Where next for the Unemployed Workers' Movement?

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An unemployed union could let TUC leaders off the hook... occurs with the unemployed many areas of the country in the few areas of the coun- where it is not yet possible try where they are already to join a TUC-affiliated members of a TUC affiliated union; where there are union. (Why do weaneed to people, who do not yet see bother with some "Mickey the need to join such unions, Mouse" unemployed move- but who are willing to particment when we already have ipate in the NUWM, where a proper, established union?) we can influence them It is important to realise towards campaigning to get that there are compatible into the TUC unions. ... But unemployed school-leavers can't just be told: join a TUC union or forget it

WHEN the National Unemployed Workers Movement was formed last year by 40 or so unemployed groups, the people who attended the founding conference had a variety of concepts of the

sort of organisation they wanted to see set up, and the direction in which it should go.

An instinctive suspicion and mistrust of the existing organisations of the labour movement was reflected in some calls for the setting up of an unofficial unemployed Whilst some of these calls were motivated by people who thought such an organisational format was not incompatible with participation in existing unions, there were others who doubtless saw it as a means of evading such participation and the sharp struggle for policies reflecting the needs and aspirations of the unemployed, against the right wing trade union bureauKeen But to be fair, most of the individuals keen to set up such a union, thought that dual membership of an unemployed union and an existing union was a possibility which would allow autonomous organisation and a fight for the rights of the unemployed within the existing movement.

This was an option that was discussed at the NUWM conference, but the meeting decided to set up the NUWM not as a union, but as a loose federation of groups that locally decided whether to form unemployed unions, action groups, TUC unemployed centres, and/or work in existing trade union branches, according to the preferences of their supporters. Thus the maximum flexibility was facilitated.

The purpose of this article is to discuss where we go from here. The NUWM steering committee has initiated a number of campaigns. The implementation of the Rayner Report has led to increasing attacks and harassment of the unemployed.

The NUWM is planning a rally in opposition to the proposals contained in the report. They are also campaigning for a democratic national conference of TUC unempioyed centres to discuss the question of setting up democratic and accountable mânagement committees, in which the centres are not tied down and hamStrung Millavis madams - do no harr limitatinno imposed by funding which is conditional, and restrictive politically.

The third initiative has been a campaign for the right of unemployed people to join existing unions and for representation and positive action to ensure that the voice of the unemployed is heard at all levels within the labour movement.

The problem with this campaign is persuading people of the importance of getting into the existing unions. After all, if we have a national organisation like the NUWM why do we need to get into another union which is remote from the needs of the unemployea! 1. - ° 11. - 1_---10 An opposite problem answers to both these ing views.

The first is that we must fight to get into and influence the unions affiliated to the TUC because only these organisations have economic power arising from the employed membership.

Power

The unemployed have some power - the power to march and demonstrate, but not enough by themselves.

To this end we must see the NUWM as a base from which to organise unemployed caucuses in as many TUC affiliated unions as possible.

To those people who are already in TUC unions and do not see the need for a NUWM at all. it must be ALINAUT IN pointed out that there are In some areas the TUC unemployed centres might draw in such people, but the problem is that in many cases the centres are not able to do this because they are staffed by MSC-funded full timers who are restricted from giving the active campaigning lead necessary to seriously attract the unemployed; because they are controlled by stitched-up management: committees imposed from above; and because they are financed on condition that the centres be non-political.

Accountable

We need democratic national conferences, an accountable national leadership elected from the rank and file activists.

The TUC unemployed department and full timers are not accountable in this sense. Until such an official accountable leadership is elected, we have every right to organise ourselves unofficially in the framework of the NUWM.

Again we must see the NUWM not as an alternative to the TUC centres network, but as a caucus within this network, and the trade unions generally, fighting to make them democratic and accountable to the rank and file unemployed.

We need the NUWM as the organisational base from which to plan and organise such caucuses, both locally in the individual centres, and nationally in the fight for an accountable, national leadership at TUC level.

We should surely see the NUWM as part of the fight for democracy in the Labour Party and unions. Indeed we must see to it that the unemployed are in the leadership of this fight, as an organised caucus, in the unions and Labour Party.

