Critical support for wildcat strikes
James Turley constrasts different left approaches to the ‘British jobs’ dispute
Protests against the effects of the economic downturn are becoming more and more widespread. The Greek youth rebellion, the sweeping away of the neoconservative government in Iceland, rallies across Russia, the 24-hour general strike in France, mass demonstrations in Latvia and Lithuania and now, Britain: serious industrial unrest, with workers walking out unofficially at various oil refineries and elsewhere in the energy and construction industry.
We would expect in such circumstances a number of things: government condemnations and threats; the tabloids frothing at the mouth and demanding heads on pikes; and a thousand leftwingers hovering around, telling the strikers things they already know and making demands that are either truisms or irrelevant.
This time, however, it is different. The Mail’s jealous rival, the Daily Express, led on February 2 with the headline, “On your bike, Mandy”, referring to Peter Mandelson’s criticisms of the strikers, whom he accused of bringing us closer to a depression. The Mail itself enthusiastically reported the strikes. The government responded critically, but there have been no threats to wield anti-union legislation, as might have been expected. Indeed it seems to have been acting behind the scenes to secure the compromise settlement that is now in the air.
And the left has been in a real state over it – some groups broadly or sharply opposing the strikes (Socialist Workers Party, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Workers Power), and others offering uncritical, or virtually uncritical, support (the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain; Socialist Party).
There are not many occasions when the left, or sections of it, can be seen coming out against a strike – but there are not a great many strikes like this one. It broke out initially in Lincolnshire, at the Lindsey oil refinery. A contract for a construction job had been awarded to an Italian company, IREM, which shipped in a corps of workers from Italy and Portugal. ‘Shipped in’ should be read literally – the workers live on the barges on which they arrived, moored in nearby Grimsby. They are driven back to the barges for their lunch. Although IREM has refused to disclose its employees’ pay and conditions on grounds of ‘confidentiality’, this is a clear case of capitalist undercutting – local union agreements and working standards are being overridden to get the job done more cheaply and profitably.
This was correctly interpreted by workers at the power plant as an attack on their pay and conditions. The unions – as long as they act in thrall to anti-union laws – are powerless, since it is illegal under both UK and EU law to strike against such actions. The walkout, when it came on January 28, was a ‘wildcat’ unofficial action – and sympathy strikes broke out in at least 19 other locations. Firstly the Humberside area, and then further afield – to the Grangemouth refinery in Falkirk, which was itself the site of a major strike in the summer of 2008; then to Aberthaw power station near Barry, in South Wales; a refinery in Wilton, Teesside; Kilroot power station in Carrickfergus, County Antrim; a gas terminal at Milford Haven, west Wales; the Fiddlers Ferry power station near Warrington; etc.
The fly in the ointment is that a prominent slogan in all these walkouts has been a direct quotation of the esteemed prime minister. “British jobs for British workers” was Gordon Brown’s promise to the 2007 TUC conference (though, as wily left philologists have pointed out, the slogan was also used by Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts). An utterly cynical and obviously empty chauvinist ploy, of course – but now thrown back in the premier’s face by the strikes. Needless to say, it is this that is at the root of the left’s unease – and rightwing glee.
A further complication is that nobody seems to agree on precisely how relevant the ‘British jobs…’ slogan actually is to the whole thing. The rightwing bourgeois media have been pushing the chauvinist angle – this is a strike against ‘foreigners’ taking ‘our’ jobs. The British National Party has promptly gotten itself involved (through a front website featured prominently and uncritically on Newsnight of February 21), although without making much obvious headway.
Those on the left directly involved, and many among the strikers,2 have tended to call it a dispute over pay and conditions with international implications. Indeed, the political background to the dispute goes to the heart of the EU project.
Viking and Laval
The story begins, by all accounts, over four years ago – in Vaxholm, a small island town off the coast of Sweden.
A school was to be built, and the contract was awarded to a subsidiary of Laval, a Latvian construction company. Byggnads, the builders’ union in Sweden, attempted to settle a collective bargaining agreement, but was rebuffed. Instead Laval struck a deal with the equivalent Latvian union, which – needless to say – undercut the going union rates in Sweden, the country that represents post-war social democracy’s stab at making paradise on earth.
