The current political situation is characterised by a sense of urgency. For its part the government is at present drawing up its Budget, the next stage in its campaign to cut the living standards of the working class even further. On the shop floor militancy is developing fast on all three fronts of the government attack — wages, cuts and redundancy.
For many workers the imminent end of phase 2 of the Social Contract has signalled the possibility of recovering the ground that has been lost over the last two years. Examples of the atmosphere now prevailing are numerous — the massive demonstration at Longbridge against Varley, the resolutions presented to the conferences of many unions, the Leyland toolroom workers strike are only a few examples.
The pressure developing against the effects of the Social Contract has forced the trade union leaders to speak out against it. However, in so doing they have been at pains to propose policies limited only to the (supposed) short term needs of ‘their’ section of the working class.
Hugh Scanlon, for example, talks about the dangers of eroded differentials and explains to the bosses that he cannot be expected to hold his members back forever, that it would be better to head them off now with re-established differentials than bring important sections of industry to a grinding halt. He is quick to add that such arguments only apply to workers in the manufacturing sector.
Alan Fisher of NUPE, on the other hand, believes that since some sacrifice has to be made it should be made by the better-paid workers and, therefore, argues for a continuation of the flat-rate policy which has cut everybody’s living standards.
It is not only among the trade union bureaucracy that different proposals are being canvassed. The National Coal Board leapt at the chance of a joint letter from themselves and Joe Gormley proposing that miners pay be allowed to rise through the negotiation of a productivity deal. Sir Charles Villiers of the British Steel Corporation has suggested that the take home pay of manufacturing workers could be increased by several pounds a week without endangering the government’s pay policy if tax cuts were introduced.
This proposal, another version of the right wing argument that reserves should be removed from the public sector (education, health, social services) to the ‘productive’, has actually been echoed, indeed recommended to the government by the TUC, who know well enough that it would mean buying off one section of workers with money saved by axing the jobs of another.
All these proposals have a common aim — to head off the possibility of a concerted attack on the central principle of the Social Contract, that is, a government imposed policy of wage cuts enforced by the leaders of the workers’ own unions. Nor should it be forgotten that the Social Contract means more than a wages policy — it also means collusion of the trade union leaders in rising unemployment and cuts in the social services.
What policies should revolutionaries fight for in this situation — and what dead end solutions have to be nailed for what they are?
Central to our strategy is the question of a fight against the cardinal principle of the Social Contract — that the cost of weathering the current capitalist crisis should be borne by the working class. We have to start from the position that the interests of the class are utterly distinct from those of the employers and the government. The assertion of working class independence is a fundamental aim of our policy.
On the wages issue this means fighting against policies which allow the militancy and energy of one section to be turned against another. The entire working class faces the same problem of falling wages and rising prices — different sections express this differently — skilled engineers as demands for differentials, well organised sections by the demand for free collective bargaining. Workers Power believes that the principal planks of a wages demand that can unite the class are: for lump sum increases protected against inflation by guaranteed increases for every per cent rise in the working class cost of living as calculated by workers’ organisations, not the phoney retail price index; immediate equal pay for women; for a national minimum wage of £55 take-home; and for full pay for workers laid off by disputes.
Why these demands and how should they be fought for? Our greatest fear is that the militancy being generated at present will be channelled away from attacking the heart of the government’s strategy, and even turned against other workers. This does not mean that other demands raised by workers in struggle are consciously aimed at other sections, but that the unevenness of the class has to be recognised and consciously overcome.
For sections of traditionally well-organised workers the demand ‘for free collective bargaining’ expresses a determination to get rid of wage control and rely on the collective strength of the shop floor. However, for the less well-organised it can be presented (and Alan Fisher is already busy doing just this) as a selfish demand from those in a position to ‘hold the country to ransom’. Although militants in every section would be glad to see strong sections break through the wages policy, their ability to bring out their own members on the same demand — or in solidarity with the strong sections — cannot be guaranteed.
On the other hand, the demand of a lump sum and guaranteed protection against inflation is immediately generalisable. Any policy aimed at the government’s strategy has to be. The barrage of press propaganda, the witch-hunts by the trade union leaders will be aimed at isolating those who take action. Every possibility of presenting them as scapegoat for the economic crisis will be used to the full. In terms of the morale of those fighting and of the willingness to join the fight of others, such isolation could be crucial.
