Dispelling the illusion that 'militancy is enough'

Scan page 10

the top, workplace leaders were incorporated at the bottom.

It was not as simple as that.

The strategies of the state and the employers did have a tremendous degree of success. By 1980 much of the structure of workplace trade unionism was management-moulded, management-sponsored.

The bosses had developed the understanding that the workplace organisation, just Like the wider union, could be used against rather than for the worker - could be used by capital for its own purposes.

Donovan's insight into the ambivalence of the steward's role, and the strategy of the 1974 Labour government derived from it, yielded tremendous dividends to capital. This is central. But it has to be seen against the political background.

Alternative Strong roots in the membership had allowed the stewards to organise the early '70s wave of struggles. But, paradoxically, the favourable economic situation was both an aid and a hindrance.

On the one hand it gave the workplace leaders the muscle to go forward. On the other hand, the ability to do so and to go that of the early '70s, then all the movement's limitations came to the surface.

The delusion that 'industrial militancy is enough' was dispelled. Vast layers of the militant labour movement had always been vulnerable to appeals to support 'the national interest' etc., and this now took its toll.

The 1972 upsurge halted when the dockers were released. The 1974 upsurge was halted by Wilson.

What was missing was a leadership which would have been able to take the movement forward, to bring down Heath in the first case, to hammer Wilson and establish a workers' government in the second.

Shop floor leaders had no answers to the arguments of Murray and Wilson that wages cause inflation, that this was the reason why the economy was in trouble, that an incomes policy could help, and so on. Leastmoving again - this time on a clear-cut basis of independence and socialist policies.

We have to build a movement that can do everything that the movement to free the Pentonville Five did - and more. We have to answer the central questions of viability, unemployment and union democracy.

We are in no position to declare a national rank and file movement right now. But we have to do everything possible to develop groupings such as Health Workers for the Full Claim and the Leyland Action, Committee, which are the seeds of such a movement.

We have to do this with our feet firmly planted in the workplaces, and our heads working for a rethink and transformation in the wider labour movement. We have to make sure that this time, a militant upturn means more than just more militancy.