The Trouble in the Post Office
Every Government in turn has ignored the protests of the Civil Servants against the periodical reductions in pay enforced under the cost-of-living bonus system. The last reduction—agreed to by the Labour Cabinet before its resignation—added to the already deep discontent. In addition to some very well-attended demonstrations, there have, it is said, been local attempts to carry out a “go-slow” policy. The new Postmaster-General, Sir Kingsley Wood, struck sharply at the alleged ringleaders of the Manchester movement, dismissing one and inflicting various punishments on others. The Communists are demanding direct action on a national scale, while the union officials are concerned lest the vigorous action of the P.M.G. should frighten some of the lukewarm members into leaving the union.
There are lessons to be learned from this situation, both for the direct actionists and for the advocates of nationalisation.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not opposed to trade union action to improve or defend working-class wages and conditions. Such action, at the right moment, can be useful. But it has very definite limits. We live in a capitalist social system, in which the means of wealth production are privately owned and controlled, and in which the owning class have the whole of the forces of society at their disposal through their control of the machinery of Government.
By striking or resisting a lock-out, the industrial workers can, under favourable conditions, secure limited concessions, because their employers do not wish to lose opportunities of profit making. The organised workers cannot, however, by strike action gain possession of the means of production, because the armed forces stand at the back of the employing class. And to talk of the workers fighting the State and its forces is ludicrous. Until the majority of the electorate, want Socialism and will organise and vote themselves into control of the political machinery, the workers in each and every industry must accept the facts of the situation and refrain from fruitlessly defying those whose power is immeasurably greater than that of the working-class organisations. If the workers, individually and collectively, ignore this obvious lesson, they do so at their peril.
The Government’s own employees are in an even more difficult position than that of the industrial workers. If they challenge their employer, they are directly up against the State itself, and no Government carrying on capitalism, whether it is a Conservative Government or a Labour Government or (as in Russia) a Communist Government, will allow its authority to be challenged inside its own Departments. It is true that the capitalist class can win in any strike if they are prepared to call in the whole of the political power which is at their disposal. In the case of State services, the distinguishing factor in the situation is that the whole political power will always and promptly be used, whereas in outside industrial disputes the employing class as a whole are not always disposed to help the emplovers immediately affected.
Post Office workers will consequently be well advised to turn a deaf ear to the dangerous Communist talk of a strike to force the hand of the Government. The objections to a “go-slow” policy are practically the same, because at some point or other the authorities can always penalise one or more individuals and thus force the remainder either to strike openly or else to admit their impotence to save the victims. Another factor in the situation is one entirely ignored by the “direct actionists.” Post Office workers, all of them no doubt, resent the reductions in pay, but the majority of them are so far from being prepared to fight the Government, that only two months ago certainly a majority of them, and probably a large majority, voted for the National candidates at the election.
These men and women are clearly not prepared to strike against the Government for which they voted.
Does this mean that the position of Post Office workers is quite without hope? By no means. Even within the limits from which, as Government servants, they cannot at present hope to escape, organisation has its value. It is convenient to the Government to have an organised body to negotiate with, and because politicians find it expedient to place certain restraints on their treatment of their employees, some protection can be secured for the individual against the arbitrary conduct of his immediate superiors, and some concessions in respect of wages and conditions are obtained which would be lost without organisation.
Then there is the much larger question of Socialism. When Government employees have rid their minds of the poisonous error that nationalised concerns are instances of Socialism, they can begin to grasp the enormous possibilities which will be opened up to them, as to other workers, when the means of production and distribution have-been made the common property of society. The Post Office is not Socialism. It is a capitalist enterprise based on the exploitation of the workers, a source from which the Government obtains profit. This it uses, partly to pay interest to investors in Government loans, and partly to lessen the taxation burden of the capitalist class as a whole. It combines the evils of bureaucratic management with the evils of capitalist ownership and control. It is not deserving of working-class support, for it solves no working-class problem.
S. C. T.