









British Labour Dumps Fake Socialism

The new Labour Leader, Tony Blair, has not only campaigned to have this clause changed, but also to reduce the influence of the Trade Unions’ block vote. As a counter-weight to the unions’ traditional support and funds, he hopes to recruit more individual members, and is unabashedly flattering potential funders in the business sector. Indeed, so successful has he been that he prompted the Financial Times headline "The City can do business with Labour". The Labour Party has now been transformed and dubbed New Labour, to distinguish it from the former and tarnished old Labour Party, in hock to the trade unions. It is claimed that 100,000 have joined the Labour Party since the Blairite strategy was unveiled. We would not be far wrong if we claimed that many are young professionals, busily climbing their own corporate ladders: a goodly proportion on the make. Amid sedate enthusiasm Clause IV was amended, as follows:

"To these ends we work for: a dynamic economy, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and co-operation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper, with a thriving private sector and high quality public services, where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them... an open democracy in which government is held to account by the people; decisions are taken as far as practicable by the communities they affect; and where fundamental human rights are guaranteed; a healthy environment, which we protect, enhance and hold in trust for future generations".

One of the Labour Leaders then made the sheepish admission that this was the Clause IV that they had every intention of implementing.

Two of the largest unions, the Transport & General and Unison, voted for the old Clause IV. At a pre-conference delegation meeting to decide on which way the T & G would vote, the issues found their respective champions: Bill Morris the present General Secretary was for keeping Clause IV as it is while Jack Dromey, the head of their public services division, was for the new version. Nevertheless, wry smiles issued from the modernizers when it was pointed out that these two unions had not balloted their members about whether to use their block vote to support the new version – unlike the others who had and did. And to round off the jolly good day the modernizers had had, Arthur Scargill’s speech was given a slow hand clap.

The Significance of the Blairite Strategy

Thatcherism, so sections of the ruling class believe, has played its role, but has run its course. What can be privatised easily has been done so (’natural’ public monopolies have become highly profitable private monopolies), anti-strike laws have been tightened up, work-forces have been slashed, dole queues lengthened to an almost unimaginable extent, but still the working class has not been forced to take the full burden of the crisis. Speed-ups and flexibility at work is talked about by the bosses and union leaders, but still the workers find their own ways of resisting to the bitter end – price yourself into the labour market the unemployed are urged, but the unemployed have to be regimented and threatened with the loss of state benefits to even go through the motions of searching for work. The Tories present policies have reached an impasse.

Thatcher’s notorious statement that there is no such thing as society still appals those who examine what is happening to society. The Rowntree Trust, funded by private capital, has been worried about the long-term impact of poverty. Whole sections of the young have become almost unemployable. Housing conditions are becoming deplorable for increasing numbers. Short-time, temporary work, rather than revitalising the economy can drag it down by dampening consumer demand. Down-sizing (to use that quaint American phrase) by cutting the work-force to the bone may not necessarily restore organisations to profit, but it can riddle it with so many contradictions that it can not see further than the current financial year. That is why free market economics, touted about once every generation or so, has now reached the end of its present usefulness and will be returned to its dusty cupboard, until some other bunch of idiots think they can make it work.

The Thatcherite clique which came to power in 1979 (after large sections of workers refused to accept the attacks of the Wilson/Callaghan Governments of 1974/9) promised to free capital from all its restraints of the unions and strikes – this had been largely achieved after the massive defeat of the miners in 1984-5, but still the workers haven’t been completely cowed. Get the state out of business was their promise, red tape and regulations would be done away with – in fact it has increased and nobody seems to be able to control it (capitalism is the real anarchism). Rely upon the financial sector and do away with all those unsightly metal-bashing industries of old – what they have now got is a Stock Market sagging under an ever-weakening pound sterling and a gloriously insolvent Lloyds Insurance Market. Even Barings Bank went bust because of the endeavours of a ’rogue trader’, the 21 resignations which followed showed that the adventures into the derivatives market (a sophisticated form of gambling) was not confined to a single person. But the real crunch for the Tories has been because they promised to slim down state spending so as to free the economy to expand. In fact, they have not been able to reverse the tendency of the state spending to increase: it has in fact gone up under the Tories. No Government, whether Labour or Tory, has been able to reduce the proportion which state expenditure absorbs of national income to below 40%. Even if the Tories manage to further reduce Income Tax, it is at the expense of the other range of taxes, whether direct or indirect. The paradox of the Tory’s results on the ratio of Tax to Gross Domestic Product has been that they have slimmed down the economy without slimming down state expenditure. That is the dilemma they are in. The patience of whole sectors of capital has become exhausted – and this is the time for New Labour to enter the stage.

