It was quite obvious (see The Red Mole, 51) that George Smith and Co. would fight for acceptance of the last offer. There has never been a clearer sell-out. One week after the acceptance of the 26 month, four stage deal, drivers employed by building companies - have won a straight £6 in a deal ending next June.
Most militants agree that just a little longer would have finished the employers. The better deal was given to drivers because the employers could not afford any further stoppages. The drivers partly reaped the benefit of the eleven week strike by the builders.
EMPLOYERS CLAMP DOWN Now the dust has settled, it is time to look at some of the lessons of the strike. We have to answer the questions being asked by militants. Is the T&GWU (which voted against the deal) a better union than UCATT? What happened to "Charter'? How do we fight the bureaucrats?
These questions are more important than ever. Since the return to work the employers' attitude has been shown in various small ways. There has been no easing up on the lump - the signs are that the employers will try to increase lump labour. With this in mind steward Charlie Kelly was sacked from the Fulham Hospital site by Higgs and Hill. On other sites in London there have been attempts to cut bonus rates. "Flexibility" has been introduced for dumper drivers at the Cubitts World's End site. Following the return to work the employers will be trying in a number of ways to break up solidarity shown during the strike.
THE BUREAUCRATS Many workers relied on the promise that any deal would go back to the membership before acceptance. But acceptance of such a deal is always a question of the line-up of forces.
The reason why the first deal was rejected after Smith and Co. had tried to accept it was because the rank and file were organised well enough to keep the pressure on the regional officials. In the latter part of the strike, with the numbers out around 300,000, the problems at the base of the strike were increased. Militants had their attention totally turned to the problems of picketing, social security, etc. This gave the bureaucrats the necessary room to manoeuvre.
REGIONAL SETTLEMENTS But what really paved the way for the deal was the wave of regional settlements. By laying stress on this form of dealing, the bureaucrats successfully shifted attention away from the need for a nationally organised stoppage. By allowing these settlements, not only did they throw the responsibility back to the regions; they also increased the biggest problem that faces building workers in struggle, the problem of organisation. The EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn, Peter Gowan, Alan Jones, Martin Meteyard, John Weal, Judith White.
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The Red Mole 2 October 1972 Page 8 strength of the dispute lay in the fact that it was nationally organised. Militants could use their base i n certain regions to bolster up other sites and regions.
WHY THE SELL OUT?
Basically Smith and Co. saw in the national movement of rank and file building workers a threat to themselves as much as to the employers. The strike, for instance, laid the basis for a big struggle against the lump and disorganisation of the industry; but to lead such a struggle would require an idea of the employing class completely different from that of Smith. His position means that he sees his role as conciliating between worker and employer.
In the case of the building industry this is more extreme than in other cases. From 1947 the building unions were company unions. They were not prepared to take up any of the basic problems of the industry. Settlements, based on the disorganisation of the workers, were never fought. UCATT has the same spots as the old ASW. What brought it into strike action was not the wish to break up the cosy chats with the employers, but pressure trom two sides. Firstly, the T&GWU was threatening to move in in a big way. A more militant face was required to offset this. Secondly, the small but growing Charter group looked as though it was going to heave out the old guard and replace it with a lefter face. THE T&GWU The T&G did not vote for the last offer, or the previous one. It also provided higher strike pay for part of the strike. Many workers will therefore see joining the T&G as answering the need for greater militancy. But it is clear why the T&G took the line it did. It was making a show of militancy in order to recruit. If it had really been interested in continuing the struggle, it would have supported the demand to pull out key sections of the T&G in solidarity. Even by keeping out the scaffolders (mostly organised by the T&G) a total stoppage could have continued. The total acceptance of the UCATT position shows how far their "militancy" is real. BASIC QUESTIONS The key question in the building trade is the organisation of the industry. This was shown during the course of the dispute. The failure of the rank and file militants to organise on a national basis throughout the strike made the job so much easier for the bureaucracy. This failure, of Charter, is underlined by the return to work. Again it was on an isolated regional basis that opposition to the deal occurred. The lesson here is that militancy is never enough. Only a national organisation of the rank and file, based on a clear line on questions like decasualisation, could have prevented a sell out. That line up of forces would have taken care of the retreat on the full demand. The paper Charter never appeared during the strike Why? Here was an organisation, newspaper, finances and speakers all supposedly at the beck and call of the rank and file. Yet it organised nothing during the strike. The answer to this problem lies in the line the Communist Party leadership is taking in industry, as shown particularly by the Morning Star's coverage of the dispute. On the morning of the final talks, the Star's line was to trust the bureaucracy - Press speculation about an end to the dispute today is groundless". The next day, after UCATT had accepted the offer and militants everywhere were looking for a lead, the Star's "We say' column had nothing to say; and on the Saturday it implicitly accepted that no action could be taken to challenge the bureaucracy's decision. This was followed on Tuesday, 19 September, by the outrageously loaded comment that Merseyside building workers would decide "whether to stay out or to return as they came our, in unity". (our emphasis.