The unemployed are in fact an oppressed grouping containing very large proportions of women, blacks and youth. The unemployed movement can learn much

Chris Ersn problems i organising

from the organised movements of these layers, such as organising as unemployed grops in caucuses, fighting for positive discrimination for the unemployed in the laboro rouen to the question etc., etc. of unemployed unions and dual membership, the TUC themselves have been toying with the idea of developing the centres network into an official unemployed union atfiliated to the TUC. They are holding back from setting one up at the moment, but they have seriously considered it for some time.

Should we be in favour of this or not? The NUWM is itself seeking "recognition as 'the legitimate organisation of the unemployed by the TUC" (NUWM Constitution), but as an unemployed movement, not a union.

In certain parts of the country, the unemployed are well organised in the IGWU. They are a source of pressure the bureaucracy and are leading the movement within the union for accountability; and they are a problem for the bureaucracy.

Full-time

The unemployed are available full-time to organise against the bureaucracy. There is no doubt that the bureaucracy would be glad to get rid of them. An unemployed, official TUC union might be seen by the bureaucracy as a way out of this -of removing the thorn in their side into a powerless ghetto - a blind alley where the militancy of the unemployed could be divorced from the muscle of the employed membership, in the existing TUC unions.

Dual membership of two TUC unions would never be a viable demand because it would create all kinds of complications with regard to dues, membership figures and voting rights, both within unions and on the general council. It would

ell l ind the

ooks at the prospects for unemployed

even cause a problem of numbers of meetings to be attended, especially It you were on leading committees.

But most importantly, an official TUC unemployed union would let the existing union leaders off the hook on recruitment and representațion of the unemployed within their unions.

Claim

They would be able to claim that the unemployed should join the unemployed union, thus relieving them of the obligation to fight for the needs and rights of the unemployed, and their recruitment and representation within the unions.

The real problem the union leaders are concerned about is the unemployed organising within their unions, not just themselves into caucuses, but also spearheading the fight, in common with the • general employed membership in their unions (who have economic muscle), for militant action against the Tories and for accountability.

Thus in the TGWU in the North West it is the militant unemployed who lead the fight for coordinating committees, which bring together rank and file delegates from branches to hear report backs from the executive members after every GEC meeting; it is the unemployed who are the loudest shouting for political action against Tebbit and for the removal of the Tories from office.

Disaster

An official TUC unemployed union might have a superficial attraction for some of these unemployed workers, but it wouid be a disaster if they were conned into leaving the TGWU by the bureaucracy.

It would divorce the unemployed from the employed, and remove the fuse from a potentially explosive mixture.

An alternative would be for the NUWM to fight for unemployed branches and an unemployed trade group within the TGWU, which would give both the autonomy and framework for the unemployed to decide and plan their requirements, but also provide foi the full representation of the unemployed on district, regional and national committees (trade groups have these rights automatically). This would be an unemployed union within the biggest, most powerful TUC union!

The advantages of such a structure over a TUC. unemployed union are clear, and such perspective would mesh with an existing movement in the North West (Region 6) where the unemployed are already organised within the TGWU.

It is imperative that this demand is taken up by TGWU branches in every region:

1) for the implementation of rule 20, clause 18, which gives regional committees the power to decide who should be allowed to join the union.

2) that the regional committee adopt the policy recruiting unemployed (as in Region 6)

3) that a special rules revision conference be immediately convened as in rule S, clause 13 to a) clarify the rules on recruitment, b) set up an unemployed branch in every town, c) set up an unemployed trade group nationally.

It is vital that the uremployed groups affiliated to the NUWM approach sympa thetic TGWU branches with a view to moving such resolutions and organising a joint lobby of the regional committees when they discuss the resolutions.

We must realise that an unemployed workers union would simply play into the hands of the bureaucracy and create the conditions for them to trick the unemployed into leaving the established and powerful trade unions, and lead them into a powerless ghetto.

We must be careful that we are not ourselves seeking a soft option which also happens to fit the bureaucracy's plans.

Does this mean that the NUWM is wrong to seek "recognition" by the TUC? In the first place if the NUWM is seriously challeng the structure of the TUC centre management committees then the question is rathes academic anyway!

The TUC are not going to choose to "recognise" an organisation that is in strong opposition to its own bureaucratic grip on ar already established and "recognised" TUC centre network! (It is• rather like asking Denis Healey "recognise" the Rank and File Mobilising Committee).