Byggnads responded with a blockade of the site; Laval took the union to the European Court of Justice, arguing that it was an illegal restriction on its right to provide EU services. In the end, the company’s view prevailed; the outcome of the case enshrined, among other things, the confidentiality of wages and conditions, that the Posting of Workers Directive (outlining the rights of workers throughout the EU) is to be interpreted as a maximum rather than a minimum standard, and that industrial action to the contrary is illegal.3 A week before the ECJ’s decision, another case – Viking – established the right of private companies to sue trade unions.
The Viking-Laval combination is a recipe for what Amicus and others call ‘social dumping’ – bringing gangs of outside workers into a country for a particular contract. Capitalists always try to play groups of workers off against each other and these ECJ decisions effectively enshrine it as their right.
The building industry, conducted as it now invariably is on the basis of subcontracting, is particularly vulnerable to this practice. The present economic crisis was, in its early stages, naively thought by some as irrelevant to the ‘real economy’ – that is, material production and circulation of commodities, as opposed to the epicycles of fictitious capital in the finance industry. Even when this fiction was at all credible, it was understood that construction was the ‘exception that proved the rule’.
In Britain and the USA alike, the financial boom had increasingly centred on services related to home ownership, particularly mortgages. This boom had in turn underwritten a boom in construction. When the financial system collapsed, it was correspondingly the first sector of the ‘real’ economy to find itself in dire trouble. The sudden surfeit of underemployed construction workers is viewed by employers as an invitation to social dumping.
The strike wave has thrown into the limelight both a direly treacherous terrain for the left to navigate, and – through the Laval-Viking connection, the brazenly cynical partiality of the state at the level of both Westminster and Brussels. This ought to provide us with an excellent opportunity to highlight the international dimension of even the most basic struggles and to build for common workers’ action across borders.
But all class struggle throws down a challenge to the left – however strong it is going into the clash, and whatever the nature of the battle. And even for its present dire condition, the left has mostly been found drastically wanting. At one end of the scale, we have the smarmy cravens of the Labour soft left, exemplified by the MP Jon Cruddas. He has called for the 2012 Olympics construction project to be limited to British workers only.
The labour bureaucracy’s long-time toadies-in-chief, the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, bitterly complained that EU law has “effectively deprived British workers of the right to seek work in their own country”, while at least having the good sense to blame the bosses – or rather, the bosses’ Europe.4
Far at the other end of the scale, the Trotskyist group, Workers Power, issued a statement declaring the whole thing to be a nationalistic lash-up – “the strikers’ target is not their employers, but 100 Italian and Portuguese workers at the Lindsey oil refinery”.5 The comrades “unreservedly oppose” the strikes, and demand they be demobilised. The SWP does not come out openly against the action, but Socialist Worker centres its coverage on the ‘British jobs’ aspect.6
The Workers Power position is simply idiotic abstentionism. There is a great deal of empirical evidence that the chauvinist element is, at the very least, not overwhelmingly dominant – see, for example, the involvement of Polish workers in the Langage walkout, and a mass meeting at the original Lindsey refinery confirmed a set of strike demands that spurned ‘British jobs’, including “building links with construction trade unions on the continent”.7 There is also a specific and legitimate grievance at the root of it all – the intervention of the legal-political apparatus in favour of social dumping – which has been given a chauvinist coloration after the fact.
Moreover, Workers Power is particularly afflicted by the ‘action’ obsession common to much of the far left. It is forever demanding protests, fightbacks and strikes, and is wont to dismiss anything in the way of programmatic discussion as ‘propagandism’. Well, comrades – here is your ‘action’. Workers have spontaneously acted to defend their interests, but, unsurprisingly, many of them have come into it with backward – indeed reactionary – ideas.
