and 1 am interested in the reasons for this.
Is there a personal explanation, simply that the comrade compiling the paper is something of a liar? Or is there an underlying social cause consisting of some material pressure you which causes you to need fo be? Or do you collectively believe that lies are alright. provided they are uselult Yours traternally, Ken Coates, The Spokesman, 15 Gamble Street.
Nottingham THE RED MOLE REPLIES:
We are pleased to receive such a vigorous denial from Corrade Coates. The fact that it is pathological rather than political secka to obscure the grin reality of the political evolution of both the journal to which be refers and the Institure for Workers' Control which he directs, We did not suggest that Comrade Coates was himself engaged in the technicalities of the afore-mentioned merger. We merely implied that the politics of his journal was aimed at producing this rather bizarre consensus.
Not only do we stand by this story, but we wish to make it clear to Comride Coates that his clear and open renunciation of revolutionary politics has not gone unnoticed. While the prooss of this renunciation bad been taking place for some time it has only recently been formalised by two letters in the bourgeois press. The first signed by Comride Coates himself appeared in The Listener (leh. 11, 1971) and berated the latter for ascribing revolutionary sins to hum: * Mr Wintour quates a short passage from one of my tracts, saying that I and my colleagues "make no secret of our revolutionary aims. Well, that is truly no secret, because we want to see a transformation which wil ultimarely lead to the developient of a classieas cooperative community and that without cant abouts to a terolation. But it is also no secret that I and very many other colleagues have argued, at some length, char such a revolution can only be brought ubout by the generol growth of a profoundly democratic sentiment arising from the painstaking development of practienl, active democratic institutions at every level of the present political economy: -For this reason bodies like the Institute for Workers Control do not condemn out of hand any of the existing democratic institutions, but rather work to ensure that all the destioo ratic potential within thein is taken."
After several more inches of similar waffle Coates proceeds to a dangerously ambiguous discussion of how to resolve the " differences of interest which exist between one worker and another, or one group and another. " He writes:
"Indeed, why would democracy be needed if it were not for the long-term need to provide institutions which can mediate equitably between divergent interests, and convert the clash of interests from a disruptive social force into a motor for all-round social advance?"
There follows another choice formulation:
"None of the liberal criteria of democracy would fons can be in any doubt as to where the be invalid if the medin were self-managed in a self manuged economy."
Just in case there was still doubt as to the politics of the WC a similarly abject letter appeared in the Timer (March 8, 1971) which took the latter to task for including the WC in its articles on "The Revolutionuries". The lattar was cinned luna aloen rolleamozin The statement that the Insfitute is attempting to translate Marxist aspiration Into fuct' is mislending The truth is that the majority of our members are nor Marxists at all: they find their commitment to worker control coming from a variety of Humanist and socialist traditions.. Its (the Institute's) influence so far as it exiata expresses itself through the established organisnLous of the Labour movement. It is the function of these bodies to carry workers" control into effect and the Institute has no wish to usurp Chese functious... If your correspondent believes the pursuit of industrial democracy by such meuns is ofterly fruitless, surely he is conceding out of hand the case made by the revolttionaries' whom he criticises."
With their pachological sensitivity to mister resentation Comrade Coatsky and bis "col lengues will claim that we have quoted selectively, and we would advise readen to consult the relevant papers at their local Lbrary.
If Comride Coatsky would like a political dincussion on relevance of the dictatorship of the proletariat or any otber Leninist theme, we would offer him our columns, as we have always done in the past. Moreover the statements which we have quoted are not the fust examples of revisionism to bave emanated from the howels of the WC. We leave it to our readers to judge whether there is a personal explanation, simply tlut Coatsky is an inveterate revisionist and capilalationist himself. Or is there a material pressure on him from sections of the Labour aristocracy which causes this revisionism. Or perhans the IC collectisely believes that revisionism is alright, provided it Is useful to trade union burcaucrats in theit campaign for re-election or cads to an amalgam of decrepit Stalinism and senile reformism!
