On Thursday, 18 January, the Transport and General Workers' Union members at Warwick University followed the lead of their shopstewards and went on strike in support of a pay claim. The workers had been in dispute with the University authorities since the beginning of November over a claim for £2.40 and the imposition of the Government freeze had blocked any progress towards a wage increase.
In the Morning Star of 24 January, under the headline 'ANTI FREEZE STRIKE CONTINUES the Warwick strike was reported and the solidarity of the students extolled. Unfortunately. as the paper was appearing on the streets that day, the workers were just about to suffer a major defeat.
STUDENTS' VITAL ROLE From the beginning the role of the students was crucial to the self-confidence of the workers fighting the administration and the Government freeze. But at first the majority of students, led by the International Socialism Group and the Communist Party, based their support on the fact that the struggle was a straightforward wage demand, not linked to the freeze. However, when the Department of Employment decläred that the strike was against the freeze, the IS and CP student leadership were faced with a dilemma: in order to maintainthe level of student support, let alone extend the solidarity, they would have to change the political basis of that support: from moral sympathy for very low paid workers trying to get higher pay, to support for a struggle against the freeze which was in the objective interests of both students and WUENCES.
But instead of doing this the IS and the CP took the view that the workers' could not win against the freeze and that they therefore had to be persuaded to put forward demands that were "winnable". The two political organisations got together to draw up a list of such "winnable' demands - such as recognition of basic trade union rights - and then recommended to the stewards that the matter of the wage claim should be referred to the London Head Quarters of the T&G which might be able to find some "loophole" through which the claim could be 'legally met".
CALLED OFF Faced with this 'advice' from the student leadership, the stewards drew the conclusion that they were isolated in the struggle for their wage claim, and therefore felt that they could not recommend the continuation of the struggle. As a result the trade union officials succeeded at the union branch meeting in getting the strike called off even before the "winnable' demands had been won.
Of course, no one can guarantee success in any struggle. But to recommend calling off the struggle for the wage claim does not avoid defeat. On the contrary, it merely makes defeat more likely. The action of the IS and the CP was a major, if not decisive factor in contributing to the defeat of the workers in Warwick University.
The very afternoon before the IS and the CP appraoched the stewards with their proposals, the T&G workers had decided to go for an in definite strike. They had done so following the Department of Employment's announcement that it was not prepared to budge because of the Government freeze. But the student leadership's meeting with the stewards completely changed the situation and the next day the strike was called off.
GOOD POSSIBILITIES The student leadership had one single overriding task: to take action which created the best possible conditions for victory. The SUBSCRIBE!
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German Distributor: ISP. 2 Hamburg 13, Hochallee 21. struggle needed to be generalised to the widest possible extent, and as a matter of fact there were very good possibilities for accomplishing this.
In the Coventry area around the University, we have already seen the car workers on a one day strike directly against the freeze. At the time of this struggle, the gas workers were on a workto-rule also directed against the freeze. The CPSA was moving towards strike action for the same reason. And the hospital workers who have been involved in intermittent rank and file activity against the freeze sent £20 immediately as an initial donation that they heard of the struggle of the University workers. There is a similar story nationally.
What is lacking in all this, is the absence of any organisation outside the control of the bureaucracy which could centralise the struggle. However, a political focus could have drawn these other workers into solidarity. The students at the University could have provided this, if the mass of students had taken up some militant form of struggle in solidarity. Within a framework of occupation, demonstrations, mass pickets, etc., students could have utilised their resources to begin a campaign which could have begun to draw in the local labour movement and beyond. Moreover if presented in a correct way, they could have utilised the fact that students are curtently involved in rent strikes and other forms of militant actiyity for an increase in student grants to draw in students nationally on the side of workers against the freeze. This would then have really made practical the struggle of the workers against the freeze..
Such a political perspective for freeing the University workers from their isolation was consistently put forward by the International Marxist Group in the University. It was the failure of the International Socialism and the Communist Party to adopt such a perspective that led to their defeatist activity. More to come The bankruptcy proceedings against the "international architect", Poulson have SQUARE OFF FAN ThE DEAL FOR HOSPITAL WHOS KNOCKED THE L'OUT UPE OF ALTH Hospital workers demonstrate against the freeze