The existence of the Welfare State has had all-party approval for 50 years. Born of the necessity to convince the working class in Britain that a post-war world was worth fighting for – planned by a Liberal (Beveridge), the education side advocated by the Tories (Butler Act 1944) and finally completed by Labour. It has been these reforms (the pride of British politicians) which are now under threat. Now the talk is that it is too expensive, maybe it was all a ghastly mistake, perhaps it has ruined the survival of British capitalism. Alternatives are being sought. The Tory Right are regularly commuting to the US to find out about what the Republicans there are up to. Others, in the Labour camp, are examining examples of the slimming down of a welfare state, such as in New Zealand, or plain living on church handouts, as in Australia. The agreement among the ruling class is that the welfare state has to be slimmed down, the only question is how and by whom.

What the Future Holds for the Working Class

The issue of the ’defence’ of the welfare state is not one on which the working class as a class can organise itself, despite what leftists may claim. The working class is not the main and only beneficiary of the welfare state – all classes benefit from it, the middle classes especially have received childcare and medical benefits at a cheap rate, compared with what it would cost through private provisions. The benefits to the working class are being cut salami style until there is little to be ’defended’: the workers will never have the possibility to alter the conditions they exist in through participating in the bourgeois state. Indeed ’new’ ideas (in reality old concepts wrapped up in new packaging) are being advanced about what should replace state provisions. From America, where the latest trendy ideas are supposed to originate, comes the concept of "communitarianism" – that neighbours and communities should combine together to provide all the local services, at as little cost as possible to the tax payer, of course.

But the attack the workers face is not purely through the ’slimming down’ of the provisions of the welfare state – those who work for the state are also under attack. Those who work for the ’welfare state’, whether for the local authorities, social workers, teachers, etc., or for national welfare benefits, nurses and others, are all feeling the effects of the attacks. Most of these workers are the natural constituent of the Labour Party and have looked to them to continue providing the ’jobs and services’ upon which their jobs and salaries are based. Trendy Lefty Local Authorities have been experimenting with "brand-new"! Proudhonism, i.e Credit Unions and money-less trading for services, administration subsidised by the local state, and charities, of course.

New Labour represents a break from the former power base it had amongst the public sector workers, who felt that Labour would always represent their interests, even in some sort of distorted fashion. They have often been the social layers who have supplied the membership, and the electoral canvassers, for the Labour Party. The illusion has lingered that Labour is different from (is better then) the Tories. Indeed the final defence is that somehow Labour is still sympathetic to the workers cause. The notion of Labour still being a workers’ party, because of the link with the trade unions, has played an invaluable role for capitalism in keeping the workers within the bounds of safety for the capitalist system. It is the disillusionment of these layers of workers, and their defection, which will undermine, if not finish off, the Labour Party. With a bit of luck, Tony Blair will not be the saviour of the Labour Party, but its Funeral Director.

















THE SIGNAL WORKERS STRIKE AGAINST RAILTRACK

Whenever the RMT raised the claim, British Rail found one excuse after another not to deal with it. Usually, the excuse concerned one of the numerous business reorganizations undergone by the railway. For seven years the RMT was strangely calm about being fobbed off in this way. The result of this prolonged "friendly match" was that the basic pay rates of signalling grades fell even blow those of platform staff (station chargehands, cleaners etc, who remained poorly paid).