The NUWM will gain de facto recognition the extent that successfully • net WOTK …To Ine extent that it actively participates in the centres. Likewise with the trade Unions. Similarly the to the extent that it remains self-isolated from the TUC centres and trade So min bureau y he that it

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NATION Wilson and Foot ... draping Labour in the cloak of nationa ACCORDING to the Labour Party's present publicity campaign, the fact that three million people are now on the dole is a punishment against the electorate for not voting Labour (See what happens if you don't!).

Às well as the big public hoardings, the Labour Party is also distributing a free leaflet (Labour's Plan for Jobs) and a 60p pamphlet (Britain on the Dole), spelling out the prospective rewards for voting Labour if there's another chance to do So. The policy ideas of these tracts came from the NEC report to the last conference, The Socialist Alternative.

Spending

The policy promises that as a result of more government spending, more economic planning, along with new price, exchange and import controls, unemployment can be brought down to below one million over a ONE period of five years.

These plans demand the closest scrutiny from the whole labour movement. If a Labour government were to be elected in the near future its ability to take a significant step towards socialism will depend on the economic feasibility of these plans and on the political likelihood of their implementation.

Limited

At the outset the explicit and implicit objective of Labour's plan for jobs requires some criticism.

Its unemployment target is unacceptably limited. It envisages that at the end of a whole S-year term, unemployment would still only have tallen to a million -hardly less than the already appalling level at which it stood when Labour was chased from office in 1979.

Labour's plan for jobs seemingly rests on the assumption that it is impossible to get back to what were regarded as normal levels of unemployment of 2-3% in the 1950s and 60s.

The objective of a gradual fall to 1,000,000 unemployed at the end of five years of Labour government is equivalent to saying that during the life of that government the average level of unemployment would be 2 million. Despite the radical words, this is far from a radical objective.

Not sufficient In fact; a recent report by the left Keynesian Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge has calculated that Labour's stated programme is not sufficient to cut unemployment to less than 2 million let alone 1 million.

The specific limitations of this objective derive from a general feature of the whole plan. Though it envisages a substantial new round of nationalisations, it remains a plan for a predominantly capitalist ("mived") economy in which even publicly-owned enterprises are (implicitly) expected to operate on the principles ot capitalist profitability.

Profit would remain the basic principle of Labour's "planned" economy and new jobs would be created according to that criteron, not primarily according to whether the jobs are socially useful.

Bearing that in mind we can look at the detailed components of the plan to reduce unemployment.

The "main emphasis" Labour statements say, is a major increase in public spending. No socialist could oppose this as long as it is spent on worthwhile activities. But even socialists must look-at the question of the economic feasibility of more public spending.

The basic question we must address is "Can more productive resources (labour, materials, machines, etc) be employed socially desirable objectives?" In a fully socialist planned economy then either resources could be directly diverted from other uses or unemployed resources could be put to work.

But in a capitalist economy problems of money and finance come between this objective and its fulfilment. In a capitalist economy we have to ask the additional question "Where will the money come from?"

The Labour Party pamphlet Britain on the Dole (well-written, by the way, by party economist Adam Sharples) gives a very interesting answer to this ques tion. It says:

66 ... overall we must pay for the extra spending by borrowing money from people who choose not to spend it - from private savers. As the economy responds and employment rises revenues from taxes will rise and the enormous burden of unemployment on the public sector will fall. This means that the extra borrowing will quickly be reduced as spend. ing generates new wealth and comes to pay for itself."

And the pamphlet then goes on to belittle the problem of more government borrowing and a higher national debt.

If this analysis is true it is good news indeed - more public spending pays for itself. But is it true?

Certainly there is some truth in it. The Tory government has found, like its Labour predecessor that attempts to cut public spending are to a great extent thwarted by the semiautomatic new spending needs engendered by the resulting slump.

As a result a desired cut in net government spending requires a much bigger cut in gross spending.

Cut But even if the opposite is bound to happen to some extent, that doesn't mean that expansion is costless.

in tact, it it were costless how do the authors of the Labour Party policy explain the fact that in the last decade governments (including Labour Party governments) in every single advanced capitalist country have come up against what has seemed to them an irresistable imperative to cut government spending?

There has been an almost ubiquitous "fiscal crisis of the state" (an apt phrase invented by the American economist James O'Connor) in tandem with an almost universal fall in the rate of profit. To the capitalist class the two things have seemed to be intimately connected.

