Trade Unionism
THE
SOCIALIST PARTY and the trade unions have a common origin in the class
struggle. The former is the organised expression on the political field
of the conscious recognition of that struggle by the workers. Its
growth is the measure of their determination to end the struggle by
converting the means of living into common property, thus establishing
a harmony of interests within society.
The class struggle,
however, does not commence with the conscious recognition of itas a
fact. Long before the origin of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
the class struggle was in progress. Strikes and lock-outs,
machine-breaking and penal legislation have testified to the antagonism
of interests in modern society for overa century.
With the rise
of the factory system the workers found themselves involved in the
struggle in grim earnest. It was no choice of theirs, but thrust upon
them with relentless and increasing force with every step forward in
industrial evolution. The Luddite machine-smashing in the early
nineteenth century was typical of this phase of the conflict, but with
further experience the need for some other form of organisation
impressed itself upon the workers. The grouping together of the workers
in the factories provided a basis for this. They began to realise that
the machines had come to stay, and that the former independence which
they had enjoyed, while still often working in their homes under the
old system, had gone for ever. Hence the trade unions arose, uniting
the workers in similar or allied occupations in order to obtain from
the employers the best possible terms.
From the first, the
strike was their most important weapon. Under the handicraft system, in
its closing stages, workers sold the articles they produced to
merchants and had to bargain with them about the price. Later all this
was changed and the price of the workers' labour-power itself became
the subject of dispute. They sold their energies by the hour, day or
week, and the system of piece¬work, which was retained here and
there,
disguised but did not alter that fact. The workers had lost all
substantial freedom, and their only alternative to working on the terms
of the employer was starvation. Hence the right to withhold that
labour-power in conjunction with their fellows became an essential
means of resistance. Without it the workers would have been crushed
beyond hope of recovery, and would have become, as Marx argued in his
pamphlet, Value, Price and Profit, quite incapable of "initiating any
large movement".
From the outset the trade unions found arrayed
against them, not only the individual employers or groups against whom
they were directly struggling, but the forces of the entire employing
class, as represented by the State. For long the unions were subject to
legal persecution as unlawful conspiracies and monopolies, and only by
dint of considerable perseverance were those obstacles overcome. The
workers indeed had their backs to the wall and only the fact that the
unions were rooted in the new conditions saved them from annihilation.
By
degrees, however, the employing class saw the uselessness of trying to
destroy the new organisations and the unions were granted a legal
status. In the course of time the employers discovered that
'respectable' labour leaders, whether in the field of industry or
politics, were useful in helping to maintain industrial peace which
they needed.
Judicious flattery aad the hankerings after
political office have stimulated the ambitions of numerous leaders whom
the workers have all too readily trusted. Underlying this process
however has been the steady progress of capitalist industry. The
constant developments in machinery, methods of working and financial
organisation
of the employers have for generations set strict limits upon the
effectiveness of the workers' struggles.
As
the magnitude of the forces engaged in the struggle on either side
increases, so the intervention of the State in industrial disputes is
rendered more certain. The necessity for maintaining order on behalf of
capitalism leaves governments no alternative. During the six years,
1945 to 1951, the Labour government on a number of occasions used
troops to do the work of men on strike. This happened during the strike
of workers at some London eletricity power stations in December 1949
and when London dockers struck in July 1949 and again in April 1950,
and Bristol dockers in May 1949, when gasworks maintenance men came out
on strike in September of the same year, and at Smithfield market in
June and July.
These strikes, like almost all of the strikes
that took place after compulsory arbitration was established in 1940
under Order 1305 were 'unofficial', that is, they were not backed by
the men's unions and were also in fact illegal.
The Labour
government, which had hitherto refrained from taking action on illegal
strikes, prosecuted ten of the men involved in the gasworks dispute.
They were sentenced to one month's imprisonment though on appeal the
sen¬tences were altered to fines of £50 in each case. Because
of the
difficulty of enforcing the law against large numbers of such strikers,
and in face of trade union demands for the repeal of Order 1305, the
Labour government just before it went out of office in 1951 repealed
the Order and made strikes and lockouts legal again.
When, late
in 1977, the firemen came out on strike to get a pay increase greater
than the 10 per cent which the Callaghan government was trying to
enforce on workers generally, the government at once brought in the
army to break the strike.
It is argued by defenders of
arbitration that when workers have the legal right to submit their
claims to an arbitration tribunal then strikes are unnecessary because
the tribunal, being an 'independent' body, will give a satisfactory
decision. This, however, is based on muddled thinking. It is true that
the tribunals can be independent in the sense that they are not
instructed by the employers or the government as to what awards they
are to make on each claim, but they cannot and do not disregard
governmental statements of general policy on wages.
In practice
arbitration bodies exist for the purpose of preventing industrial
disputes from taking the form of stoppages of work, and their awards on
wage claims are bound to be influenced by the attitude of the workers.
If workers were to abandon all idea of strikes the employers and the
arbitration bodies alike would reduce still further the amounts they
were prepared to offer. The strike remains the workers' indispensable
weapon.