On April 1st, 1994, track and signalling infrastructure on the railways, together with the associated staff, was brought under a new government-owned authority: Railtrack PLC. Other assets and staff remained with the old BR businesses. This division was all part of the British state’s plans for privatisation of the railways, mooted since at least 1990.

On 13th April, the RMT balloted all its members for strike action, officially over the right of workers to transfer from BR to Railtrack and vice versa, and to retain their seniority when they did so. However, the majority of RMT workers who voted "no" to strike action on that occasion, were to be surprised at the interpretation the RMT – this "industrial union" – would make of their negative vote at a later date. Some months after the commencement of the signal workers strikes, RMT workers from other railway sectors (including BR staff) would ask why they had not been balloted. They were flatly told: in April you voted against rejecting the BR/Railtrack separation; now they are separate companies, a sympathy strike would be illegal. So why didn’t the RMT look for a legal pretext for balloting its non-Railtrack members – over their pay, for example?

The government intervened in the RMT-Railtrack negotiations in JUne to ensure that its cronies in Railtrack senior management didn’t breach the public pay sector guidelines by offering "too much". There are hundreds of thousands of public sector workers dissatisfied with the way their pay has been held down over the years. The government was determined to avoid anything that might trigger a mass gaol break, which could accelerate inflation and force a rise in interest rates.

Did the RMT risk upsetting the government’s apple cart? In fact, the union managed the strike actions from 15th June in such a way as to steadily diminish their effect. The regular stoppages were prevented from having any impact by the way in which various categories inside Railtrack were balloted at different times. Although it was obvious from June 1st (when the signal workers voted to strike if their demands weren’t met) that the management would do everything it could to keep the signal boxes open, and therefore to keep train services running, the RMT persisted in treating the strike as a matter for signal workers only. Even allowing that the signal grades were paid according to a different structure to their supervisors (half of whom were members of the RMT), it is strange that the latter were not called upon to strike until the beginning of August. The issue of safety could have been raised at least a month before, by which time Railtrack had been bringing in half-trained managers to staff boxes for some weeks. It took RMT six weeks to get around to balloting the supervisors; yet when the leadership had done their deal with Railtrack in September, the 48-hour strike planned for that week was called off within hours, and a telephone ballot was arranged to take place within two days. Railtrack crossing keepers were balloted only after the signal box supervisors had voted not to strike. It should be added that a number of RMT branch officials continued to work in the boxes throughout the strike.

As has already been added, the union officials had used the negative vote on the PT&R issue in April as an excuse not to hold a ballot on strike action in support of the signal workers. Yet there had been numerous calls from other RMT workers to allow them to join the dispute. These other categories weren’t happy about keeping the trains running while boxes were manned by managers and supervisors alone. Many BR drivers, platform staff and technicians would have voted for a strike had they been balloted. The RMT pleaded that it was fear of legal action by the state, with the risk of loss of funds that this entailed, which prevented them from taking this course.

In spite of the dividing tactic employed by their union apparatus, the signal workers themselves showed considerable determination in their struggle. Even in the last weeks of the strike, signalmen were heard to say that the dispute had become "personal" – they didn’t want to give an inch – not even the original 5.7% offer would have been accepted if it had been tabled again. When the strike fizzled out in September, the RMT leader referred to the final offer accepted by the union as 8.2% when Railtrack were claiming it was only 3.4%. Both of these figures were false, face-saving devices for both organisations. The signal workers certainly got something out of their struggle, but more could have been won had the strike been less circumscribed.

In the July issue of the paper RMT News, the union’s leader Jimmy Knapp made the following comment: "We have to organise to maintain and consolidate our collective strengths. The principle of industrial trade unionism is as relevant as ever." If the conduct of the signal workers strike is anything to go by, this statement is sheer hypocrisy.

