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SOLIDARITY nny in Washington EVERYONE agreed on one thing at least about Solidarity Day (Saturday September 19): over a quarter of a million marched in Washington.

And that was even bigger than the great 1969 march which helped to undo Nixon's policies in Vietnam - or the 1963 civil rights march which was a major influence on desegregation in the 1960s.

In fact, very few of the quarter of a million actually did much marching, since the demonstration was so huge that soon there was no space left at the finishing point for those still at the starting point to march into.

The vast crowd simply filled up the great open space between the Washington Memorial and the foot of Capitol Hill.

New experience If in its size Solidarity Day resembled the Vietnam and civil rights marches, in other ways it was a new experience in post-war Washington. Because, though many groups and parties supported the demonstration, it was overwhelmingly a demonstration of organised labour.

It was the largest demonstration of trade unionists ever seen in Washington.

A primary reason was that it was the first major demonstration to have been organised for decades by AFL:CK the AFI-CIO, the federation to which most of America's main unions belong.

George Meany, the arch-reactionary who dominated the AFL-CIO during the post-war period, was completely opposed to demonstrations, or indeed to almost any kind of labour mobilisations.

The younger generation of labour bureaucrats who have succeeded him -led by AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland - have not fundamentally broken with any of Meany's methods.

They still see their main political role as negotiating with administrations of either main political party, and not as mobilising their members.

But the fact that they felt obliged to seriously build the Washington demonstration certainly marks a change of key in American trade union strategy.

What are the reasons for it? One of them is the declining strength of the unions in the past few years, which springs from the failure of the leaders to use organised labour's strength for the benefit of the members.

At the latest count only 24.5 per cent of non-farm workers were organised in unions in the USA, which is more than two percentage points down on the 1978 Union leaders have finally woken up to the fact that they must be prepared for some mobilisation of their members, or else they may have no members left.

No protection SEPTEMBER 19TH AFL - CIO already facing massive lay, ›tis all over the country anc have seen Reagan restrict their wage rises to much less than the rise in the cost of living.

This was simply done by edict, without even semblance of negotiation with the unions.

That explains why public sector workers came in such strength to Washington on September 19, and why their unions are tending to take a more leftish stand against the government.

The largest single contingent of workers came from the million-strong American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who brought 60,000 to Washington - a fact which gave their president, Gerry Wurf, the right to be one of the main *platform speakers.

If Reagan has been disdainful towards public sector unions in general, his contempt for the air traffic controllers' union PATCO has so far been complete.

PATCO

But the most widely sported badge in Washington was one showing support for the PATCO strike, which remains strong and solid.

And union leaders from the platform all had a good word for the controllers.

Unfortunately none of them proposed any concrete solidarity action to black airlines and bring the whole strength of organised labour behind the most vulnerable section of the movement.

Even the strong and excellent speech by the PATCO member whose photograph, in chains and held by federal marshals, has become a world-wide symbol of union-busting, ended by thanking other unions and the AFL-CIO for their support.

When so many obvious blacking measures could immeasurably strengthen the strike overnight, PATCO's gratitude shows just how low are the expectations of inter-union solidarity in the US.

That is the shameful political tradition of George Meany and his fellow labour leaders of the postwar period, which their WASHI® successors still continue.

For all the very strong words of condemnation of Reagan on September 19 -more uncompromising than against any president in recent history - the trade unions are not turning to build their own independent political alternative.

A noticeable minority of the demonstration (not only Trotskyist organisations) carried placards calling for THE USA is the only advanced capitalist country without a mass political labour movement. The reasons for this go back a long way.

In 19th century Europe the working class began to move and live - politically through being mobilised by the middle class in the struggle against old feudal institutions.

But the American Republic, though oligarchic, racist, and founded on genocidé against the Indians, had no hangovers from any feudal past. And it had a very large class of small propertyowners. The • westward expansion of thes provided ever new opportunities for many workers to become small property owners.

In the later years of the 19th century, as huge capitalist corporations began to develop, the working class started 'organising. By 1912 autu wind Immed tod election to increase their weight at the top of the Democratic Party.

They are hoping that, by becoming its financial mainstay, they can get a pro-labour platform and candidates in the 1982 (congressional) and 1984 (presidential) elections.

Their reaction to political By Martin Thomas half-formed revolutionary party and militant trade union, had its hard-core membership among the numerous workers who wandered from job to job across the whole country.

Immigrants

Socialist polities were strongest among particular immigrant communities, like the Germans.

Savage anti-socialist repression during and just after World War 1, followed by a huge boom, stymied further socialist development. The IWW withered. A Communist Party was formed from the best elements of the SP and IWW, but was limited by early sectarianism and then by the geoisie for protection rather than support 81 independent alternative.

A number of aspects d Solidarity Day reveale just how deeply bourgeoi ideology is embedded i the US unions.

Aside from the national ist policy slogans (UAV members wore caps witi grip of Stalinism.

The boom collapsy suddenly in 1929. Within few years the working cla was organising to fight bar on an unprecedented scal A new union federation, ti CIO, broke away from # AFL and began to organi the mass producti industries for the first ting Black workers poured in: the labour movement.

Revolutionaries beg arguing for the union mor ment to go further by setti up a new political par based on the unions, as opposed to both boss parties.

Diverted But the movement = diverted - by the bure crats, and perhaps crucia by the small but signifie Stalinist party, directed the new worke movement into an alliat with Northern liberals a Southern racists, beh

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