Confusion reigns
The Socialist Party has intervened directly in the strikes, and has a member on the six-strong strike committee thrown up by the wave. However, while the SP in a leaflet (drafted by strike committee member Keith Gibson) states, “rather than saying ‘British jobs for British workers’, we should say ‘Trade union jobs and conditions for all workers’”,8 it continues to downplay the danger of the ‘British jobs’ slogan. A similar line is taken by Respect, whose approach, like the CPB’s, seems to be to dismiss the significance of chauvinism altogether, and concentrate on the narrow trade union demands – this leaves the right an open goal.
And, last but not least, we have the AWL; Martin Thomas and Sacha Ismail’s initial agitational article effectively took a line similar to the SWP,9 but apparently the nuances of this position were lost on one comrade. Robin Sivapalan desperately tried to organise an anti-chauvinist picket of Unite’s headquarters. The AWL position is softening by the hour, particularly after the mass meeting at Lindsey refinery – apparently, these ‘new’ demands are no longer reactionary … but they were floating around when the strike was reactionary and basically unsupportable, according to the AWL. How about admitting the mistake, comrades?
The task of communists in this dispute has been the same since workers first walked out of Lindsey. Those workers rose in brave action against a genuine attack on their class interests; and it was and is incumbent on us to foreground at every step the class nature of this battle. It was inevitable, given the involvement of foreign labour, that chauvinists of various stripes would slime their way in. The media, from the outset, focused on nationalism, not class, and the likely settlement centres on this too – according to reports, half of the IREM jobs will go to ‘British workers’ and half to Italians/Portuguese, with the pay and conditions on offer not being disclosed. Meanwhile, Brown has stated that “some way” must be found to ensure that new jobs are sourced to local workers.
The ‘British jobs’ aspect to all this makes our intervention more necessary, not less. If the international dimension gives succour to chauvinists, it also points to our primary political duty. This paper carries on its masthead every week the slogan, “Towards a Communist Party of the European Union”. This is no lofty abstraction, but is posed as a pressing (and sadly absent) necessity with every new walkout.
We have seen a united and concerted attack by the legal and political bureaucracies in Brussels and London; any fightback has to be similarly united. The call by the Lindsey strikers for cooperation between construction unions is welcome, but limited.
As a matter of urgency we need EU trade unions fighting for EU-wide common pay and conditions. That would put a stop to social dumping. But most of all we need the highest form of political organisation: precisely a Communist Party of the European Union.
The legalistic form of the attack should not go unnoticed either. The system of binding precedents and the rule-of-law state are inimical to democracy and the proletariat’s interests. They act as a restriction to the popular will, and have in this case provided a neat tool for providing the bosses with cheap labour. Apart from anything else, the strength of the legal-bureaucratic cage around the unions has been exposed anew – Thatcher’s anti-union laws and the EU’s working in harmony. Many will no doubt have been surprised to find that the ECJ has kindly provided unions with a (very short) list of things they are allowed to strike about!
Similarly, the dispute highlights the question of workers’ control. The SP correctly calls for “Union-controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.”10 But it frames this in the context of Britain alone, not the EU as a whole – and thus in a way which risks feeding into the call for ‘British jobs’. We must also bring to the fore the demand to open the books. What the bosses pay our brothers and sisters is not their own ‘confidential’ affair – it is the business of our class.
Treating the issue as a narrow economic dispute is wrong-headed. The strikers have instinctively grasped the international implications of their actions – whether this realisation is derailed into British chauvinism, wasted on jollies for union bureaucrats or converted into real steps (however modest) towards European working class unity will depend on the forthright intervention of the Marxist left.
Notes
1. See www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2009/02/02/british-wildcats-exposed
2. See, for example, the web forum created by strikers – www.bearfacts.co.uk/Forum
3. www.amicustheunion.org/lavalvikingruffert/the_cases/laval_c-341-05.aspx
4. Morning Star January 31.
5. www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=173,1823,0,0,1,0
6. Socialist Worker February 7.
7. www.socialistparty.org.uk/latest/6850
8. www.socialistparty.org.uk/txt/49.doc
9. www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/31/jobs-all-workers-not-british-jobs-british-workers
10. www.socialistparty.org.uk/txt/49.doc
I agree with your analysis Turley. This strike has really brought out the failure of the left sects to pursue a meaningful internationalism.
