The real record of the Communist Party at Cowley
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
The author of this review started work in the Cowley Assembly Plant in May 1959. In September of the same year I joined the Communist Party. I began to be active in the trade union movement and became a shop steward.
Soon afterwards I was discussing with the TGWU branch secretary Tony Bradley. Since anti-communism was much stronger in those days I decided to tell him that I intended to become much more active in the branch and that I was a member of the Communist Party.
His reaction took me completely by surprise. He said he had no political prejudice against the Communist Party, but in the vast majority of strikes which had taken place in the factory, the best known CP member in the plant, Arthur Exell, came into work.
I found this view to be expressed even more strongly by the Works Convenor Bob Fryer who organised and led the paint shop where Arthur Exell worked.
He said that in successive strikes in the 1950s (and this certainly proved to be the case in the 1960s) they had never been able to get Arthur Exell out.
Today, The Politics of the Production Line: Autobiography of an Oxford Car Worker, published by the History Workshop and written by Arthur Exell, is being presented by the Communist Party as an authoritative account of the CP's principled history in the Oxford car plants.
This makes it important that the book is reviewed and the record put straight.
Unfortunately much of the book is of little relevance except to those who wish to cultivate romantic notions about factory life or enjoy earthy accounts of life on the production line.
This will no doubt make it standard reading for the inhabitants of Ruskin College and students of the WEA. But there is a more serious side.
Arthur Exell started work at the Radiators plant in North Oxford, supplying components for assembly at Cowley, in November 1929 after coming from South Wales on the hunger marches.
He joined the CP in 1934.
He gives interesting accounts of the work of the CP both in the Radiators factory and in the town.
He describes the victimisation of CP members for attempting to become shop stewards and a rent strike organised on the Florence Park estate (with the help of students from the colleges, notably two young students by the names of Dick Crossman and Patrick Gordon Walker). Arthur Exell and several CP organisers were evicted as a result of the strike.
Exell's account shows how hard it was to organise a union against employers who took their lead from William Morris, the leading employer in Oxford and fanatically anti-union.
Union recognition in the Radiators plant was therefore painfully slow. By 1934 there were only four union members in the plant, all members of the CP.
In most cases CP membership came first, since joining the union could well mean the sack. Active Labour Party members did not join the union at that time.
The outbreak of war brought changes. The plant was turned over to war production and workers from traditionally unionised areas were moved in.
The Essential Works Order, which meant that workers could not leave their job, also meant that employers could not sack them. It became easier to organise.
Another factor however was more significant: that was CP policy towards the war (although Exell appears to be confused about the exact period).
From his account the Oxford CP, well to the right of national policy, appears to have given full support for the war effort right from 1939, which had dramatic effects in the factories.
When Churchill's government brought in a system of Joint Works Production Committees (JWPCs) to help the war effort the CP were completely behind it.
The Committees were class collaboration bodies similar to the more recent exercises in "Workers' Participation", but with far more power.
In Radiators, Arthur Exell became the Secretary of the JWPC and set about making the factory more efficient.
From his account he settled enthusiastically into his new role. "Absenteeism was terrible" he explains:
"One of the things we promised was that we would see to it that people came to work."
But this could only be done effectively, he says, if the workers were in a union:
"If they weren't in the union we had no control over them."
[Photograph. Caption: While Stalin talked to Churchill, the CP backed factory slavery]
The anti-union management was quick to catch on. After all, they had a fortune to make out of war contracts. Suddenly they wanted everyone into the union.
The result was 100% trade unionism, but at what a price! The JWPC was literally the policeman of the plant with Arthur Exell holding the truncheon. He explains how it worked:
"This one certain girl did lose a lot of time. So we had her in front of our committee, and our committee was the trade unionists in the factory and the management. We had to talk to her and told her of the necessity of doing the work properly or else she would have to take the punishment which the government [the Churchill government! AT] had authorised us to give.
"The punishment first of all would be suspension, but the chance of imprisonment was in the document. I don't remember any case where they were, but it was there for us to use our judgement on."
Exell retains a reactionary, patronising attitude to women. But this is worse. These were women being conscripted into industry for the first time and required to work under the most appalling conditions, which Exell himself describes.
But even using the union apparatus to threaten workers with prison did not satisfy the appetite of the Radiators CP branch in their support of the imperialist war effort. Exell explains:
"The Communist Party factory group then made another outstanding offer to the management. We were prepared to form a shock brigade, which meant that the management could call on any one of us to do any job in the factory, in any place at any time.
"We had big coloured posters put up in the factory stating the facts and our names. The scheme was used but unfortunately the management used it to give us the jobs that others wouldn't do. But we proved our case."
Presumably the case was proven that the CP was totally servile to the management. But even that was not enough for Arthur Exell!
While visiting his parents in Liverpool Exell attended a meeting addressed by Stafford Cripps. He explained the activities of the JWPC and Cripps was very impressed. He awarded the Radiators plant an additional contract.
Unfortunately management considered it was more than the factory could cope with and turned the contract down.
But Arthur Exell was not prepared to settle for this. A meeting of the JWPC was called and they sorted the problem out:
"The trouble was caused by a bottleneck. Men lost hours of their time through waiting at the test for leaks to be repaired and so I suggested that a second set of testing tanks be installed much nearer to the main section.
"I am pleased to say that management acknowledged my suggestion and must have told Cripps, for I received a letter from him thanking me for my endeavours."
In 1941 came the German invasion of the Soviet Union. If recruitment to the CP had been slow up to that point there was now a dramatic change.
Membership of the Radiators CP branch rose almost over night from 4 to 50. By the end of the war they had 150.
Management gave permission for a CP branch library of over 500 books to be kept, appropriately enough, in the foreman's office! Exell comments:
"They couldn't grumble at us, because we worked, really produced, which is what a foreman likes."
He goes on:
"The library was fantastic, we didn't know how to cope with it. 200-300 people borrowed books … They were in series: the Little Lenin library and the Little Stalin library."
They sold hundreds of copies of Soviet Weekly in the canteen and 200-300 Daily Workers a day in the factory.
It seems that not all the party members were able to accept this relationship with the management, but dissidents got little sympathy from the party.
Exell recalls Pat Mills, who was still in the Oxford CP in my day, arriving at the Rads.
"The most remarkable fellow in our branch was Pat Mills. He was a character on his own … he was drafted into Radiators. And he was always laughing at everything: he said 'well, that's one thing, they can't sack me now, I'm under the Essential Works Order'. They sacked him within a couple of days! Yes he was sacked. I think they said he was being awkward. Maybe he was trying to be very awkward there. You know, it's very silly to be awkward: you go there to do a job. If you can get away with trying to push the party line, all right. But if you were trying to put over propaganda and it was detrimental to the production that wasn't a good thing."!!
[Photograph. Caption: The last of war production side by side with the first peace-time cars]
As soon as the war was over, all this collaboration had little impression on the hard-nosed motor bosses. No sooner had the victory celebrations died down and the Essential Works Order been lifted than they began the wholesale sacking of the militants at the Rads and including the convenor, apparently without resistance.
Exell explains:
"This meant the firms came back into their own, and the first thing they did was to remove all the trade union militants within their power … I wasn't touched just then because I had long service having started in the '20s, so I at once took the convenor's job."