James Turley draws lessons from the Lindsey workers’ victory

A protracted and hard-fought struggle has drawn to a close at the Lindsey oil refinery (LOR). And there is little doubt over who has come out on top – all the workers’ demands have been met, including the reinstatement of nearly 700 made redundant and sacked, guarantees of work, and (paper) commitments not to victimise militants.

This is not the first time in recent history that a dispute at LOR has taken on significant proportions – in January this year, an unofficial walkout followed the news that a construction subcontractor would be shipping in the workforce for their job from Italy and Portugal; the contractor, IREM, refused to release details of pay agreements, but the fact that these workers were housed on barges miles away from the site and driven back there for lunch says it all. These workers were being used by IREM to undercut standing union agreements in Britain.

What happened next is well known – the LOR walkout was followed by solidarity actions all over the country. Even the rightwing media supported the strike, opportunistically highlighting chauvinist slogans that had some limited traction in the early days of the strike (‘British jobs for British workers’). Yet Polish workers walked out alongside their British brothers and sisters at an oil refinery in Plymouth; in fact, it was perfectly obvious to most workers that this was a particularly brazen attack on working conditions at LOR, and by extension on the rights of all workers – in spite of the idiotic abstentionism practised by some far leftists unwilling to be associated with a trade union struggle for jobs and conditions because of the chauvinist slogans adopted by some of those involved.

Eventually, IREM was forced, broadly speaking, into a truce; but the capitalists in charge at the plant and its satellite contractors were not likely to forget the bloody nose they had been dealt. It seems that, four months after the original dispute, Total – the French oil company which owns LOR – decided that it was now safe to deal with troublesome militants, serving 51 redundancy notices without warning and without the standard option to transfer to another local contractor. On June 11, hundreds walked out of work to overturn the redundancies.

Total’s first major response (apart from refusing to come to the negotiating table, as usual) was to very publicly fire another 647 workers, effectively imposing a lockout – this prompted calls for solidarity action, which were met by workers around the country. In fact, well over 20 workplaces (mostly, as in January, in the energy and construction industries) saw significant walkouts, again involving foreign workers. The anger was palpable, with the Socialist Party’s The Socialist quoting Unite steward Kenny Ward: “Would Total do the same in France? Absolutely not, because there would be tankers turned over on their sides … because the French wouldn’t put up with it … Our government will be subservient to companies like this. But we won’t!” (June 23).

Total posted up notices saying that workers could reapply for their jobs on an individual basis – the strikers burned them. Eventually the company was forced to the negotiating table, at which the 647 sacked workers were reinstated, the 51 compulsory redundancies rescinded, and promises of work drawn up. Assurances have apparently been made that no worker who came out in support of Lindsey will be victimised (though no doubt there will be attempts to do so).

So the workers have won for now (although it has to be said that the agreement does not provide for permanent, secure jobs: the 51 originally sacked were short-term contractors) – and the rest of our class can take heart in a general way, that defensive actions can be highly successful even in times of severe crisis. The scale of the walkouts also point to the elementary solidarity that comes naturally to the working class.

This has once again provided us with a clear lesson: the anti-union laws introduced by Thatcher and perpetuated by New Labour can be broken to the advantage of workers. Spontaneous walkouts of the type that followed the first 51 redundancies are comprehensively illegal – so, of course, are secondary and solidarity strike. The bourgeoisie knows that the power of the working class lies in its unity. Since the proletariat is separated from ownership of the means of production, it needs the highest possible degree of united organisation – both trade union and political – to force the bosses and their state to comply with workers’ demands. Injunctions against solidarity actions are aimed at undermining that unity, by making the organisation of legal strikes a procedural nightmare. While for workers the anti-union laws are an affront to industrial and political freedom, for the bourgeoisie they are a very sensible class warfare tactic.

Legislation is only effective inasmuch as it can be enforced, however. Just how shaky the ground is under the anti-union laws was demonstrated in 2007, when the Prison Officers Association – which formally has a non-strike agreement – successfully organised a one-day action which was simply not legally challenged at all. Similarly the experience of Lindsey – both in January-February and June – proves that determined action in defiance of the law can yield results.

It is common on the left to leave it here. The Socialist Party, which has played a leading and generally positive role in both LOR disputes, has unsurprisingly covered the recent battles fairly closely. “The anti-trade union laws were brushed aside by the determined strike action and the solidarity,” writes Alistair Tice on the SPEW website, summarising the events – before drawing other lessons concerning the role of shop stewards and so on (‘Lindsey workers: militant action pays!’, June 26). Socialist Worker celebrates the victory in a series of articles that note how the anti-union laws are no match for militant unity (July 4).

Not only can defying these laws produce results for individual struggles: it symbolically weakens the law as a whole. But to disregard a law is not to overturn it – a particular struggle is perfectly inspiring, but the anti-union laws remain real, bureaucratic obstacles to effective trade unionism. They also constitute a shield for the labour bureaucracy to hide behind and use as an excuse for failing to stand up for their members. This legislation must be entirely overthrown – which demands a more generalised fight, not just audacious infractions.

And in fact, with every union-type action that contravenes the extant legislation, this becomes more urgent. It ups the stakes, and challenges the bourgeoisie to strengthen its hand further in this regard. Total did not simply let the January-February strikes slide; neither will the bourgeois class as a whole let the working class off the hook for its increasing willingness to contravene Thatcher’s laws.

Which means that even a more generalised union struggle to force the anti-union laws off the statute book is insufficient. Both trade union and legal gains are, by their very nature, temporary. A political fight is inevitable – and it is critically important to take the battle to the capitalists in an organised and coherent fashion. If the class enemy has a free run in high politics, it will find other ways to restrict even further the power of the unions.

And so we arrive at the fundamental question facing our class today – the question of party. Parties are, among other things, machines for linking diverse struggles and aspects of social life so as to transform them. There is no such ‘machine’ in this country presently fit for purpose. Indeed, the very fact that the brief flurry of militant strikes has so brightened up the world of the workers’ movement testifies to the long, grinding periods of darkness from which they emerge. For the light to be switched on permanently, you need permanent organisations that are independent of the capitalist state and any particular sector of production – on these counts, unions in their basic tendency and the majority of their concrete manifestations do not fit the bill.

A party cannot simply limit itself to donkey-work in particular struggles, however. The old ‘official’ CPGB undertook many key tasks of basic class organisation – yet its programmatic degeneracy ultimately rendered it useless even as a galvanising force in the union bureaucracy. The fight for full trade union rights must be part of a full programme for conclusively reshaping society in the interests of the working class.