However, it should be said that if the unions exercise a stifling effect on struggles today, the possibility of intervention within their ranks has not been cancelled at this stage. The very structure of some unions (such as the RMT) more steadily permits communication between different categories of workers. Of course, the routine branch meetings of such unions are "rubber stamping" operations, of no more use than those of any other, more narrowly-based union. But when a struggle is being confined to one sector in a broad-based union, valuable opportunities for intervention can present themselves. In this situation, special meetings or rallies called by the union to "support the workers on strike" (how many times has that word "support" been misused!) can be used by communists to promote a widening of the struggle to other categories, and so to derail the divisive strategy of the union bosses.







Theses on the Trade Unions in Britain



1. There are three fundamental characteristics of the trade union movement in Britain. The first one has been that trade unions arose at the same time as the first stirrings of the organised proletarian political movement. In a word: in Britain the unions came first, before the formation of a proletarian political movement. Deprived of any model or experience to follow, the early trade unions had to learn through practice, faced as they were with an ascending capitalist system.

For the period of their formation we must go back at least to the end of the 18th century, to the workers’ clubs and their ingenuous and open-handed efforts which included clandestine actions and violent class struggle.

2. The second fundamental characteristic of the trade union movement in Britain is its historical continuity. Despite many, and vicious, attempts to break these unions, they were able to exist from the first half of the 19th century. Thus the trade union movement has survived intact organisationally, and has been destroyed neither through war nor fascism.

3. The third fundamental characteristic of the trade unions in Britain has been that they were the first ones to be corrupted by the bourgeoisie. From the point when the trade unions were made legal in the 1820s, having failed to just disappear according to the desires of free market economists, open efforts were made to suborn, neutralise and / or buy out the trade union leadership. But the need to ruthlessly exploit the work force meant they could not buy off the bulk of the workers, and so an incessant class struggle took place right throughout the 19th century.



The Formation of the Trade Union Movement

5. The TUC, when set up by craft trade unions, was already a corrupt and hostile class enemy for the working class as a whole. References to the English Trade Union leaders made by Marx at the Hague Congress, about it being an honour not to be such a trade union leader, is sufficient to underline this. This TUC, a collection of craft unions, was quickly taken in tow by the Liberal Party. The Trade Union leaders already had their eyes on Parliamentary seats, at lease those with good political connections.

6. The common name for the economic organisations of the workers in the British Isles has been that of trade unions. Strictly speaking there are three types of such unions:

Trades Unions - the organisation of craft / skilled workers into unions protecting their own insular economic interests, e.g. plumbers, carpenters, printers, etc.

Industrial Unions - only able to survive from time to time in the Nineteenth Century, and combining all those in specific industries, but excluding skilled workers, who remained members of their own unions since they could move from industry to industry.

General Unions - few in number (two survive in name only) and generally united mainly the non- and semi-skilled in industries not already organised. These had to fight fierce battles to even exist – the gasworkers union, helped by Eleanor Marx was a case in point.

7. The industrial unions composed those workers who worked continuously in the same industry and had acquired thereby some skills: often referred to as semi-skilled. The nature of the semi- skills is such as to make it difficult for the employers to easily replace them. The types of industries covered here are the railways and the mines.

8. The General Unions were known originally as New Unions, were formed and extended in the 1880s and 1890s. They were the product of large-scale struggles, such as those fought by the gasworkers and dockers, and had to fight to remain in existence. Temporary employment was often a characteristic of these industries.

Eighteen Eighty-eight saw the strike of the match-girls at Bryant & May – followed 1889 by the memorable strikes of the Gas workers and Dockers. The Dockers in London held out for sixpence per hour – "the full round orb of the docker’s tanner" – against the importing of blackleg labour. Threats of a General Strike, and more importantly large-scale funds from fellow workers of Australia, helped tip the balance in favour of the dockers. In 1890 the strike movement spread Northward, encouraging those who had not been able to maintain an organised existence until then. In some cases they were able to survive, in others they lost ground, like that of the Gasworkers and the Agricultural Workers.