So cutting state spending has emerged as a route towards restoring profitability: It is a very contradictory and painful route, as Thatcher and others have found - and it entails great political unpopularity.

But unless the real rationale behind it is understood then the only possible understanding of Thatcherite policies is that they are either stupidly irrational of just plain vindictive.

Both of these explanations are implicit in Britain on the Dole and more

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After the protests - will Labour carry out its promises?

¡OUR POLICIES We fight for action on two fronts: on the one hand sion of the total work available among the total workwe struggle to mobilise workers in occupations and force, combined with guaranteed living standards. to mobilise the full strength of the trade union move- Such a system is the only real answer to unemployment behind them, to defend existing jobs against closures and cuts; on the other hand we fight for a There is of course no prospect of the Thatcher programme of useful public works to create new jobs government embracing socialist solutions to the crisis.

And a bosses' government that is prepared to bankOur answer to management attempts to impose rupt whole sections of its fellow capitalists in order to redundancies is to campaign for the retention of the restore profitability for the survivors is not going to whole workforce, and for a programme of work be swayed from its course by protests, petitions, or sharing on full pay, under the control of elected The fight against unemployment and for the right And where employers claim that 'loss of orders' or to work means therefore a fight for action by the bankruptcy compels them to close down or axe jobs, working class to bring down the Tory government, we fight for action to force the opening of the comp- and a fight for a new, socialist, leadership in the labany's books, and those of its suppliers and bankers, to elected trade union committees. The figures revealed Previous Labour governments have administered will point to the profits extracted from years of capitalism in collusion with the bosses and bankers, exploitation, and the necessity for each major basing themselves on the established state machine industry to be nationalised, without compensation ignoring or defying Labour's rank and file.

The reconstruction of society to provide useful The new technology now available - micro- jobs for all requires a workers' government — a govelectronics, computerisation, and other forms of able to it, taking decisive measures against the bosses' ernment based on the labour movement and accountautomation - offer the possibility of substantially reducing the working day, and improving the condit- state machine and capitalist privilege.

The Left must therefore organise and fight to But under capitalism new technology produces transform the labour movement: to democratise it; to only the mounting misery of speed-up and unemploy. win accountability; and to arm it with the will, the mass involvement, and the clear policies necessary to Only under a socialist planned economy can work- enable it to push through working-class solutions to ers achieve a genuine sliding scale of hours — the diviSutcliffe short of osals anc argues that Labour's what is needed, both in the means to carr serious attempt to understand the rationale of the policies as a response to capitalist crisis is absent. In fairness, however, Sharples does develop the way in which unemployment is being used by the Tories to weaken the bargaining strength of the workers.

If a Labour government really believed the vulgar Keynesian analysis implicit and explicit in this presentation of the Alternative Economic Strategy and were ever to try to implement the AES they would receive some nasty surprises about how the capitalist economy reacted.

The consequence of understanding the complex relation between state spending and the profits crisis would be a realisation that a new round of increases would not be a simple uncontradictory affair.

It would almost inevitably • raise interest rates, leading therefore to further problems in parts of the private sector; it wouid increase intlationary pressure and create foreign exchange and payments problems for any country which carried through such a policy alone.

It might, therefore, in some ways exacerbate the crisis of profitability prevalent throughout British trade and industry.

The radical reformists who have invented the AES do not like the consequences of these facts. They have a tendency to deny that the profitability crisis has taken place. Once they admitted it they would be obliged to respond to it las previous Labour governments did) or to make very much more radical advances away from the mixed (capitalist) economy than those proposed by the AES.

In Labour's plan for jobs, therefore, as in all radical reformist rhetoric, there is a problem - the profit motive of capitalism and its consequences.

jobs in it: y the YALE NEAR LETSTANCE UD M 25 NC MBER 1981 Parrots The same is true of the naive confidence with which Labour supposes it will be possible to implement a system of planning through a paraphenalia of enterprise boards and planning agreements.

Capitalists won't necessarily change their spots or their rules of behaviour because you put them in cages. They may put all their energies into trying to break out.

It is not possible to predict in detail the ways in which the capitalist economy might belie the more hopeful expectations behind the AES.

In fairness it should be said that many of the possible problems are now being foreseen and contingencies developed at least in general outline.

Unfortunately, however, the general answer to such problems from the proponents of the AES is not to search for a democratic anticapitalist solution but to come up with a new control.

