Yes, the working class still wants to fight!
Labour Briefing1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
John Kelly has taken exception to one of the points I make in my review of his pamphlet Labour and the Unions (Briefing no. 53).
It relates to my view that on the one hand the Tory offensive, aided by the new realists in the union, has inflicted serious damage on the structures of the trade unions; whilst on the other the working class remains basically strong and willing and able to fight back.
He argues that these points are contradictory.
I can only repeat that both these factors seem to me to be firmly a part of the situation today.
In Austin Rover in Cowley, where I worked until I was victimised in 1982, the number of shop stewards in the Assembly Plant was reduced during the first half of the 1980s by 60%, and this remains the situation.
Many sections no longer have shop stewards since repeated victimisations have reduced the number of people prepared to do the job.
At the same time, shop stewards facilities have been almost abolished other than the operation of the discipline procedure and dozens of workers are sacked every week for minor offences or inadequate work effort. Seven or eight years ago 90% of those sackings would have been unthinkable. The work effort has been increased massively over this period, and working conditions worsened.
This situation can be generalised throughout manufacturing industry to one degree or another. The shop stewards movement, the most important component of the trade union movement in Britain, is a mere shadow of what it was ten years ago. Many of the combine committees have ceased to exist or have become empty shells of organisations.
It is true that this has not happened to the same degree with the white collar unions. Some have had serious setbacks, like the teachers, but others have even made organisational gains.
But the millions of workers in manufacturing and related industries are the traditional power base of the trade union movement, they cannot be left out of the calculation.
But trade union structures and the mass of the working class are not the same thing.
Although all this has happened, the working class have not suffered a definitive defeat such as they did after the 1926 General Strike. Even the defeat of the Miners' Strike — the most serious blow the trade union movement has taken — did not produce that.
The rank and file in the unions therefore have not reduced to the state where they feel it is impossible to challenge the employers. Conditions have been more difficult, particularly because the traditional counterweight to sell-outs from the top — the shop- stewards movement — has been much weaker, but the capacity to struggle has remained.
Militancy
Militancy has been rising for some time but has been held back both by the objective situation and by the rightward shift at the top of most of the trade unions. This militancy has broken through in a number of sectors, in particular in the NHS and in the car factories where it has come very much as a movement from the rank and file, in spite of all the problems.
All the signs are that this rise in industrial struggle will develop further, perhaps creating the conditions where some of the damage done can be repaired.