The Pilkington Book Dear Comrades, I want to take issue with the very hostile review by Alan Jones of the recent study of the Strike at Pilingtons by Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts (in Red Mole 1-15 Feb), not simply because it was unfair to the book and its authors.
but because it raises some important questions about the outlook and strategy of the Left in Brituin First, some points of detail. Alun Jones sees fit to sneer at the authors because they include the firm of Pilkingtons in the list of those they thank in the Acknowledgements. This is contrasted with the work of IS and the SL.L, who are "it least genuinely attempting alter socicty in a way that would get rid of the diety form of class structure represented by the Pilkington family: "The implication is that Lane and Roberts are compromised, and their real position exposed, by their "thanking" Pilkingtons.
Well, in the Introduction to his book on Enoch Powell, Paul Foot, a prominent and deeply commitled member of IS, is obliged to declare with evident emburrassment that he is "grateful"
to Mr. Powell for his help. No one hus, to my Knowledge, suggested that this retleets adversely on Paul Foot, and no one who has read his book could suppose that it has in any way caused him to moderate his criticism of or hostility to Powell's role in stirring up race pro judice. Similarly, no one who, despite Alan Jones's review, actually reads Strike of Piking authors sympathies lie. They Lie, or lay, with the Rank and File Strike Committee. What is more, they managed to win the confidence, or the trust, of the RFSC (see the note on p. 179).
Now this is particularly signiticant when we consider what Alan Jones called the most sickening purt of the book", the very short sec most important point made by Lane and Koberts is that the approaches of these groups were treated with great suspicion by the RFSC. This may be a very unpalatable fact as far as Alan Jones is concerned, but I seo to reason to suppose that it is not true. The fact is that groups of working people, involved in a difficult and, for them, very risky, struptle are apt to be suspicious of anyone whom they suspect may be trying to use them, or manipulate them, in some way. This suspicion may be unjustified. but it is there, and it is u fact which Socialist organisationr have simply got to take into account. 1 know nothing of how IS or the SLL may have acted at Pilkingtons, but Lane and Roberts do quote one RFSC member as saying: *There was one man, X, who used to speak down to us and he really got my back up. I know he wanted to help us but the way he spoke marked me, and a lot of other people felt like that too.
It simply is the case that a lot of the approaches made by Socialist groups to workers are insensitive and counter productive. This is sometimes a matter of unexperience, but is equally likely to be a questien of dogmatist, of people coming from "outside" a particular situation with an air of knowing what it is all about, what the answers are, without having to he told anything about it. Workers welcome support in their struggles, and the Pilkington RFSC were no excoption to this, as Lane and Roberts make clear. But they do not welcome being told how to do things, and they are understandably cautions about putting their trust in outsiders. It is therefore to the credit of Lane and Roberts that they were able to win the trust of the RFSC at Pilkingsons.
It is of course possible that most readers of Red Mole are in Alan Jones position and have such a thorough understanding of strikes that they will learn little from this particular study.
useful study, purticularly since it is nor wittien from an angle of either hostility or careful neutrulity. As 1 say, the authors symparhies are obvious, and it is this which enables them to write with perception about the causes and character of this strike and of strikes in general.
Of course, it is open to Alan Jones to denounce the uuthors as liberals" if he wants to (and to label me as another for defending them), but there seems little more to this than a demonstrafion of one's own credentials as a militant or a revolutionary. There is little enough written these days which shows any understanding of why workers strike, or any sympathy for strike action, that I would have thought the appearance of this study, which will, with luck, reach quite a large audience, ought to be welcomed.
That Alan Jones saw fit to damn it suggests that he hus little contact with the climate of opinion outside the small world of the militant Left. But this self-enclosed quality of the Lett is not a virtue, but part of its disease.
Anthony Arblaster, 41 Westbrook Bank, Sheffield 11.
ALAN JONES REPLIES:
Comrade Arblaster unfortunately does not appeur to have properly read the review which he is criticising.