As it now stands the AES would entail a vast network of controls - on prices, probably wages (less often stated), foreign exchange movements, investment (domestic and overseas) and imports.

The extent would be similar to the British economy in World War Il or many underdeveloped countries more recently.

Experience has not surprisingly shown that intense bureaucratic control of a basically capitalist economy combined with defensive economic nationalism is not very conducive to economic growth, efficiency or equity let alone to socialism.

All this doesn't mean that some of the first steps of an Alternative Economic Strategy envisaged by Labour's Plan for Jobs would not be extremely welcome to those who now suffer from the effects of capitalism.

But it does mean that socialists in the Labour Party have to come up with some very different answers to the inevitable problems which would arise than those which currently appear in the AES.

But quite apart from the feasibility and coherence of the AES at a theoretical level, there remains the question of what are the possibilities of any future Labour government implementing what are now the Party's economic policies.

Labour's plan for jobs, despite its very modest objectives and its theoretical limitations does seem like a radical step forward for the Lots more nationalisation, public spending on a large scale, economic planning and equal rights for at trade union rates of pay.

workers' committees. and under workers' management.

ions of the working class.

ment. women - all this sounds like quite a departure for the party which ran British capitalism (badly) from But is there any reason to suppose that Labour's next government will carry out a radical economic policy.

To decide that we need to look back to the last Labour government and learn their lessons.

Labour fought the 1974 election on a set of policies which, while less specific and detailed than the AES, sounded every bit as radical.

Labout, you may remember, promised "a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power to working people and their families"

The circumstances of coming to power (Heath's overthrow in the miners' strike) led, to begin with, to a round of large wage increases and an increase in both real wages and public, spending in the first year of the government.

This, however, was not willed by the government. It was the price they paid to avoid worse social upheaval. Most of the rest of the life of the government was a relatively determined crusade to respond to the interests of capitalism and redistribute power and wealth away from working people.

Just as in 1965 Labour had thrown its National Economic Plan into the waste paper basket, the "planning agreements" promised in 1974 (as now) were dropped. Only one was ever signed (with Chrysler) and ment. strong speeches in Parliament.

our movement. the crisis of capitalism. that was a joke since Chrysler promptly sold out to Talbot.

Chancelior of the Exchequer Denis Healey taxed wages more heavily, and gave huge tax handouts to capitalists.

Real wages, after a brief rise, fell again under the impact of inflation and labour's taxes and real take-home pay was no higher at the end of Labour's rule than they had been at the start.

The main weapon to hold down wages was the infamous Social Contract. After1976 the party which now advocates a vast boost to state expenditure made the most comprehensive attack on government spending since the war.

In particular general state capital expenditure (schools, hospitals, roads, etc) was almost cut in half between Today's critics of monetarism on Labour's front bench fulminated against the over-rapid growth of the money supply and took many steps to control it.

Britain on the Dole rightly rejects the Tory argument that workers are pricing themselves out of jobs - but fails to mention how often Denis Healey as Chancellor of the Exchequer said the same thing.

When Labour came to office in 1974 unemployment (excluding the effects of the 3-day week) was 600,000. When they left, it was well over one million.

So virtually all the criticisms which Labour today directs' towards the Tories could be directed with equal point against the last Labour government.

Virtually every item of the AES concedes a critcism of the last Labour government.

The indigestible fact is that if Labour had won the 1979 election and continued the economic policies of Callaghan and Healey then the situation today would not be much better than it iS.

Hypocrisy

Yet, since neither Labour's Plan for Jobs nor Britain on the Dole make the slightest mention of any of these facts, it is impossible not to feel struck by a tremendous impression of hypocrisy.

Of all those in the Cabinet of 1974-79 who were primarily responsible for Labour's disastrous economic policies only Tony Benn has made even a semblance of self-criticism.

Many of the rest remain unrepentant and remorseless at the head of the Labour It is for that reason impossible to believe that we have a Labour Party which is any more capable than in 1974 of carrying out the spirit of even the first main steps of an AES let alone anything more radical.

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Socialist Organiser no.83 May 6, 1982 Page 10

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JOBS FUN YOUTH. ROCKLAT

strong tendency to assume away the whole basis of the

TORCHLIGHT PROCESISIIOIN

NEUS UTUR