The Morning Star took this line because the main aim for Charter, as far as the CP is concerned, is to lever themselves into the bureaucracy of UCATT and the T&G. Lou Lewis and Co. put all their efforts behind the left bureaucrats during the strike. Now we have a settlement, Charter will simply be turned into the necessary election machine to squeeze the CP into power. It will then be wound up as it exists now.
RANK AND FILE ORGANISATION But the real object of rank and file organisation is not to change the faces of the bureaucrats. Its object is to fight the bureaucracy, by keeping the workers independently organised. Charter should make initiatives for a struggle to end the lump, and prepare national actions to support that struggle. That's the best way to "put pressure on the bureaucracy"
Organisation and demands which out across the ability of the employers and the desire of the union leaders to keep struggle at a local level are required. A big chance was lost to give a lead to the whole working class - on the issue of the shorter working week, for instance. That demand would not only have drawn together building workers but would also have had a deep impact in the rest of the working class.
WHERE TO START It is clear that we must begin a struggle within Charter to change its programme and build it into a real struggle organisation.
Local organisations of militants outside Charter unfortunately don't meet the problem of the trade. By simply organising locally, the key question of the national organisation of workers in the trade cannot be taken up. A responsibility rests on the regional Action Committees to stay formed and make links with Committees in other areas. The fight has to start now. pushing the Jewish communities of these countries to the right, as champions of international law and order'. In the process it has acquired some strange co-thinkers, such as the French Fascists of "Ordre Nouveau', who also congratulated the German authorities on their firmness and called for an all-out war on 'red terrorism' DANGER This Zionist-inspired transformation of world Jewry into a right-wing pressure group on imperialism has potentially dangerous consequences for western Jewish communities: they become possible victims of any, major crisis in Israel's relationship with one or more imperialist power, and can be used as a weapon against the anti-Zionist left. Direct action by Zionist extremists agains revolutionary militants is already a widespread phenomenon in the USA and certain countries of Western Europe, and it is now to be supplemented by 'legal' and constitutional attacks under the pretext of state protection for Jews against the "anti-Semites of both Right and Left'. In France; tie Jewish Students' Front (not, it is true, the main Jewish student organisation in France) is clamouring for Government dissolution of all the revolutionary-socialist groups and: anti-Semitism is de magogically equated with anti-Zionism as emotional blackmail.
SINISTER This accelerated drift to the right is more and more finding its logical expression in the growth of the neo-fascist Herut (whose predecessors collaborated with Mussolini), and its various offshoots, including the sinister Jewish 'Defence' League, and has as its counter-part the squeezing out of all liberal or radical elements inside the institutions of the Jewish community. At a time when in Britain the National Front and other fascist organisations are experiencing a new lease of life through the Ugandan Asian agitation, the Jewish press has hardly mentioned the problem, let alone sought to mobilise alongside the left to crush the Fascist threat. Indeed, "socialist' Zionists of Hashomer Hatzair refused to underwrite the recent left-wing demonstration against the Monday Club's rally at Central Hall, on the grounds that the participating organisations (IMG, IS, etc) were anti-Zionist! These great defenders of Jewish rights (especially in the Soviet Unior and the Arab world) from the "right-wing' Herut to the left-wing' Mapam pour their energies into organising against Arab Terror' and cannot find time off from these propaganda stunts to defend the Ugandan Asians against Colin "Hitler was Right' Jordan and the genuine anti-semites.
The Zionist movement, no matter how "leftist' the phraseology of some of its representatives may be, was never and can never be on the side of the socialist revolution. Those who refuse to fight racist reaction in Israel cannot do so here, and the only consoling thought is that there are others to do battle.