Significance of BL's Cowley witch-hunt
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
JACK Cleary (in SO149) seriously distorts my article on the recent Cowley sackings. He does so to such an extent that I can only conclude that he does so in order to more easily polemicise against me.
He claims that I predicted "a purge in every industry and every area of society" as a result of the sackings. And he claims that I see the sackings as a part of a campaign to "smash the labour movement".
Exaggerating your opponents' arguments until they are incredible is a very destructive way of conducting a polemic.
In fact I made no such sweeping statements, although I think the sackings were very serious. The nearest I came to such statements, which I stand by completely, was to say, "Such comments from someone like David Buckle show how deep were the dangers for the workers' movement that had developed at that time.
"Thatcher and Tebbit were sitting waiting to see what they could utilise for their own anti trade union ends".
I think that is a cool assessment. I think the Cowley sackings and the witch-hunt around them was one of the factors which has created a significantly new situation in industry. This can be seen in the pits, was seen in the Stockport Messenger, and now in the hardening of BT management and their injunction against the POEU.
I don't intend to respond extensively on the matter of SL. My article was written in the spirit of fraternal solidarity with a far left group who were being witch-hunted by the media at the time by forces which posed a danger to the labour movement as a whole.
Jack Cleary is clearly incapable of comprehending such an approach, since the logic of his comments would be to provoke a discussion, which even if it did not have sectarian intent could be damaging to the far left.
Therefore I will go no further than to defend the criticisms I made of Stephanie Grant for the Monday press conference. It is just not true to say that the media can whip up a national witch-hunt at will. Why did they pick on Scargill's ill-timed visit to the USSR, for example?
They need the right kind of things to hang it on and they need the right things to keep it going. We should not give them those things at the time they need them if we can avoid it.
There are no timeless rules on this, we have to take the concrete situation.
In my view, having followed it in detail, the media had a problem after a few days in the Cowley situation and needed a fresh angle to keep it going. In particular they needed personalities and the press conference gave them that.
As a result we had another four days of damaging witch-hunting. That is why I made my comment.
There is, however, another worrying aspect to Jack Cleary's letter. That is the way he sets out to play down the role of BL management in Britain today.
He says for example that, "The Cowley management is not the whole capitalist class". I assume we can accept that he means BL management rather than Cowley management, who clearly would not have had the authority to do this.
Well, it is certainly true that BL management are not the whole capitalist class, but it is the single most important industrial asset they have. Moreover someone in Jack Cleary's position could not possibly make a chance remark on it, and any playing down of the role of BL management in the current situation is seriously politically wrong.
In fact very few people in the whole labour movement today would deny the central role of BL management over the last five years, or see their actions as a local affair.
Take Tony Benn's speech at the Labour Party conference last week as an example; or the recent events at Vauxhall. Even the right wing would not deny it, since they cannot deal with them in the same way.
That is part of the reason for David Buckle's attitude to both this and the hand-washing strike.
The very fact that it was BL who sacked the 15 in this way was absolutely not by chance. It may have come up in a 'haphazard' way, but it was not dealt with as such.
It was dealt with with all the authority BL management has amongst the employers, and they were all strengthened by it. (Not enough to smash the labour movement at a stroke, of course, but significant just the same. Certainly enough to tell the difference if you are a militant in a key industry).
Perhaps I could ask Jack Cleary if he could name a few more managements who might have taken such an initiative as this in this period? Is there a parallel to BL's 1979 survival plan and the way they implemented it? What kind of effect did that have on the national situation?
Is there a parallel to the sacking of Derek Robinson and what effect did that have on the national situation? Would any other management have carried through the sacking at Longbridge two and a half years ago so effectively?
Has any other management achieved even half of the speed-up of BL? Has any management broken down a powerful shop stewards' movement to anything like the same degree?
For all these reasons it is wrong to see it as just another management acting for its own local interest. Michael Edwardes' book has been such a big seller for all of these reasons. It now plays the role of an employers' handbook on how to fight the unions.
On top of this Cowley has another significance which should not be played down. It is the only major factory in manufacturing industry with a significant and long-established tradition of Trotskyism within it, and which has played a significant role in the situation.
Jack Cleary should be playing up the significance of BL, not playing it down.
[Photo: Top BL managers Musgrove (left) and Armstrong. "the single most important industrial asset the capitalist class have".]