While the Socialist Party have been mostly principled in this dispute, you are right that they are not critical enough of nationalist ideas and avoid putting the case for meaningful international action- presumably ‘the workers aren’t ready for that’.
On the other side, the SWP were wary of showing support because of their promotion of bourgeois anti-racism, formal political thinking and complete lack of a principled working class perspective in their internationalist work.
Both the SP and SWP have accepted the single nation as the only current field of struggle. They have made huge concessions to nationalism and repeatedly pursue halfway-house, reformist fronts which spread the fallacy of top-down socialism, of managing the capitalist state.
It is never too early to fight for genuine internationalism. ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ was not meant as a heartwarming slogan- it was an injunction to a necessary task.
As for Sivapalan, who organised the pathetic three-man picket of the Unite offices calling for an end to the ‘racist strike’, this is clearly an organisation in ideological disarray.
Laurie
Oh, and I forgot to say: what’s your analysis of the demand, which has been won, of 50/50 British and Italian workers?
Jobs for All
Workers Power leaflet for the construction workers’ strike
This leaflet will be distributed at the Unite and GMB construction workers national shop stewards meeting in Manchester on Monday 9th February.
http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,1843,0,0,1,0
Toned down your criticisms a bit ay? Also the link does not work.
It would be pretty stupid not to tone them down when we were leafleting the strikers. We’re 100% clear on the issues, 100% opposed to strikes for reactionary goals.
Idiotic absentionism? Hardly. We got down to argue with the workers at the first opportunity. We’re having a debate and unlike some people we’re on the right (or is that left?) side of it.
Cheers,
Luke
So you toned down your criticisms because you did not want to tell the strikers what you actually thought of their strikes. Why would you do that Luke? If you are a 100% clear on everything why can you not enlighten the “reactionary” and “nationalist” strikers? Seems very dishonest, opportunist and seems to me WP lacks confidence in what they have to say on the strikes.
If you got down to argue with the strikers at the first opportunity, how come you knew nothing about what the strike was about or the demands of the strike?
Er, we did know what it was about: British jobs, for British workers.
At best: The establishment of a quota system for British citizens and migrants on UK construction sites.
At worst: The driving out of migrants from these sites.
Still, the whole episode does at least go to show that most the non-SWP left criticise them from the right.
There’s nothing dishonest about what we’ve said to the striker or elsewhere. There are two tasks.
First, clear opposition to Bj4BW (and the strikes around them). Second, clear agitation and argument for an alternative strategy to defend jobs and make the bosses pay for the crisis.
It’s ABC comrades.
Luke
You seem incapable of reading what the strikers actually decided their demands where. Not one demand was for the throwing out of foreign workers, in fact the strikers called for equality, transparency and unity. Not for BJ4BW, you can’t find a single demand decided democratically by the workers who were involved in the strike for BJ4BW. So unless WP knows more than the strikers themselves, it is pretty obvious you haven’t got a clue.
Going to the strikers with a watered down, in fact almost opposite position on the strikes is very dishonest. Why could you not go to the strikers with statement you put up on your website? Why did you have to water down your politics? It is either a severe crisis of confidence or a case of dishonest opportunism. Which one?
Luke – an ounce of experience is worth a tonne of theory!
Like I said, there is nothing inconsistent with the position in our leaflet or our other pieces. It has exactly the same position.
As we have said many times in our articles, which I know you have read Chris, is that it’s no good attacking the nominally progressive demands of the lindsey strike committee to an otherwise reactionary demand: replace the IREM workers with British labour.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating: the 300 jobs for the new contract were carved up on national lines. 200 for the Italians, 100 for the Brits.
Great! So much for share the work on full pay! Or, jobs for all! Now the British left is fighting for British jobs: great.
Not sure what Janet’s comment is meant. Obviously you need theory, experience and – last but by no means least – a bit of common sense and recognition of reality.