1. I did not simply give the book a very hostile review" What I actually said was "definitely buy the book" (hardly a damning (suggestion calculated to limit its audience), but I gue a certain reason for getting it, which was to buy it "for the contribution of the Pikington strikers, not for the contribution of the authors". In other words the quotations from.
and descriptions of, the strikers activities, speeches, viewa, etc. ure very valuable. The contributiona of the authors, on the other hand, add virtually nothing. In order to see why this is, we need only discover what can take a book valuable from the point of view of a revonothing more than that it gives facts pathered in a relatively scientific manner. On that criteria the book falls down heavily; as I pointed out when i wrote, their sampling method was so inadequate as to ronder any results worthless Cde. Arblaster does not even try to refute that in his letter.
The other way in which a book may be valuable is in a rbeoretical sense, Le, it contains ideas which lead to a better revolutionary practice. But here again the book is inadequate in that it simply sees strikes as a function of complexity and therefore produced not by one particular form of society bur produced by something totally unreluted to classes at all. In other words it is a liberal explanacion (as cbe title of the reviow points out), The authors may have all the sympathy in the work for the strikers but that in not what the term liberal refers to. Liberalism is a utopian deftover from 19th century capitalisin, one of whose main functions is to provide "classless" ex planations and "remedies" for the obvious oppression of the working class. Nothing could he a better example of that approach than the Lane and Roberts view which I quoted. ("The fact is that no large firm can completely banish friction from the shop floor. Problems such as clerical errors cannot be organised out of existenoo.") 3. As for the suspicion of strikers towards revo Jutionary groups, unfortunately Cde. Arblaster does not distinguish two reasons why strikers are suspicious of such organisations. One is undoubtedly that some "revolurionaries" have a very manipulative approach to politics. Another factor is that many revolutionaries show an organisational incompetence which quite rightly the working class rejects. (If it did not reject it, it could not survive for two seco in the struggle ag good reasons for suspicion, and an even benei one is the natural suspicion of organised worker to members of the petty bourgeoisie-this suspicion reflecting the type of experience which workers have had at the hands of M.P.s. Industrial Relations experts, doctors, lawyers, etc. Other reasons far suspicion reflect not the best parts of the present consciousness of the working class, but its most backward sides; refusal to take women seriously, dislike of people who have long hair, who dress in certain ways, ete Some cdes, appear to believe that if only we could get over these prejudices, then all would be well, Unfortunately this is not the case. The ultimate reason why workers are suspicious of revolutionary groups is be cause they reject their polities. This may not accord with the views of those who see the working clasa as innately revolutionary, anti-capitalist, ete. but it is an unfortunate fact of life. What complicates things is that these politics also happen to be necemary and no amount of sympathy in the world can replace them. Often this means that revolutionaries will be greeted not merely with suspicion but with open hostility. But faced with that situation, what does nobody any good is to drop the politics. That might overcome the suspicion, but it also means giving up the reason for being a revolutionary. This in what Lane and Roberts have done, as 1 pointed out in my review, and in point 2, above. (Of course Lane und Roberts may never have seen the revolutionares, which would certainly explain the arguments In the book, but would also mean their politics were hardly of use in the first place, let alone when the book was written).
I can only conctude as i did in my original review by urging readers to buy the book for the benefit of the contributions of the strikers themselves. What 1 should also have added in my original review was that a far better account both of the strike and of the politics involved is available in the pamphlet The Pillingron Strike produced by the IS. group N. B. As for the referenor to the Enoch Powell book, that is up to the author to answer, not me. But far from there being no criticism of thi Preface to the book, certain members of Paul Foot's own organisation, let alone anyone else, have commented on the passage Cde. Arblaster refers to, in terms which the press usually describes as "immoderate"
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conventional democratic terms, but, it seemed, by shop-floor negotiation with a local nage-
labour costa and make them more predictable to among maty workers who try to make a distincT assist investment planning, and to try to retain
The proletarian revolution and our old friend Coatsky
In which case, include me out, as they say. Not being an industrial worker I found this a very