9. In 1890 the leaders of the New Unions took their organisations into the TUC. The leaders of the old unions were intent on keeping their control over the TUC. By-and-large the rift between the two tendencies, "old" craft union and "new" unions, can be characterised as the former being for the alliance with the Liberal Party and the latter being influenced by the socialist movement. The tussle between the two tendencies resulted in the formation of what is often called the Labour Movement. Changes to accommodate these two tendencies led to the centralising of authority into the union leaderships constituted into the TUC. Local bodies, the Trades Councils, had much of their organising powers restricted – they were deprived of any authority in negotiations with employers over wages, and lost the capacity to officially organise strikes.

10. By 1900 the entire ruling class, excepting for a few odd-balls, recognised that the trade unions were here to stay and had to be lived with. Most union members still could not vote in Parliamentary or local elections, but this mass membership attracted the attention of the bourgeois parties. The Liberals had it mostly sewn up, but the Tories had made attempts to win over "Labour" leaders to their side, even making funds available for the Hyndmanite Social Democratic Federation to stand against the Liberals in order to split the vote.

But this ’living’ with the unions did not mean that attempts were not made to curtail the organisation and influence of them in the workplaces. This same year, 1900, saw a strike in South Wales over the victimisation of a signalman who had previously led a movement for a pay rise. The Railways Company then took the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants to Court claiming damages and costs. The first Court agreed with the Employers, the Appeal Court found for the Union, finally the House of Lords found once again for the Employers. The Taff Vale Judgement sent a shudder through the ranks of union leaderships – funds could be under threat because of strikes.

The Trade Union leaders now felt the need to look at the legal standing of their organisations – it was no longer a fight for existence, but one for stability. Electoral alliances were now sought out – the old alliance with the Liberals was put to the test. As it became clear that legal protection of union against claims for damages was not going to come through the Liberal Party, shifts of political allegiance started to take place. The setting up of a Labour Representation Committee was purely for limited issues of legislation, and it was on this basis that the Labour Party was being formed. This Labour Party AT NO TIME ever had any notion of socialism, social change, nor even class struggle, as it was always there as a party purely of reform.

11. The alterations of the electoral alliances did not solve the problems unions faced before the Courts. Conflicts between the unions and employers over the rights to strike, particularly with regards to the Taff Vale judgement, was a bone of contention between the Union leaders and politicians, but this did not prevent the cooperation of the unions and the state. This was demonstrated by the National Insurance Act of 1911 in which health, unemployment and pension benefits were made available through the contributions of the government, employers and workers. It only really benefited those who could afford it and were in regular employment.

12. The growing collaboration between Union Leaders on Commissions, minor Government posts, etc., did not prevent the class struggle going on at unprecedented levels. The period 1910-3 saw massive strikes, both in Britain and in Ireland, begun mainly as unofficial movements until the Union leaderships moved in to curtail them. Some of the strikes were violent, at least on the part of the employers and the State. Police and troops were used in Dublin, Liverpool and other cities to combat the strikers and maintain order.

13. Those Union leaders who were the most involved in this unofficial movement, such as Tom Mann and James Larkin, where influenced by Syndicalism. This syndicalism, a mixture of the ideas of Sorel in France and De Leon in the United States, was a reaction both to the open class collaboration of Trade Union leaders as well as the deplorable Parliamentarian types involved in the development of the Labour Party. The conclusion of this sort of syndicalism was in the replacing of the old leaders with new, and better, less corruptible, leaders.



The Test of War on the Labour Movement

15. Those who fought against the war almost from the start were those who had a clear perspective of advancing the interests of the workers before the war broke out. Those who wavered before August 14th 1914 were generally the ones who rushed headlong into supporting the war and defending ’Our Country’ once the war broke out.

