Or We Stay Out Andrew Wiard (report)

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workers pay negotiations, and dare the unions to challenge it, has not just been exposed as a bad error of judgement. It has resulin a breakthrough against her policies which has given confidence to the working class and has potentially far reaching effects for her final year in office.

So few have been the reverses for the Tories in these kind of industrial confrontations that it is hard to remember when their hard-line, take-it-orleave-it attitude was last dealt such a blow. What makes the waterworkers' achievement all the more remarkable that the workers responsible for it went into battle with no tradition of struggle and with a pitifully weak prestrike level of organisation and national leadership.

Thatcher's calculation that she could defeat the strike was not an unreasonable assumption in light of the experiences over the past year in particular. One after another, similar largescale actions mounted against the government's policies have been defeated whether on pay or jobs.

One result of this has been the monotonous climb of unemployment with each successive month, strengthening the employers' hand. The Tory propaganda, heard throughout the NHS pay fight last year, about the 'state of the jobs market' was again - produced as justification for holding out against the waterworkers' demands. mination of the waterworkers themselves. In surveying the debris of her 'achievements' , which have included defeating substantial groups of indus» trial workers, Thatcher failed to take account of one highly signifienat feature common to all those struggles - with scarcely an exception the workers involved in those battles have remained absolutely solid throughout. makes an remarkable tenacity and many months, there were commitment to the strike preparations made to conthat was shown by the front a strike if it became waterworkers in their first- necessary. ever strike. The over- .. The result was one of the whelming rejection in the most thorough, systemfirst week of the employers' atic and coordinated strikefirst offer almost trebbled breaking operations seen the 3-1 initial vote for strike since 1926. Shamefully, action, showing the strike the TUC-affiliated staff had actually grown strong- union, NALGO, representer once it had begun. ing a large proportion of And, despite the strike's the white-collar workers, widespread effects on the was at the centre of it. community which governleadership calling for the use of troops and technicians.

Allusions to 1926, the year of the last: General Strike in Britain, are far less farfetched than it might appear. Such an all-out clash between the capitalists and the trade unions must be regarded by Thatcher as by no means an impossibility, since her declared strategic aim is to break the power of organCirculars from the union ised labour once and for all. In fact, in yiew of the lengths to which she is prepared to go in her nothing to prevent the most attacks on the unions, such blatant collaboration with a confrontation may well be seen by her as inevitable.

In the absence of firm Before the strike, in and principled leadership industrial terms, the waterfrom the union at national workers were an unknown and local level, a combina- quantity whose muscle had tion of bribery through never been put to the test lucrative payments for and few people had expecthose working around the ted the strike to be resisted clock and threats about job as effectively as it was. security and promotion got Such experience will be put to good effect when it is It therefore proved next needed. unnecessary to call upon But if the bosses learnt the special arrangements something, SO did the GAWN Sha.

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workers. With the workforce divided fairly arbitrarily into three different unions and lacking any semblance of independent organisation even within regions, the national officers of the unions and the full-time officials began the strike with virtual dictatorial powers over the way it was run.

The National Joint Negotiating Committee (with the exception of one member) was made up entirely of full-time officials. As if this were not enough, by far the dominant union the GMBU, itself hardly a model of democratic, rank and file involvement.

This GMBU domination,