[EETPU has lost 30,000 members in the last…]

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EETPU has lost 30,000 members in the last eighteen months.

The organisational dangers of poor leadership can be seen in the case of the NUR, where attempts to discipline those who blacklegged on the national stoppage have led to a management-orchestrated exodus in several branches.

Nor should we underestimate the impact of unemployment in dividing and demoralising the working class. Apart from exerting pressure on the unemployed, it cuts a whole generation off from involvement and training in the unions, and opens them to the full force of Thatcher's ideas. 25% of workers under 20 are out of a job.

Unemployment also reinforces other divisions, with areas such as the South East remaining relatively sheltered compared with Scotland, Merseyside or Wales, and the public utilities being reasonably wels off compared with manufacturing industry.

This catalogue of unrelieved gloom is important to assimilate. It presents, however, a one-sided picture. Even in its details it needs developing.

Despite its eventual failure, the NHS dispute illustrated the deep reservoir of anger and aggression that exists amongst workers new to trade unionism and inexperienced' in large scale industrial struggle. It also produced solidarity action urparallel› ed since 1926, overshadowing in the depths of recession the action against the Industrial Relations Act in 1972.

The Sean Geraghty affair showed that rank and file militants are prepared to fight Tebbit, even without the support of their union or the TUC.

The pages of the left press disclose weekly that workers are prepared to struggle not only over wages but over jobs and over unin rights. Daily Telegraph; Leyland Windows; Heathfields; London Newspapers; BBC TV; electricians; Rhondda Council workers; Park Royal Ambulance workers; National Union of Students employees; Air India; Sandhar and Kang; Arlington House - the list is a long one.

Most encouragingly, it includes many workers regarded as weakly organised and new in trade union terms. It covers women workers, and it covers hlanka The recent disputes at the Times and at P.S. Raindi and at Timex highlight the small-scale and limited victories which are still being won. The social security offices strike, in particular, showed that JOHN HARRIS workers are prepared to strike for a considerable period over cuts and are prepared to say 'no' to the attempts of the full-time officials to send them back.

Resistance is strong considering the level; of unemployment.

Paper pay rises (and they are still rises) are more or less matching the rate of inflation, and their decline is being halted - although a Balkanisation is taking place as the weaker groups are separated from the stronger.

The fall in inflation means that the real value of pay rises was higher in 1982 than in 1981. A recent report by Industrial Relations Review and Report notes a broad stability in a study of 600 pay settlements between November 1981 and November 1982 -between 5% and 9%, with a recent bunching around 7%. Though noting that productivity deals and demanning were all too often an ingredient, they also confirm the TUC evidence on moves towards shorter working hours, longer holidays and fringe benefits.

The Tories failed to impose a 4% pay limit in the last pay round. A CBI survey showed that only about 30 of 1150 reported settlements were for 3% or less. The miners, for example, were turned back but 8.5% is far more than will be available next time round. Other groups received final offers of 3 or 4% and ended up with 5, 6 or 7%.

While strike days are down, 1982 still showed an increase - almost a doubling _ on the previous twelve months. The number of workers taking part in industrial action was also sharply up, at about 2.4 million - and if these figures are down on the average of the previous decade (nearly 12m) they still show a considerable level of resistance.

The same can be said of the figures on trade union membership. Unions which virt ... will increasingly become the cockpit of the class struggle such as NUPE and COHSE have seen their membership increasing, and NALGO has just registered a small loss after an increase over the previous two years.

The growth of unemployment has not yet precipitated a secondary haemorrhage of employed workers leaving the unions because of their ineffectiveness. In unions like the NUT or CPSA, where these factors might be expected to operate, membership loss is still cuts-based.

There is a downturn but no decisive defeat. Our overall verdict must be that the severe setbacks of 1982, particularly in the NUM, ilustrate that there is a retreat on the industrial front. To fail to recognise this would be to indulge in wishful thinking.

Nevertheless, Thatcher has not succeeded in imposing a crucial defeat on the unions. They remain organisationally intact. The game is not up as the TUC would have us believe. The possibilities of a fightback and the power to undertake it are still there. One group of workers confronting the government could still at this stage provide the opportunity..

Whether we look at British Leyland (the massive vote at Cowley Assembly Plant for industrial action over wages, the night shift vote to support Alan Thornett), the miners (the vote for action in Scotland, South Wales, Kent, the fact that Kinneil was willing to fight), or the NHS dispute, we see that even after all the shots are called against the workers there is a sizeable minority willing to fight the Tories and a smaller minority conscious of the why and how.

Moreover, it we are to start analysing the present relationship of class forces, we have to set this empirical evidence against the class requirements of the Tories and British capital. Despite three years ' of relentless hammering away, despite an unprecedented level of post-war unemployment, Thatcher has failed as yet to even emulate the last Labour government in imposing between 1974 and 1977 what the economists Andrew Glyn and John Harrison calculated as the greatest cut in living standards this century.

She has not yet decisively, still less permanently, blunted the working class organisations which stand between her and her requirements: a lasting reduction in the share going to wages, a lasting increase in productivity, a lasting restructuring of British capital.

If she is to achieve these objectives, Thatcher needs to impose a defeat of interwar proportions on the working class. Yet if we look back to 1920, the year when the attempt to break the working class strength amassed during 'the Great Unrest" and the First World War began, we find that organisationally the unions are far stronger today than they were then. They cover a far wider range of workers, with far superior organisation and with a far greater potential stranglehold over the productive process and the whole functioning of society.

Stewards Of course in this sphere there are . weaknesses, weaknesses exploited and developed by state orchestrated attempts to reform industrial relations" from the mid 60s to 1979. Written agreements have tied down shop stewards. Formal grievance, disciplinary and shop stewards procedures; closed shop and check-off arrangements agreements all influenced and underpinned by allegedly pro-union legislation); the replacement of piecework by measured day systems; the growth of full-time convenors in hierarchical workplace structures, have all pulled stewards •away from their members and led to greater integration in, and control by, formal union machinery and formal rational negotiating machinery.

This problem is also present in the new unions, where, despite in many cases less bureaucratised union structures, steward systems have otten been fostered from above. The stewards have never had the direct bargaining over cash which was at the root of the close relationship with members developed by stewards in manufacturing industries, and they have developed workplace organisation within the confines of the procedure-based industrial relations of the last 15 years.

But while organisational developments are important, it is in the field of politics rather than organisation that the problems of organising a fightback really lie.

In the next part of this article we will look at some of the political arguments and analyses.

Continued next week

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Organiser no.118 February

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