Wake up to reality – these strikes were about British jobs for British workers. They establish an appalling precedent going forward. Even Mark Serwotka agrees:
http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,1848,0,0,1,0
woops, that should read attaching[/I] not attacking.
Well if Mark ‘everything to everyone’ Serwotka agrees it must be true. I have just skimmed the article and it seems that he is against the slogan no necessarily the strike like WP were.
Now, how can you say that there is nothing inconsistent with your positions when you admitted to changing your tone in this thread and anyone who has read your original statements and then read the text for your leaflet would be a bit confused at what has changed? You still haven’t answered why you toned down your condemnation of the strike?
The reality of the strikes are very clear, there was an unfortunate use of a slogan which the right wing press, opportunists and the BNP jumped on. Yet, the strike was not about BJ4BW as the strikers showed through their demands which were decided at a mass meeting of workers. I would also like you to show where you got those figures from for which workers got employed. As I understand, there are 102 jobs which are open for anyone to apply for, regardless of nationality.
If anyone has not read it, check out Gregor Gall’s report on the strike which is posted <a href=”http://radicalsocialist.org/forum” here. WP members should be asking not just why they got it so wrong, but what has happened to an organisation which once prided itself on its integrity, including openly admitting its mistakes (eg not calling for a vote for Sheridan in the 92 election).
I thought James Turley’s article was generally very sound, apart from the insertion of the standard CPGB dogma about the ‘action’ obsession and supposed disdain for analysis of the far left. No serious left group should have failed to intervene at Lindsey had they the opportunity, so what point is being made? All theory must be tested in practice, comrade, and revised in the light of this – how else does our analysis move forward? In making this point, moreover, you’ve completely undercut the main thrust of the srticle, which was that the media portrayal of the strike as pure xenophobia distracted from the fact that in many ways it was exactly what WP and others have been calling for: a rank-and-file initiative sidelining the union tops and directly challenging the anti-union laws in order to fight the attempts of the capitalists to destroy unions and drive down wages.
Jon,
You misunderstand Jame’s point. If you look at what he wrote he was sniping at the Workers Power view that revolutionary unity is forged in undefined and unsubstantiated “action”. This also becomes quite apparent in Revo’s call for “co-ordination of action across campuses” as the way forward for left unity too. No politics – let alone Marxism.
We are clear that genuine must come from is programme
and politics. And this is not “CPGB dogma”, by the way:
“What is your programme? That is the decisive question” – VI Lenin.
United action of the class as a whole, which is good and something objectively necessary, cannot be achieved on the basis of the left organising through bureaucratic centralism (no factions, no open expression of differences in the party press).
It is not just a “bad thing” but is actually counterposed to the unity in diversity that our class needs. In fact, this contradiction between the united front tactic and the “party of a new type” is one that runs through the history of our movement down to 1920 and 1921 respectively in the Comintern’s formulation of the united front tactic and the nature of the CPs in the Comintern.
So to labour the point somewhat – unless the left unites on an openly Marxist, revolutionary minimum programme NOW with open factional rights and democracy, then this contradiction will run and run.
We need action and intervention, but in a way that is linked to a clear political and programmatic strategy – the fight for a communist party which is democratic centralist not bureaucratic centralist. This actually means breaking with the type of “action” proposed by a group like WP/Revo.
That was the point that was being made. Have a look at the article again, or read the relevant sections of Mike Macnair’s book on Revolutionary Strategy.
Cheers
Ben
Ben
With respect I do characterise these views as dogma as they are uncritically repeated by CPGB members, including young members with virtually no experience of the class struggle or knowledge of the left. WP has an unrivalled back catalogue of programmatic development going back over thirty years, including the only attempt to update the Transtitional Programme, The Trotskyist Manifesto, which remains central to the politics of PR. Add to this the groundbreaking analysis of the Fourth International, The Death Agony of the Fourth International, and you will surely recognise that this has been a group which has never favoured action over reflection or sought to forge unity without reference to programmatic agreement. If the CPGB had been privy to the unity initiative with what is now the AWL and taken heed of our characterisation of their trajectory you might have saved yourself a lot of trouble over your own ill-fated attempt to merge. Similarly if you had taken heed of the programmatic ABC which led WP to steer clear of Respect you could have avoided more wasted years.
