It seems that it is easy (to judge from the reviews of The Ford Strike in Workers Press and Socialist Worker) to fall into the trap of reviewing a book simply by describing it. These articles prompt the question, what is the point of reviewing a book for a revolutionary newspaper? It is quite clear that anyone wishing to follow the course of the Ford Strike should read the excellently written account in full. John Mathews develops his story simply and clearly and in an entertaining way. The question for the reviewer however surely is to assess the aims of the book-and the political ideas surrounding those aims in relation to the story it tells.
The aim of the book is quite clear from the subtitle "the workers' story." The author takes pride in not consulting Ford management. His book is centrally an attempt to justify the actions of the Ford workers in their parity struggle' and draw certain lessons from it. This is done in several ways. Pirst he deals with the "backdrop' to the Parity Campaign, the growth of the multi-national company. In 1922 there were over 200 companies producing cars in the U.S., Britain and Germany. By 1968 there were 23 firms in the whole of the capitalist world, and many of these were specialist, in the sense of not competing for the mass market. The drive to continue accumulating capital, despite stagnant markets, means logically mergers, takeovers and amalgamations. This concentration of resources, capital, markets and labour in the hands of fewer and fewer companies had its obvious extension in the need to standardise all of the operations of the company. It would be an impossible situation if measurement for Ford parts in Dagenham was not the same as in Genk. On the question of wages however a contradiction arises, While it is necessary to avoid tremendous administrative tasks where possible, the unevenness of wage rates is an advantage. Skilled workers can be played off against semi-skilled; and many other divisions can be carefully encouraged (like that between women and men workers). But, the way production was now being organised (i.e.equality of conditions etc.in all assembly plants in any company in Britain) contradicted the thousands of different wage rates between the companies and inside the companies in the workers' eyes. It is no accident therefore that the Ford women's struggle for equal pay occurred around the time of the parity struggle, when precisely those issues were being raised. Hand in hand with that realisation, militants also knew that taking on a "multinational" was at least a national job. The plant by plant struggle was no longer adequate. It is this background which gives the key note to the success and the failure of the Ford strike. The success lay in the mobilisation of the vast majority of workers in the Ford empire in Britain in the strike; the longest and most important battle in the history of the British motor industry. The failures lay in the increased possibility of the trade union bureau-cracy intervening in the strike by posing it as a "national" question. The National Joint Negotiating Council, and the shop-stewards and convenors were entirely unprenared for the intervention of the secret ballot, arranged by Gillen, Scanlon and Jones.
All of this is of course indisputable. The close following of the conduct of the strike in Chapters. 4-6 hangs within this framework well. However this is not all that is said. When Socialist Worker says that the book has no political conclusion they are incorrect. Not only the conclusion, but the entire terms of reference of the study develops a political theme. From the introduction, statements like "In a well argued wage claim, the Unions showed that Fords was the most profitable, the most efficient and the most productive company in its field. Its workers were top of the big league in everything except wages"; show this. Later in the introduction Mathews says • *It also (the book) asks the key question: how much could Henry afford to pay". Chapter 7 spends 13 pages asking and answering this If the claim is based on Henry's ability to pay. it is based very unsoundly. What the book does not say is that the justification of the worker's claim does not of course rest on the millions owned and spent by Fords. If it did Fords, and all other managements, could simply say, "this year has been a bad year, I'm sorry lads there's no money". More importantly, the difference between reformist and revolutionary politics lies precisely in the answers to the question 'Is capitalism able permanently to meet any needs of the working-class in this period. Ment at Fords, Dagenham, rote for strike action on Ist February, 1971.
• Revolutionaries answer no-and it is always necessary to stress this. Reformists answer yes, and conduct their struggle within those political limits. However any justification for a workers struggle must be one which is centrally an attack on the capitalist system, through attacking central ideas by which it props itself up. One such prop which needs to be dismantled is the notion that workers ask because capitalism can afford to pay, because: (a) capitalism cannot afford to pay; and (b) even if it could workers historical interests are not met by containing their demands to that alone. Flowing from this central confusion the book has several important errors of omission or commission. Throughout the book it is clear that Mathews has no truck with the trade union bureaucracy, but is totally ambiguous as regards the C.P. Workers Press rightly takes up the issue of Sid Harroway (dept. Convenor, Dagenham) but deals with it wrongly. The question of the C.P. 's actions in the strike was not that they were creeping around trying to find a bourgeois to sell it out to, but rather the absence of any programme within which to place the demand for parity which raised the question of the struggle against the system as a whole. Neither was this point raised in any of their propaganda.
If you start from an implicit reformist framework (as Mathews and the Workers Press do) it is impossible to criticise the C.P.'s industrial policy in any terms other than their willingness to "sell it out". And Mathews is confused by this as he finds no direct evidence of any "sell out" by most of the rank-and-file leadership. He therefore arrives at an uncritical position of any of this leadership's actions. John Mathews' book is certainly worth reading His political position, however, can only be understood in terms of the role of the *unattached" Marxist intellectual. Because he is incapable of relating the Ford strike to any organised revolutionary programme the book has little to offer in a political sense. It is not enough to call for the rebuilding of the rank-and-file organisations of the working-class movement without the struggle for a clear programme for these organisations. Mathews" book is one of the best examples of work from hopefully a dying breed.
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Mathews' book on the 1971 strike