The relatively high levels of employment for some years
after the second world war put the trade unions in a strong bargaining
position. Unable to rely on widespread unemployment to hold wages down,
governments sought to do this by means of an 'incomes policy'. The
Tories relied only on moral appeals and them 'pay pause' was ignored by
the unions. But when Labour was returned in 1964 some unions dropped
this opposition to wage restraint and within a few months, along with
representatives of the government and the employers, had signed a
Declaration of Intent agreeing in principle to restraint.
Soon
the Labour government took tougher measures. In 1966 they brought in
the first of a series of Prices and Incomes Acts that gave them power
to ban or delay negotiated wage increases and to fine any who defied
such a ban. Many workers had their increases delayed but, although some
seemed to break the law, the Labour government did not take any to
court as they had done in 1950.
A new phase of wage restraint
opened up under the Labour Government elected in 1974. The Labour (and
Tory) policy of seeking to prevent unemployment by expansion of
government expenditure — in effect, inflation — had completely failed.
Unemployment rose to nearly 1 1/2 millions in 1976 but inflation had
reached dangerous levels and, in order to maintain British
competitiveness in world markets, it became increasingly urgent to curb
it. The Labour Government negotiated a new restraint with the T.U.C.
named "the social contract" designed, according to the Government, to
hold down prices by limiting wage increases. It had little or no effect
on prices — the rise of the price level between the return of the
Labour Government in February 1974 and February 1977 was 71 per cent
and it was still rising fast. Its effect on wage levels, however, was
drastic. In the years 1974-77 'real wages', that is the purchasing
power of money wages, had fallen materially. According to figures
provided by the Trsasary, the purchasing power of the take-home pay of
workers on the average wage fell by 12 per cent between December 1974
and February 1977 (The Times, 16 May 1977).
The workers'
standard of living fell in the trade depression which began in 1974.
just as it had in the trade depressions of the nineteenth century when
openly capitalist Liberal or Tory Governments were in power.
The
effectiveness of trade union action has clearly been blunted by support
for the Labour Party, a link that has been justified by saying that
Labour is the political arm of the trade union movement. But the
experience of all the Labour administrations of capitalism since the
second world war has shown that, far from using political power to
force employers to grant wage increases, Labour governments had used it
against workers to bring about wage restraint.
In the early
months of 1969, the Wilson government announced its intention to push
through legislation which would have empowered a minister to impose a
twenty-eight day 'conciliation pause' on certain strikes and to enforce
it by fines on workers who refused to comply with an order to continue
at work. Only in face of widespread trade union opposition, and the
threat of some Labour M.P.s to vote against it, was the proposed
legislation dropped.
Trade union effectiveness has also been
blunted by the extent to which the unions have been drawn into the
administration of capitalism. During and since the second world war it
has become customary for individual unions and the Trades Union
Congress to associate themselves with the government and government
departments in carrying out government policy. In return for
consultation the TUC and the executives of the unions are expected to
endorse policies and to undertake to recommend them to their members.
It
may be argued that some of these activities are a logical development
of the functions of organisations formed to protect the workers under
capitalism but it is obvious that they, like the link with the Labour
Party, distract attention from the principal purpose of the trade
unions: to resist the pressure of the capitalist class on the workers'
conditions.
What, then, is to be the future of the unions? At
present appear to have become jumping-off grounds for Labour
politicians, and to that extent less useful to the workers: but there
is no obvious reason why, with the spread of understanding among their
members, they should not be valuable centres of resistance to
capitalist attack.
As we have seen, the trade unions arose from
the resistance to the pressure on the workers in the early days of
capitalism. They necessarily took the form most convenient at the
moment, and have been slow to adapt themselves to changing
circumstances. They have tended to overemphasise the distinctions
between workers of different occupations and skills, origin, and sex.
The Socialist Party, organised as it is for the emancipation of the
workers as a class, insists upon the necessity for subordinating all
distinctions to class solidarity. On the political field the workers of
all countries have but one interest, and that involves winning
political power and dispossessing the capitalist class. The supreme
conflict with that class leaves no room for sectional antagonisms
between workers.
Syndicalists (a name derived from the French
word for trade union) argue that workers need not bother with political
action to dispossess the capitalists and that instead they should
organise into unions and in the course of a general strike 'take and
hold' the means of production. Syndicalism is based on a dangerous
illusion and is opposed by the Socialist Party. Though a general strike
may be useful under some circumstances to resist attacks on living
standards, it cannot be used to overthrow capitalism. The capitalists'
monopoly over the means of production rests upon their control of
political power. To leave this in their hands while attempting to carry
out the social revolution would be folly and bound to lead to
unnecessary bloodshed and suffering.
Syndicalism also, with such
slogans as 'the factories to the workers' and 'the mines to the
miners', suggests that capitalist control of industry should be
replaced by that of a federation of industrial unions or workers'
councils. This is misleading and shows the futility of drawing prints
for a future society, since this proposal merely reflects occupational
and sectional distinctions of capitalism.
The Socialist Party of
Great Britain, while recommending trade unionists to offer their utmost
resistance to the worsening of conditions, never fails to point out
that under capitalism the pressure on the workers is inevitable. It is
not enough, therefore, merely to apply the brake to these worsening
conditions. The system that gives rise to them must be abolished.
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