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From International Socialism (1st series), No.37, June/July 1969, pp.1-2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
At the time of writing the future of the government’s anti-union legislation is still in doubt. But the major factors in the situation can be seen. And whatever the outcome of the present wrangling both within the labour leadership and between it and the unions, these factors are likely to persist.
The motivations of the Wilson entourage in attempting to rush the legislation through are clear. On the one hand they have to continually reassure those involved in the scramblings of the international money market that they are setting about solving the problems of British capitalism in an agreeable fashion. On the other they feel the need to make an immediate contribution to their long term strategy of altering the balance of power at the shop-floor level to the advantage of Capital. The government does not aim to smash the unions, but rather to utilise their bureaucracies so as to decrease the control exercised inside the factories by on-the-job organisations. To this end it encourages long term wage bargaining, productivity deals, plant level agreements made between national officials and local management. It hopes to persuade the unions to police such agreements.
There are limits to the extent to which the ‘penal clauses’ of legislation can help it directly in all this. Legal restraints alone can only alter the balance of class power slightly, and might aggravate the problems of the ruling class by actually increasing the amount of class strife. Their real significance is ideological. They serve to focus attention upon trade unionism as the cause of Britain’s economic difficulties. In a long drawn out war of attrition to alter the lines of control in the factories they weaken the ideological defences of the militants. In doing so they can also prepare the way for more determined onslaughts in future.
This alone explains the seriousness with which the future of the bill is treated, and also why key sectors of the ruling class are not prepared to abandon it. If militants in industry were successful in ‘in imposing their will on this government, they would be in a stronger position to attempt to frustrate a reforming Conservative Government’ (Sunday Times, 11th May 1969).
The battle that is being waged is more symbolic than real. But it can still have significant effects. For a ‘liberal’ capitalist society depends for its stability not upon crude force, except occasionally, but upon an elaborate complex of institutions, beliefs and loyalties that both reflects the existing balance of class forces and freezes these so as to provide a peaceful environment for on-going exploitation.
In Britain the official labour movement has played a central role here. It has served to tie the working class to the parliamentary system and the overall control of the ruling class in return for the right to push for certain reforms. Basic to this functioning has been the operation of the institutions of the labour movement at a variety of different levels. The first has been the parliamentary where the overtly ‘political’ aspirations of workers have been focussed. Parallel to the Labour Party, but supporting it in various ways and more closely connected to the class have been the national trade unions. These have mediated working-class aspirations in national industrial negotiations. Finally over the last twenty years there has been the development of organisations of localised and fragmented industrial militancy, not subject to the control of the national bureaucracies, but depending upon them for legitimacy and for the fulfilment of functions that are by their very nature national.
In the period of capitalist expansion and bourgeois optimism of the 1950s these differing structures could coexist in apparent harmony. At the national level the trade-union leaders seemed the natural support for the Labour right wing. In industry the national officials and the local stewards organisations might conflict, but never sufficiently to threaten each other.
The problems British capitalism now faces – marginal economic failings exacerbated by international financial instability – are not going to immediately dissolve this complex of mediating institutions and the various beliefs associated with it. But they do begin to put these seriously into question.
The Labour Party has been the most seriously hit. On the one hand millions of workers have broken with the habits that bound them to it for a generation and have withdrawn from electoral participation, for the time being at least. On the other hand the split with the national union bureaucracy is having its effect in the leadership of the party. Hardened right wing careerists like Callaghan turn against Wilson as they see no future for the party their own futures are bound up with if it loses even its present tenuous ties with its financial and vote-supplying base in the unions.
The collapse of the old stability is much less marked in the unions than in the labour leadership. For here the bureaucracies are still in possession of real bases, of organisations that force them to take some account of their members’ interests and at the same time enables them to exercise some sort of influence over their members’ actions. Twenty years of capitalist expansion and working-class ‘fragmentation’ have weakened the ties within the unions, but their existence is still real rather than mythical. This provides a degree of ballast to the union leaders that prevent them swinging from one extreme to another in the manner of their Labour counterparts. The TUC General Council is not yet marked by the conspiracies, acrimony and paranoia of the PLP.
