As printworkers fight for survival: Stop Murdoch's presses!
Labour Briefing1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
The sequestration of the whole of the funds of SOGAT 82 marks a very significant stepping up of the offensive by the courts against the trade union movement. Not just because it is yet another attack or because of the overall obvious importance of the Wapping dispute, but because it was a meted out in the first instance and used directly as a punishment on SOGAT. Previous sequestrations, such as the NUM and the TGWU, have been imposed after a warning period and ostensibly in order to recover fines after the refusal to pay.
It is another example of the courts acting politically and imposing the harshest measures that they think they can make stick in a given situation and presents another major challenge to the trade union movement and the policy of opposition to the anti-union laws adopted in 1982.
Not that there is any chance of the TUC responding in defence of SOGAT 82. The sequestration came on the same day as the TUC scandalously let the EETPU off the hook over their role in Wapping by giving them a list of demands they knew they could accept. They voted by a majority of one not to ask the EETPU to instruct its members not to cross SOGAT picket lines.
Not that these developments are a great surprise. The fact is that a series of events over the past two years have already had a profound effect on the trade union movement and it has been the EETPU which has led the march to the right under the banner of the new realism and is now going far beyond it.
Business Unionism
It has led to a situation where the EETPU no longer represents simply the most right wing and collaborationist brand of British trade unionism but an extreme form of US type business unionism. This type of organisation rejects any form of class principle, openly organises with the employers to break other independent unions and bases itself on the need for profitability in industry. The most open form this takes is the relationship which the EETPU is developing with the CBI.
The EETPU is not necessarily a company union of the Japanese type, but it is close to becoming it. Its nature is defined by its relationship to the employers which is based on legally binding no strike agreements, the end of the closed shop and the unchallenged right of management to manage.
The EETPU already have a one union deal on these lines with Eddie Shah who is preparing the next stage in the demolition of the print unions. They have signed single union agreements with Japanese firms which meet every requirement of Japanese management. In one case they signed a single union agreement over the heads of 200 T&GWU members on the site.
They denounced the NUM and the striking miners and now organise directly with Roy Lynk and the beleaguered UDM, which was created by the NCB.
Nor is the problem only with the EETPU. The AUEW is moving along very similar lines, and other unions like NUPE have shifted dramatically to the right. The main responsibility for this development, however, lies with the TUC. Their decision to call a special Congress in February to reverse formally the official opposition to the anti-union laws established at the April Conference of Executives in 1982 represents another negative historical turning point for the labour movement.
In Place of Strife
In the 1969–1974 period Harold Wilson's "In Place of Strife' and Edward Heath's Industrial Relations Act were in the end defeated. Now, for the first time ever, the unions are to accept the intervention of the courts into industry on the side of the employers. Wilson was only forced to repeal the Industrial Relations Act because of the strength of continuing opposition.
That this capitulation comes in the form of a capitulation to Gavin Laird and Eric Hammond over the use of Government money for trade-union ballots makes it worse. Business unionism was strengthened as a result.
The EETPU and the AUEW should have been expelled from the TUC. It is true that the price of this could have been to split the TUC and probably it would have created a new right wing federation. But not to expel them meant shifting the whole TUC to the right since they had no intention of making a single concession. They should have been expelled and the 1982 decisions defended.
But the betrayal did not start with the issue of ballotting. In fact TUC opposition to the use of government money for ballots was the only time they had stood out against any aspect of Tory anti-union laws. It was the TUC betrayal of the NGA over the confrontation with Shah at Warrington which was the marker for it all. The NGA appealed for support under clear TUC policy and was rejected and ordered to work normally. TUC policy was destroyed there and future events shaped by it.
The Miners' Strike
The miners' strike was another watershed. It was the greatest struggle in Europe for many years against the creation of mass unemployment as the spearhead of the employers' offensive. The outcome of that strike was always going to determine the shape of the labour movement in the aftermath. Victory or defeat of the miners was always victory or defeat for the whole labour movement. There was no escape.
It was not only the greatest strike in Britain since the General strike, but it was a strike which very evidently could have been won. It was not lost through any lack of tenacity and sacrifice in the mining communities but because that sacrifice was not matched by support from the rest of the movement the isolation was not broken.
Yet the movement had everything to gain. A victory for the miners would have provoked dramatically different conditions to the ones we face today. There would most likely have been a sharp swing to the left, a growing Scargillite current in the unions and a serious challenge to Kinnock in the Labour Party. The employers' offensive would have been knocked back and the best possible lead given to workers in other industries.
The lesson of the miners' strike was that the working class are prepared to confront Thatcher's government even under conditions of mass unemployment. Although the miners are the most militant section of the working class, they are a part of the class as a whole. The additional factor with the miners was a determined leadership with a class struggle line.
That, however, is not the lesson drawn by the TUC. They draw the convenient conclusion that compromise has been the right way after all. Kinnock was greatly stengthened inside the Labour Party by the argument which has underpinned the march to the right.
Since the end of the strike the employers have pressed home their advantage. Seven hundred victimised miners have been joined by workers sacked at Silentnight, Forgemasters, Ffestiniog slate quarries, Morris of Glasgow, and Fleet St. There is a rapidly growing band of victimised workers looking to the labour movement for support.
All this is not to say that the basis is not there for a fightback: it is. But a fight back cannot be organised unless the depth of the problem is recognised and an understanding of it developed at the base of the unions.
At the same time a class struggle line of direct action against the actions of the employers has to be developed against those who say that strike action is no longer the way. The left needs to be strengthened and organised in the unions to meet the growing confidence of the right. A renewed struggle for democracy in the unions has to be developed.
The print unions must be defended against the courts and the employers. A campaign has to be mounted to stop the TUC retreat over the anti-union laws and implement the decision of 1982. The print unions themselves should take the lead in this and pull out their members on all national newspapers.
The miners' support groups need to be strengthened and organised to embrace the cause of the print workers alongside that of the victimised miners and the growing ranks of victimised workers in other industries.
The march and demonstration on March 2nd needs to be built into a massive protest and linked directly with Wapping.
A fight back of this kind can help to build a movement amongst the rank and file which can challenge the prevailing trends which are dangerous to the future of the labour movement.