16. Other expressions of class struggle arose, in the form of shop stewards and works committees (direct representatives of the workers on the shop floor, as opposed to union representatives from the outside) because of the direct conflict between capital and labour within the factories. Even though some of the issues were clearly counter-productive, like the opposition to ’dilutees’ (preventing unskilled workers taking up skilled work) by and large they reflected a growing mood of discontent amongst workers. Shop stewards had made an appearance before the war, but the local employers had effectively stamped them out before they could take a hold. During the course of the war the shop stewards led the agitation for wage rises, because inflation was reducing the real wages of workers, leading to stoppages of work often of two weeks duration. The employers would have liked to have fought this out, but the demands of war curbed their zeal for lock-outs and victimisation. Although not a revolutionary movement in itself, these shop stewards and works committees represented a desire to continue the economic battles despite the war.

The struggles over wages and conditions continued after the war, right throughout the period 1918-22. The total union membership topped 8 million in 1921, the number of days affected by strikes never much less than 20 million during this period. Unofficial strikes were largely because of the existence of the shop steward movement; but many of the big strikes were official because the trade union leaders perceived there were sectional interests to be defended.

17. It would be logical to expect that those who were most consistent in their opposition to the war, and in fighting out the class struggle, would form the natural constituent of a Communist Party in Britain. That was not to be. The main component in forming the Communist Party of Great Britain turned out to be the British Socialist Party, an organisation which was far from having had a record of involvement in the class struggle. When the BSP was formed, it took up a hostile position towards the industrial struggles of 1910-13. The opposition to "industrial" as against that of "political" issues (which was in fact little more than involvement in the lowest levels of the state administration), was matched by a virulent hostility to "German Expansion", and by a patriotic defencism. The BSP was late in its conversion to an anti-war position, beginning with the expulsion of the Hyndmanites in 1916, and lacking in its involvement in the industrial struggles which went on during the war, especially towards the end.

But even more serious was the fact that the BSP, which was an affiliated body to the Labour Party, having a seat reserved on its Executive Committee, wanted to remain in the Labour Party. This issue effectively disrupted the negotiations to unite all the potential revolutionary forces into a single Communist Party, and even those who accepted the discipline imposed by Moscow to join despite the issue of affiliation to the Labour Party, soon found themselves expelled before the year was out.

18. In 1920, the year of the founding of the CPGB, a Red International of Labour Unions (known as Profintern) was set up in Moscow. There was only limited success in influencing some Shop Stewards and Works Committee, however influence amongst some sections of miners became apparent. This inability to make large-scale inroads into the existing unions showed the fault line within the existing economic organisations in Britain. Bodies such as shop stewards and works committees were hostile to the centralised existing unions, especially as the union leaders saw shop floor organisations as a threat to their authority. As the Labour Party was the ’political representatives’ of the trade unions, these shop floor organisations tended to be hostile to the Labour Party as well.

19. Towards the end of 1921, changes took place in the policies from Moscow. The Third Congress launched the United Front, not what we envisaged it in Italy as a Workers United Front, the united front from below (that is through economic organisations – the trade unions), but as an alliance of political parties. Back the CPGB went to try to get into the Labour Party. Even after secret attempts at horse-trading, it all came to nothing. Eventually the secret minutes were published which showed that the CPGB were prepared to abandon all of Moscow’s principles and policies, just for the control of an MP or two. In fact the CPGB showed its contempt in practice for the Comintern by saying it wanted to turn the Labour Party into the Communist Party.

20. By 1923 the British Bureau of Profintern undertook a sharp about turn. No organised opposition in the existing unions were henceforth to be tolerated. The Red Union strategy was abandoned without a word of explanation. No thought was given to tactical considerations, nor to the needs of the workers involved, who were supposed to observe discipline to the Leaders of these unions, even when they operated as strike-breakers. The strategy put forward was that of trying to influence trade union leaderships, with or without any real organisation of the workers into a class force. And so in 1924 the Minority Movement, an electoral machine within the unions, was launched.

