By Andy Yorke
The second Troublemakers conference brought together 150 trade unionists to discuss workplace organising and building a rank and file network. Last year it was one of three new ‘rank and file’ initiatives, alongside Counterfire’s Rank and File Combine (now seemingly defunct) and the SWP’s one-off Workers Summit. The organisers are to be congratulated for being the last group standing.
Partly this is thanks to its much more open structure, rather than being the property of a single organisation. Troublemakers also has support from a number of rank and file campaigns, including NHS Workers Say No and the Construction Rank and File. A worker from the recent Cammell Laird shipyard walkout addressed the conference.
Spokes and hubs
The model for Troublemakers put forward by Daniel Randall (AWL and RMT) and Ian Allinson (rs21 and author of Workers Can Win) is the US campaign Labor Notes. Randall explained that LN acts as a hub for rank and file campaigns or union reform groups. But what will Troublemakers itself stand for?
Troublemakers cannot simply declare itself a rank and file movement. It must first widen its appeal. This means placing demands on the union leaders, left and right, to act in defence of their members and the wider working class, while mobilising workers to fight for these demands ‘with the union leaders wherever possible, without them when necessary’.
We must warn rank and file workers of the inevitable betrayals and obstacles these misleaders will place in our way, so we can prepare for the ‘where necessary’ part of this old Clyde Workers’ Committee slogan.
Troublemakers should not be an empty hub, but aim explicitly to build a rank and file movement across the unions. That goal and the content that defines it – such as a worker’s wage for all officials, the election and instant recallability of officers and direct membership control of all disputes – should be the basis for interacting with campaigns and developing a national movement.
This includes union reforms of a far-ranging nature and, where possible, standing rank and file candidates in union elections. However, a rank and file movement would go much deeper, aiming for a genuine root-and-branch transformation of the present-day union machines, which relegate members to a purely passive role. It should recognise the strategic necessity of workplace organisation, which can become the basis for elected strike committees capable of mounting unofficial action in defiance of the anti-union laws and the bureaucrats.
Troublemakers also needs a political goal, especially in the context of a Labour government. For our unions to become real schools for socialism, they must not restrict themselves to fighting for better conditions within the capitalist system, but ultimately strive to overthrow that system of exploitation.
We look forward to fighting for this perspective in the months ahead and at the Troublemakers AGM in the New Year. The attacks of the new Labour government and the wars that are increasingly part of the international situation will throw up new rank and file activists. Troublemakers can guide these activists, so they that can avoid the bureaucratic pitfalls that befell many of the strikes in 2022–23.