The demand in itself does not guarantee success, no demand can, but a determined campaign of direct action — of occupations, strikes, organisation of mass picketing and 100% effective blacking — on a demand that is raised because it is in the interest of all workers, can not only overcome isolation but develop the independence of aims and organisation that the class needs. The same is true of demands for equal pay, the minimum wage. To develop the unity we need means strong sections fighting for the interests of the weak.
The demand for full average earnings to those laid off by disputes is of central importance. The bosses’ offensive is an all-embracing one affecting every aspect of the working class’ standard of living. This means that an attack by workers on one front will immediately produce a counter attack on another. Demands for wage rises in one section will be answered by the argument that they would create unemployment in another. The public sector cuts will be presented as a result of the demands of those in the ‘productive’ industries. Union leaders will pose one aspect of the fight against the Social Contract as an alternative to another, for example, ‘fight the cuts, not for wages’.
To make sure one section’s fight is not turned against another’s it is necessary to raise demands which stress the class-wide nature of any attack on the Social Contract. The demand for full lay-off pay is a concrete application of the slogan ‘Work or Full Pay’ which, in a general fashion, underlines the workers’ refusal to pay the cost of the crisis. Given that the bosses will lay off workers at the slightest chance it is vital, both to the morale of those in dispute and to the development of action in solidarity with them, that full lay-off pay is raised as a central demand.
The unions and the Labour government
There can be no doubt that a campaign for such demands, using methods of direct action, will be opposed wholeheartedly by the union leaders who see the role of the rank and file as solely that of a stage army, to be used as a negotiating counter. We have already seen how Scanlon has turned on the toolroom workers, more examples will follow as other sections begin to move.
Therefore, bound up with the fight against the bosses’ offensive there has to be an equally determined fight against the trade union leaders’ collaboration with the state and the employers — and not only at national level. Participation schemes are designed to produce the same result — workers taking part in the management of capitalism and thereby accepting responsibility for making it work. Since, in the present time of crisis, capitalism can only work at the expense of the working class, participation means taking part in the planning and execution of attacks on the working class. This is precisely what the leaders of the trade unions have done via the Social Contract.
The whole labour movement stands in urgent need of a drastic renovation to clear away those leaders who take part in the attack on their own members. Such a renovation is also necessary to rid the movement of the bureaucratic inertia which prevents it from responding quickly and flexibly to changes in the direction of attack. The movement to do this can only be built on the basis of the fight against the Social Contract.
Rank and file committees formed to organise direct action in defence of the class will also be the bodies which spearhead the movement to democratise the unions. Such democratisation will involve the direct accountability of the leaders to the rank and file, the election of all officials and their recallability, union officials to be paid the average wage of their members and the end of secret negotiations.
The fight to democratise the unions and the fight against the capitalist offensive are both part and parcel of the development of working class independence and both have to be posed in that light.
The strength of the Social Contract over the last two years has rested on the close collaboration of the trade union leaders in the drawing up and enforcement of economic policy. The fact that it is a Labour government that has forced down living standards, not only by permission of, but with the active assistance of, the trade union leaders, reveals all too clearly the continued hold of traditional political allegiances over the working class.
Despite its record the Labour Party is still seen, by the majority of workers, as ‘their’ party, the one that represents them, as opposed to the Tories who represent the bosses. The strength of this belief, even among the most militant sections, can be seen from the leaflet issued by the Leyland convenors inviting delegates to the April 3rd conference: ‘Our aim is not to bring down the government. What we seek to do is to ensure its return at the next election by changing its policies to those of the working people who elected them.’
The message here is perfectly clear: the policies of the Labour government are an aberration, they can be made to change course, the hope of the working class still lies in the Labour Party, if disillusion were to set in then disaster would be just around the corner. The logical result of this belief? Put pressure on the left of the Labour Party, so that they will put pressure on the government. (The Labour government have already shown the only kind of pressure they will bow to — the IMF, the City and the CBI.)
In this argument the illusion that the Labour government can be made to act against the interests of its political masters is not to be attacked and dispelled, rather it is to be protected! A clearer example of the absurdities that Stalinism is reduced to in its search for a peaceful, parliamentary, British road to socialism could not be found.