What I am driving at is that the CPGB’s line on action and programme more reflects your own needs to develop a set of coherent policies – it also serves as a convenient excuse for those young members who prefer discussing left politics to having to talk to workers or otherwise engage in the class struggle.
As for the charges of ‘bureaucratic centralism’ which are routinely aimed at all left groups bar the CPGB, you again need to sharpen your analysis. PR and other several other left groups have perfectly healthy internal regimes which include the right to express differences openly. WP itself and the LRCI (as was) not only promoted full rights for factions and tendencies but educated all its members to ensure their full participation in debate – a million miles from the sign-em-up-and-sell-the-paper practice of the SWP and SP.
It is however true that the regime of WP and the LFI has degenerated, as a result of initiating a youth group which was nominally independent but which the LFI sought to control. The decisive point in WP’s degeneration came when the minority which opposed the idea we are in a pre-revolutionary period were barred from leadership bodies. This made the split with PR inevitable and WP more prone to mistakes like the one they have just made over Lindsey.
Jon,
there was no attempt on behalf of the CPGB to merge with the AWL. There were discussions between the two groups and explorations of political differences, alongside an attempt to cooperate more closely within the Socialist Alliance, specifically around the production of an unofficial SA paper. This proposal for common work in the production was not just made to the AWL, a number of ‘independent’ members of the SA supported the idea – unfortunately no other organised group showed any interest. Workers Power opposed the idea from the start, describing it as a “Tower of Babel”, before sectarianly flouncing out of the SA altogether.
And our time in Respect has been far from wasted. We were central to exposing and challenging the popular frontist logic of the SWP’s politics. Sectarian abstentionism is nothing new to the Workers Power tradition.
You claim that “the CPGB’s line on action and programme more reflects your own needs to develop a set of coherent policies – it also serves as a convenient excuse for those young members who prefer discussing left politics to having to talk to workers or otherwise engage in the class struggle.” Aside from the fact that this is patronising crap (alongside the comment about “young members with virtually no experience of the class struggle or knowledge of the left” – no wonder you one no friends in Revo), the drawing of some kind of dividing line between “discussing left politics” and talking to workers is laughable for a socialist. If you don’t talk to workers about left politics what do you talk to them about?
Jon,
Dave has cleared up some of the more silly of your accusations.
A few points. You write:
“Add to this the groundbreaking analysis of the Fourth International, The Death Agony of the Fourth International, and you will surely recognise that this has been a group which has never favoured action over reflection or sought to forge unity without reference to programmatic agreement”.
But did not early Bolshevism draw a distinction between agreement and acceptance of the party programme? It is precisely the politics of “agreement” as opposed to acceptance which led you into the mess with WP, and in fact why most of the trotskyist left have built nothing but split-bound, fractious groupings. We are of the opinion that this is not how mass parties of the class are made. Nor was Lenin in 1903 by the way, no matter what Luxemburg or Trotsky wrote in 1904, and certainly not how Zinoviev portrayed it in 1924.
You shrug your shoulders and say the split was “inevitable”. I agree. But it is not an accident that you were excluded from leadership bodies etc, it flows from your theoretical understanding of the ‘vanguard party’.
As I allude to above, this analysis has its origins in the 1921 theses on the nature of the CPs in the Comintern. Trotsky’s TP takes this as a given. We in the CPGB do not, and think it was in part responsible for what later happended to the CP and the Comintern – the theorisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat as that of the vanguard party – which is certainly not what Marx,. Engels, Luxemburg meant (Lenin and Trotsky were less consistent – cf Hal Draper Vol III).
Now, if the theoretical legacy of WP and PR is so wonderful, why is it that the former adopts a left-sectarian stance on the labour party/the strikes/Socialist Alliance and the latter provides left cover for the Stalinist/labour bureaucracy lash up in the Convention (many PR members voted against discussing a new party, let alone forming one!!!!)