But even within the upper levels of the trade-union bureaucracy the new pressures are giving rise to new tensions and forcing the adoption of new postures. The old style right wing union bureaucrats still exist and dominate whole industries. Many of these long ago lost interest in their unions. They see their future in the House of Lords and the Boards of nationalised industries. But this is no longer an attitude with a future. For in the long run even the knights and peers of the General Council depend upon independent working-class organisation. To make a lucrative life for themselves in bourgeois society by selling out their members they need members to sell out. They have arrived where they are by balancing between the organised workers and the ruling class. They cannot face with equanimity any sudden change in this balance of forces that might upset their own position. They have no objection to keeping down their members’ wages and worsening their conditions, but demand as the price of any such attempt their own independence. They see little future for themselves as underpaid state employees.
Increasingly one can expect to see within the unions the adoption of a new stance. This is that of the ‘aggressive’, ‘left’ union leader of which the prototype is a Scanlon, a Jack Jones or a Jenkins. These men are far from being revolutionaries. But they do see quite clearly that their position rests upon their being able to threaten the powers that be. They control the unions that are growing. Because they show a willingness to fight if necessary they attract both members and the attention of the ruling class. They do not display the same unremitting hostility to the rank-and-file militants as did the old style union leader. Insofar as they depend upon them both for internal union struggles and for the power that brings esteem, they cannot afford to.
The willingness of the ‘left’ trade-union leaders to break with the old unified bloc of employers, state and union officials opens up possibilities of a new sort for militants. But it also presents new forms of danger. These were well illustrated in the Fords strike. Official recognition served to magnify the effectiveness of this. It brought the possibility of complete success much closer. But it also enabled to ‘left’ officials to end the strike on terms which were a victory for themselves, but did not satisfy the demands of the workers. The strike achieved less than it could have, both in terms of material gains and in raising the militancy and morale.
In general, although the ‘left’ union leaders represent a reaction to the new situation, it is not one that in the long run can cope with it. They share many of the fundamental assumptions of the old guard. On the one hand in practice they exercise power in very much the same manner. They identify their own control over the apparatus – against the right wing certainly, but also against the rank-and-file militants – with the interests of the class. In order to maintain this control they will make concessions to the right as well as to the left. Although they do not have the same aversion to militancy as their predecessors, and see the source of their power in their ability to mobilise workers, they also see this power as being undermined should the workers mobilise themselves. They have come to power through the apparatus and in no way reject its functioning. They too see their role as being a strictly reformist one – even if they are prepared to fight for reforms occasionally.
This makes them unable to face the new challenge in a double sense: firstly they cannot draw the necessary political implications. They still see their role as ‘industrial’ (note, for instance, Scanlon’s willingness to criticise the May Day strike). Secondly, they are not adverse to one consequence of the government’s long term strategy – that of increasing the powers of the national bureaucracy vis a vis on-the-job organisation. The result is that while they speak out against the government, in many fields they do exactly what it wants: they too argue for productivity bargaining, for plant level negotiations and so on.
All the groups that balance between the workers’ organisations and the ruling class are bound to be pushed into a variety of contortions by the need of British capitalism to alter the balance between the two. In the process all sorts of established ideas will be shaken. Marginal economic problems can produce considerable political and ideological crises. Even the most moribund of Left MPs might take on a new lease of life.
For the revolutionary left two sorts of mistaken approaches are endemic in such a situation. One would be to ignore possibilities that are being opened up by treating with disdain the arguments between ‘left’ and right in the official labour movement. As a result of these large numbers of workers can become open to new ideas as never before. The other mistake would be to become euphoric at the increased importance of the left bureaucracy, without continually pointing out its inbuilt inconsistencies and limitations. The divisions and arguments that break out within the official organisations can provide us with the possibility of making meaningful socialist interventions. But this is only possible if there exists in each industry organised socialist militants putting forward an alternative perspective to that of the left bureaucracy and its hangers on.
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