Demands on reformists
For the Communist Party and its fellow travellers the downfall of a Labour government, even as a result of the working class defending itself, would be the greatest calamity. Thus they raise, almost to the point of principle, the widely-held belief that the working class will have to put up with the Labour government’s attacks because ‘there is no alternative’. The task of revolutionaries is to build a movement that will, itself, generate the alternative. In the present period this means arguing for direct action against the government’s policies, even though this would endanger the existence of the government.
If and when the Labour government is put in jeopardy because the working class refuses to accept its capitalist policies any longer, then revolutionaries have to argue that it is the government, not the class, which is faced with the choice of changing course or continuing in the same direction. The question for the government will be either to fall from power because the ruling class will no longer tolerate a government unable to do its bidding, or to defend itself from the ruling class by rallying the mobilised working class around itself. Since the latter would mean carrying out pro-working class policies, we do not believe the Labour government will choose that option. It would rather fall from power than attack the bourgeoisie.
The Communist Party, with its ‘save the government from itself’ line, consciously promotes reformism. Other groupings, in trying to overcome the problem of reformism, end up accommodating to it. Slogans such as ‘Force the lefts to form a government’ (WSL), ‘Labour to power on a socialist programme’ (WRP) or ‘Kick out Healey/Callaghan’ (IMG) are objectively only variants of the CP’s line.
The comrades of these groups believe they are carrying out the tactic of ‘putting demands on the reformist leaders’ in order to ‘expose’ the bankruptcy of reformism to the working class. In their scenario, once the reformists do not carry out the demands the ‘revolutionaries’ have placed on them, the working class will see through them — and take up revolutionary politics instead.
We can only wonder if the comrades really know what it is they are saying — they are hoping to win the working class to revolutionary politics by trickery! ‘The way forward is to follow the left reformists’, they cry out to the class, amongst themselves they whisper, ‘of course we realise it is not the way forward but if we say that the workers might not listen to us — when the reformists have sold them out — then we can put a revolutionary line’. Such an approach is a complete distortion, a total falsification, of the tactic of raising demands on the reformist leaders.
Putting reformism to the test is a matter of raising in struggles the policies that the working class needs at the present time and calling on the reformists to support those demands and the struggle to implement them. Calling for a new Labour government made up of different personnel in no way helps the development of revolutionary politics in the working class or of a movement based on the independent direct action of the working class. Reformism is a blind alley because it leads to defeat, a defeat stemming from just the kind of illusions in ‘left’ reformists that calls for a ‘left’ Labour government will not dispel but on the contrary, will propagate.
We argue that reformism will only be defeated when a movement of millions of workers decides to implement the policies of a revolutionary programme against the opposition of reformist leaders and reformist governments. The task of revolutionaries is to build that movement that can transform the labour government’s not defending the class into realisation that no reformist party can — that the interests of the working class can only be furthered by its taking control of society and transforming it.
In the here and now this means that revolutionaries, whilst fighting alongside reformist workers in all struggles, have to argue for an action programme of those policies vital to the class at the present time. Such a programme would include: nationalisation without compensation and under workers’ control of all firms declaring redundancies, nationalisation of the banks and finance houses, restoration of all social service cuts and protection against inflation of social expenditure, immediate implementation of equal pay for women, inflation-proofed wages, support for all sections of workers taking action against the attacks of the employers, a programme of public works to give work to the unemployed, the immediate withdrawal of troops from Ireland, the repeal of the Immigration Acts.
These policies have to be argued for as what a genuinely pro-working class government would carry out. To those who agree with the policies but believe a left reformist government would carry them out, we reply, ‘We are certain they would not and could not, but join us in a united front to fight for such policies.’
In fighting for these demands we argue for direct action to gain them since this is the only way in which the working class can build the independence of aims and organisation that it needs. We do not call on the reformists to open the books of companies and industries, we call for shop stewards’ committees to force them to be opened, we call for direct action by the rank and file to cut hours, not jobs. It is in the development of such action that workers’ control is to be found and a basis for working class power built. Certainly we call on the reformists to support such actions, but we do not rely on their good offices to implement our demands.
Only in this way can a movement be built, based on the needs of the class and able to withstand the inevitable sellout by the reformists, or, indeed, the rise to power of a right-wing government.
