Problems and Policies Here come Protessionals

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The AUEW's top men: John Boyd, Gavin Laird, Terry Duffy society as a whole. As the I the capitalist class made craft unions began to deliberate land widely develon a hierarchy of full successful) attempts to UNDER intolerable management pressure, the tension on the shop floor finally erupts into an unofficial strike; sensing their own strenth, or determined to maintain their dignity and agreements won in decades of struggle, the rank and file take action and look for guidance and suppert.

Instead they are all too often met by a sinister band of mafiosi. Immaculately anted and well-heeled, the strangers climb out of sew cars, financed by the Arikers' subscription paymenty. The old-fashioned gangster's violin case has been ranlarad hur thair UCCU Iopiautu vy their black attache cases.

Calculating eyes and sony stares confront the strikers: in place of their militancy and deep-felt grievances they are presented with a catalogue of their own weaknesses, the government's strength and the employers' financial problems. They are told to get back to work. The union officials have arrived. The 'Professionals' Though every section of workers feels that they are the first to encounter them and the worst betrayed, the union bureaucracy is not new, nor are its betrayals limited to local level. Your unfriendly arrival - be he an Area Official, a National Officer or General Secretary is simply part of a long chain of command reaching up to the top echelons of the TUC, and stretching back troll nurar Qunano in tima weu uvel ou years du bullt.

The rise of a trade union bureaucracy as a distinet element within the labour movement dates back to the turn of the entury.

The emergence and expansion of trade unionism had begun in the mid nineteer the mos regular!: tions of - the si mushror worksho imperial While organise own def step fort ly privi relation kers me: many w and thei drawn ir forward and coll employe indonna.

Even form, tr tended rooted i seeking proveme employe broader ath century among t self confident and y employed secthe working class ‹illed workers in the oming industrial ips of Britisn lism. : their readiness to • jointly in their fence was a major vard, their relativeleged position in to unskilled worant that there were ays in which they ir leaders could be ito seeing their way through persuasion aboration with the irS rather than dant atmorareles иш sugg in its most radical lis trade unionism to remain firmly in the workplace, reforms and iments from their own ir rather than any transformation of time officials, these in turn reflected the same politics of gradualism and reformism.

When the drive began in the 1880s to unionise the vast layers • of unskilled industrial and other workers, many of the new leaders who emerged at the head of that movemert ottered 3 very ditterent, style of leadership, often in "uenced by socialist ideas. The early leaders of the Gasworkers Union, for instance, forerunner of today's GMWU, included Eleanor Marx.

But during World War

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Socialist Organiser no.112 December 9 1982 Page 15 S STUN TH SOCIENT