Pressure politics

Scan page 2

LAST week brought what for many Timex workers was a baffling sequence of events. It began with them confident that their dispute was fully and energetically backed by the AUEW leadership, and praising the stand taken by its General Secretary Gavin It ended with them having to vote down a squalid sell-out deal cooked up by Laird with the employers - offering the occupiers 13 weeks of 1 day per week working, clearing out the machinWouldn't it be easier if union leaders were consistent. - the right wing always openly opposed to strikes, the left wing always This does not happen - because the nature of the full-time trade union bureaucracy jtself. It is an intermediate layer - a grouping of power-brokers, whose position of influence and privilege rests on the one hand on the organised working class, but on the other brings them under the day-to-day pressure of the However much the right wing may appear to agree with every detail of the employers' arguments, they are not employers, opposed in every instance to strikes. They cannot completely ignore the rank and file. Rather, like steam locomotive drivers, they must have regard to the pressures that give them power -and, where necessary, vent excess steam to prevent an explosion The extreme right wing can call strikes. Steel union chief Bill Sirs called the biggest all-out strike against the Tories: Terry Duffy called strikes for the 39 hour week; the shipbuilding unions have now even called for sit-ins to oppose the latest sackConversely, the 'left' wing does not always give the expected call for action. NUPE's 'left' talking leadership refused to act on an all-out strike resolution during last year's NHS pay fight; and Arthur Scargili, having collapsed during February's jobs fight, is now devising schemes to avoid a national strike call.

What is almost invariably true is that having called action, the right wing officials do little or nothing to achieve it (shipbuilding), and, once workers are out, do nothing to build, extend and strengWhat union bureaucrats fear above all is the emergence of a rank and file leadership that has any serious political and organisational independence. So they seek to dominate or stifle strike committees and control the spread of publicity. Left speeches are ten a penny; but only under a massive pressure will most officials do anything to spread a dispute, fight for real solidarity strikes or boycott action, or even arrange adequate finance for But the most dangerous time of all is when the rank and file appear to be getting things their own way, and have grasped the employer by the short hairs: it is always at this point that the bosses! pressure is most acute on the officials to turn about and knife the struggle they have supported. So many bitter expertences in BL, the NHS pay fight, the ASLEF strike, Timex show the unending ability of union leaders to snatch defeat from the This is no reason or recipe for despair: the strength has always been with the rank and file, the weakness in the conservatism, careerism and class collaboration of the leadership, which cuthlessly exploits every chink in the armour of the membership.

Place not your faith in full time officials - whether right wing or left wing; Labour loyalist or Communist Party Stalinist.

Work with us instead towards the building of an alternative kind of leadership; a principled, revolutionary leadership, dedicated first and last to the interests of the working class and the struggle to overthrow the power of the employers.

We will need such a leadership whoever wins the election.

Laird.

ery from the doomed watch-making plant!

in favour?

employers.

of uncontrollable rank and file anger.

ings. then the action. long disputes. alrea OF THE 9,000 redundancies now threatening shipyard workers throughout Britain, nearly one third are due to be implemented in shipyards on the Clyde: 2,150 at Scott Lithgow alone, and 600 in the yards ön the Upper Clyde.

The union's Shipbuilding Negotiating Committee (SNC) have called for a sit-in of every yard in the country unless the threat of all redundancies is lifted. But how serious are the union leaders about their apparently militant stance? And what are the problems involved in mounting an effective sit-in of the yards?

Such questions are posed particularly sharply for union militants at Scott Lithgow, since these yards are threatened with the lion's share of the redundancies.

S.O. spoke to Joe O'Rourke, a union activist at Scott Lithgow, about such problems.

SO: So you think the union leaders are going to launch a serious fight this time against the job losses?

JO'R: No. There's devious thinking behind their call for a sit-in. In fact, they'd settle for 9,000 voluntary redundancies. Or if the number of redundancies was cut to 5 or 6,000, they'd call it a victory. There's not a snowball's chance in hell of them actually leading official action. in in the expectation it won't take place. Before meeting management, the SNC got a blank cheque from the membership to support whatever they decided. They were never subject to any mandate!

Then the SNC decided to call for a sit-in. But there had never been any discussion with the members beforehand. That call is now being put to mass meetings in the yards for endorsement. It'll get the endorsement all right, but if it's anything like the mass meeting here, it'll just be a blind vote, with no discussion again.

The SNC probably reckon that yards like Yarrow, Vickers, and the yards in Sunderland won't occupy. A national sit-in won't be possible. And then the SNC will turn round and blame the members.

Even at Scott Lithgow, I don't like talking of leadership, but there's a distinct lack of fighting leadership. Some of the stewards were even prepared to testify against Pat Clarke (a victimised shop steward) at his tribunal.

Duncan McNeil (convenor at the yards) is rumoured to have said that any sit-in should start not with the announcement of the date of the redundancies, but. when the first workers go out the gate.

McNeil's attitude is summed up in his expression, 'at other yards they build Minis, but here we build Rolls Royces.

All the strikes we've ever had this country have always including the Caribbean Teachers Association and black workers in the Labour Party. One said 'I didn't join the Lasuffered from being isolated.