I think it has its origins precisely in the contradiction between the 1920 and 1921 congresses and the stuff I outlined above – flip-flopping between bureaucratic self-censorship in the name of ‘unity’ and sectarian abstentionist denunciation in the hope of buildiong the ‘vanguard party’.
I thought PR’s approach to politics was a rethink, a programmatic look in the mirror, a reassessment of the Bolshevisation of the Comintern, another look at party and class? From your postings one would assume you are on the wrong side of the split.
Cheers
Ben (24 years of age, by the way)
*addition* – sorry I posted that a bit quick and didn’t finish a point.
I write:
“You shrug your shoulders and say the split was “inevitable”. I agree. But it is not an accident that you were excluded from leadership bodies etc, it flows from your theoretical understanding of the ‘vanguard party’.”
I would also like to add that there will always be splits where there is a ban on factions and the public expression of differences in the party press and the rights of leadership members to have vetos over local branches. (more or less all of this is in the 1921 theses on the nature of the party btw). It is in that sense I *agree* the split was inevitable.
But in a healthy regime they could have been contained and hopefully overcome with patient and rational discussion PUBLICLY. This is what makes your stuff about “not talking to the workers” particularly laughable.
The workers weren’t too informed about the developments in WP before the split were they? How could they be, one asks oneself, they wouldn’t have been able to read about in Workers Power!!
Ben
It’s very simple: how can the Lindsey OR outcome be a “victory” (as the Weekly worker says0 if it did not force a single extra job out of the bosses?
How can it be progressive (ie a “victory” for socialists) when a strike associated with the demand BJ4BW, and when the strike committee’s demands deliberately excluded proposing a rejection of this demand to the members, and when the outcome of the strike was to seize 102 jobs from Italian workers to give them to British workers? If the LOR demands are rolled out without a rejection of this reactionary slogan, isn’t it safe to say that the result also will be – quotas for british workers or “local people” at the expense of foreign workers?
(btw who knows whether these workers will keep their jobs, or whether these core workers of IREM will be redeployed in Italy at the expense of other workers – don’t believe everything the papers or union officials tell you – though it is irrelevant whether such job losses occurred).
Isn’t the left that claims this is a victory being economistic: the relative handful of jobs gained, that last only a few weeks in the case of LOR (as welcome as this is to hard-pressed workers and their families) is weighed in the balance against a much harsher set of outcomes
a. this campaign for power workers as an alternative for the union leaders to fighting the mass of 100,000’s of job losses
b. that in the great majority of workplaces where CUTS not contracts for new jobs is on the order of the day this would mean dividing the workforce directly when it needed to be united to fight
c. the POLITICAL sacrificing of internationalism, and massive propagation of the slogan BJ4BW throughout the working class which gives a big boost
to not just economic nationalism and protectionism but nationalism and racism and the BNP
Once again if it is progressive and represents a victory to win jobs at foreign workers expense, to advance trade union demands without rejecting BJ4BW in the middle of a mass BJ4BW society-wide campaign by the bourgeois press, then it follows that it is progressive to roll out such strikes across the land and such victories too. But won’t this “trade union strategy” in the majority of cases then mean redundancies for foreign workers (and its debatable whether this was the case with LOR), huge and growing divisions in the working class, and won’t it politically create a massive wave of racism?
The LOR dispute’s outcome is the test case – if the weekly worker thinks it is a victory, then it must downplay or ignore its consequences (the SP’s strategy) or applaud them and hope for more such ‘victories’.
Andy, no Italian workers have lost their job through this dispute, the 102 jobs which have been opened up,are for anyone regardless of nationality to apply for. So I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers on this. The current IREM workers are not going to lose their jobs and will be taking part in the construction project at the Lindsey site. The task now it to get these workers into the unions and break the Viking-Laval decisions to ensure workers across the EU work on equal terms and that contracts can be put under scrutiny by workers’ organisations. These demands were laid out by the LOR workers themselves.
