Pressures on the Union Rank and File

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THE TUC DEMANDS Defeats like strike action bureaucrats manoeuvres are not somethe overall situation of trade unionism What was going through the minds of miners in October, to varying degrees and with varying coherence was the knowledge that they were not doing too badly wages-wise, compared with other workers.

"Millions have settled for less than 6%. Millions have no job. We are lucky in many ways. The country is in trouble. There is an económic crisis. Look around you. The money isn't there.

Thatcher is a determined and confident enemy. Coal stocks are high. Any strike would be long and bitter. Other strikes are being defeated. We can't expect any help from the TUC, look at what happened to ASLEF. We can have 8.5% now with no sweat. That is not bad going. There is a time for striking and a time for not striking. These were the basic arguments miners will have come up with for adopting the position they did.

The press campaigns, particular tactics, are all important. So is the role of the trade union bureaucracy in defusing struggle. But again we have to avoid explaining all defeats in terms of the cowardice, manipulation and betrayal of union leaders in terms which simultaneously glorify and diminish ordinary workers.

Crudest At its crudest, this view - in the hands of Gerry Healy in years past, for example - implies that the consciousness of ordinary Workers a always fixed.

are always militant, always ready for a fight, always straining at the leash - like the mindless muscle in a Mafia movie restrained from beating the living shit out of the opposition only by the capo. The red hot militancy of the workers is switched on and off by the evil bureaucrats.

Yes, there are JOHN HARRIS - such as those in British Leyland over the past decade = and they obviously demoralise and disillusion workers. But the result then becomes one part of their consciousness, a consciousness which at the moment shares the view of the bureaucrats that a fight is not on.

When, for example, Alan Thornett was victimised in 1974 the manoeuvring of the union apparatus was, if anything, far more of a probiem than in 1982. Workers will always have to face such manoeuvring. The point is that at one time they overcame it, at another they don't. Overali, at the moment, the bureaucrats who don't want a fight take the workers with them against the militants who do.

This is not simply because of trickery, but because in today's conditions the rank and file share many of the ideas of the bureaucrats. The miners who were given leadership and rejected it are not some special case. The same pressures are acting on them as on millions of other workers and with the same impact.

The real pressures that operate inside the working class operate on both full time official, shop steward and members. Of course the bureaucrats' stance reinforces and develops the rank and file view that it is best to sit tight, but unless we recognise that the bureaucrats' control is to a great extent political control, and that the failure of the militants to take the workers with them when faced by opposition from the full-timers is a politica problem, we will not able to come up with the answers to deal with today's defeats. We will not be able to grapple with the way groups like the are thinking.

It is not a question of blaming the workers. Do we wait, like the SWP, for the inevitable upturn or do we confront this problem which exists within the rank and file? Do we accept that crucial political weaknesses exist within the rank and file and work out strategies to confront them? Or do we continue to simply blame the bureaucracy, a conception which can blind us to the real problem and the real solutions?

Look at this example of sectarian lunacy. "Some rejected it (Scargill's appeal) because they had become sick of Scargill's manoeuvres and his acceptance of massive job losses, they had no confidence in him leading a strike to victory in the circumstances of November 1982. These workers were looking for a real alternative to the bureaucratic dealing and the illusory alternatives of Scargill" (The Next Step, January 1982).

Ultra-leftism

If one meaningtul explanation for Scargill's defeat was 'left wing resistance to the union leadership", the fact that a substantial section of Scargill's members were to the left of him, then (despite their ultra-leftism in voting no) our task would be relatively easy.

But the fact is that the consciousness of even the advanced sections of the working class lags • far behind the needs of the situation. How many struggles have we seen aborted by the idea that the employers have shown us they can't pay? How many anti-redundancy fights have been impaled on the capitalist logic - "we are KENT AREA Were miners to the left of Scargill? not making a profit, there is no alternative to closure"?

Fear and lack of confidence provide a fertile seedbed for the sprouting of national interest, chauvinism and Thatcherite commonsense always present in our movement.

We have seen the stewards at Vauxhall Ellesmere Port state that they could not mobilise over wages, as the struggle to stop imports must take precedence. We have seen steelworkers picket ports to stop foreign steel when they wouldn't picket closing workplaces. We have seen stewards in strongly organised factories collecting for the South Atlantic Fund.

In a period of retreat it would be' remarkable if this did not happen. To recognise it not succumb to it. It is an essential prerequisite for a fight against it by specifically taking up these ideas in the context of the fight for action.

NHS concentration on denunciation of the trade union bureaucracy rather than an attempt to break vatism arises from the rank and file from its ideas, is often rooted in a failure to start from the question of trade unionism in capitalist society rather than from the secondary categories bureaucracy and rank and file.

Unions are essential organising agents and defenders of the working class, but they fight only the effects of the capitalist system. Because they fight the employers, they are schools of war in which all workers can learn and develop. Because they fight within capitalism, bargaining over the price of labour rather than attempt- 22: ing to abolish the wage labour system, they legitimise that system. - When capitalism can afford it trade unionism dictates aggression. When capitalism is in crisis it dictates retreat and sacrifice. But always bargaining over the price dictates ARD compromise within the realism of the maintenance of the system.

Whilst unions are essential, trade union consciousness is reformist consciousness. Whilst trade union struggles provide the essential preconditions for the development of socialist ideas, whatever the level of struggle, the ideas trade unionism itself generates are insufficient if capitalist society is to be transformed.

Consciously

Socialists need to be involved in all trade union struggles, but we need to consciously fight to develop and transform the ideas that those struggles produce if society is to be transformed.

The union bureaucracy isation and isolation and the reaction of the state to this - not, as is often thought, from the fact that this body of personnel is rooted in a privileged labour aristocracy.

If we see the limits of trade unionism we can better understand the problems of rank and file consciousness. The bureaucracy are the purest carriers, the reinforcers of reformist consciousness and the most susceptible to it, structuring its development by the state.

But trade unionism cannot be broken down into two distinct watertight groups, rank and file and bureaucracy, living almost in two separate worlds. The ideas and pressures the bureaucracy feel are also felt by the rank and file, and rank and file bargainers like shop stewards, whilst distinguished from the professionals by the fact they work in the plant is the product of trade and are subject to recall, unionism's central mechan- are also subject to 'bureauism bargaining. Its conser- cratisation"

function, from its profes- Concluded next week sional role, with its specialdid wit

----- pull-quotes -----

the miners' vote against

last October cannot all simply be down to

argues John Mellroy in part 3 of his article. The bureaucrats

thing coin- pletely extern al; their demobilising role is part of

BETRA: JOHN HARRIS