CGIL have understood that whilst the strikes have had unfortunate slogans, the content of the strike is necessary if somewhat limited: http://www.marxist.com/britain-italian-workers-message-of-solidarity.htm
‘Isn’t the left that claims this is a victory being economistic: the relative handful of jobs gained, that last only a few weeks in the case of LOR (as welcome as this is to hard-pressed workers and their families) is weighed in the balance against a much harsher set of outcomes’
It was a victory, it broke the anti trade union laws the strikers correctly called for unity and parity with the foreign workers and has spurred on action across the country against the undercutting of wages, conditions and agreements. So for the movement as a whole it was a victory as it gave a glimpse of the strength the working class possess when they fight without the restraints imposed by the bureaucracy.
‘a. this campaign for power workers as an alternative for the union leaders to fighting the mass of 100,000’s of job losses’
I find this odd. A strike that spread the length and breadth of the country against job cuts and the undermining of conditions is far more welcome that what the union leaders have to offer. I am all for struggling within the unions to make the union leaders fight, but it is better to see the rank and file organising independently of the bureaucracy and taking action independently of the bureaucracy. I thought this is what Workers’ Power have been arguing, or have you flip-flopped to “make the union leaders fight”?
‘b. that in the great majority of workplaces where CUTS not contracts for new jobs is on the order of the day this would mean dividing the workforce directly when it needed to be united to fight’
Where has the workforce been divided, has WP got secret access to some demands from the strikers everyone else hasn’t seen? Remember the LOR workers demanded unity not division. If you want to believe the right wing rags over the workers, then that is up to you.
‘the POLITICAL sacrificing of internationalism, and massive propagation of the slogan BJ4BW throughout the working class which gives a big boost
to not just economic nationalism and protectionism but nationalism and racism and the BNP’
Where was internationalism sacrificed, yes the media played heavy on the nationalist slogans but surely anyone in our movement can see past that and read what the strikers decided their demands were. So in fact the workers snubbed nationalism and the BNP.
We do not downplay the consequences, the problem WP have is that they wont believe what the workers themselves decided, and have therefore imagined the strikers demanded BJ4BW and the sacking of the foreign workers. Most Marxists prefer to live in the real world not a fantasy land.
Jon B, I presume?
“With respect I do characterise these views as dogma as they are uncritically repeated by CPGB members, including young members with virtually no experience of the class struggle or knowledge of the left.”
Who are you referring to here? I’ve yet to meet them…
Comrades maybe interested in the videos of the SPEW/ Respect meeting where Workers’ Power managed to garner support from the Sparts…and no one else.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/latest/6908
Reports on the meeting:
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/2556
http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/report-on-oil-refinery-strikes-meeting/
No one likes to see middle-class leftists explain away their differences with other middle-class leftists by calling their opponents “middle class”. Generally I’m not a fan of class determinism.
But it is impossible to ignore that it was the student groups (SWP, AWL and WP), i.e. the groups that have their social base at British universities, that took a more or less abstentionist position towards these strikes; It was the worker groups (like SP and PR), with their social base in the trade unions, that tried to engage with the strikes and overcome their reactionary slogans. (WP had the most openly abstentionist line and also has the highest percentage of students – around 80% the last time I asked.)
Racism is a major concern to left-wing students (who feel latent hostility to the “uneducated” working class), whereas subcontracting in order to undermine union rights is not anywhere on their political radar. It’s much easier to score points at the university with a simple “no to nationalism”. But of course that makes any kind of intervention into the workers’ movement more or less impossible.
It’s also telling that leading WP cadre are commenting on all the blogs of the British left, which they don’t do very often. Their members are, as usual, being pummeled with calls for “Bolshevik discipline” (i.e. “Don’t question the line!”), but that’s clearly not enough to overcome doubts about having a position that is actually to the left of the Left Communists (see ICC statement) and wins the support of the Spartacists.
In one sense, their tactic has been successful: When has a position of the small students group Workers Power been discussed so much by the British left? It’s the old Spartacist tactic of having such ridiculous positions that people can’t help but talk about you. And from a sect perspective, publicity (whether positive or negative) is far more important than an intervention in the workers’ movement.