21. The launching of the Minority Movement represented a shift in Moscow’s position, having recognised that affiliation to the Labour Party had failed; the way to the British workers was, as Zinoviev put it, "through the wide portals of the trade unions". The CPGB went to the task with wild abandon, seeking to affiliate bodies, such as trade union branches and Trades Councils, to the Minority Movement. At the same time overtures were being made to "left-wing" trade union leaders, even to the TUC’s General Council as a whole. Trade Union leaders were praised and lobbied, taken to Russia where they were feted and glorified – and so the ill-fated Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee was experimented with.

In 1925 the British ruling class was not ready for a conflict and so they deferred the brewing fight with the miners for nine months. The apparent ’retreat’ of the Government, by holding a Royal Commission, was hailed as a victory – Red Friday. The miners were to pay a heavy price, a bitter nine month strike, the following year.

22. Apparently the CPGB thought that the trade union movement could substitute for the Soviets in a revolution, but this strategy was to fall apart in the 1926 General Strike. Besides having mixed up the roles of trades unions and soviets, as if they are interchangeable, the CPGB did not realise that to prepare the workers for a fight meant empowering the bodies through which they would organise the struggles. To have done this would have led to a rift between the union branches and their leaderships, as well as an equal rift between the Trades Councils and the TUC. The CPGB was calling for the Trades Councils to become Councils of Action, organising centres for a General Strike, while still subordinated to the TUC’s General Council. Anybody with any sense would have realised that the TUC would cut and run at the first sign of a real fight, calling for everybody to return to work!



From Slump to War

24. After the General Strike the TUC began its own reorganisation. During 1928-9 direct talks between a representative of the employers (Mond, Chairman of I.C.I) and Turner, Chair of the TUC, cleared the air between the two camps. Nothing directly came of these talks except that Sir Alfred Mond clarified the point that the employers saw it as in the interests of all in industry that workers be allowed to be members of trade unions.

The CPGB by this time was in the grips of another Moscow inspired about-turn. This was the period of "social fascism", when the existing Labour leaders had to be denounced as just as bad, if not worse than, the fascists. This policy lasted until the victory of Hitler in Germany in 1933. A later change, to that of the United Front against fascism, which again made overtures to Labour Leaders, was greeted with the infamous "Black Circular" of 1934, which banned CP members from posts within trade unions and the Trades Councils, even after the Minority Movement and related bodies had been discarded.

25. Individual trade unions began their own form of reorganisation, funds often being at a precarious level after the General Strike. In the case of the Transport workers unions a reorganisation took place, forming the Transport and General Workers Union, the third largest union, during this period. The leader of this reorganised union, Ernest Bevin (a sponsor of the Mond-Turner talks), was to be one of the most determined bulwarks of the trade union machinery, defending its interests against all comers. Bevin can be regarded as the archetypal Union Baron, a law unto himself. He centralised the union affairs into the newly built Transport House, headquarters also of the Labour Party. Bevin was not only the landlord of the Labour Movement, he was also its Press Baron, ensuring that the trade union mouthpiece, the Daily Herald, became a power in the land.

When the Labour Government of Ramsey MacDonald reacted to the financial crisis facing the national economy by cutting back on the payments to the unemployed, it was Bevin who effectively split the Labour Party. The TGWU sponsored its own MPs, and insisted that they toe the union line. With ten per cent of the Labour Party Conference votes, through its Block Vote, Bevin was a power who could not be ignored. But more than that, Bevin was influenced by Keynesian economics and was more aware than many what was needed for capitalism in Britain to survive. This insight prepared Bevin to ensure the collaboration of the trade union leaders throughout the 1930s, the war and the subsequent Labour Government.

Bevin was also active in curtailing the various attempts of the CP to get footholds in industry and transport. CP members had encouraged a Rank-and-File Committee amongst Busmen in London from 1933 onwards. Bevin allowed this to run for some time while he prepared counter-measures. This Rank-and-File Committee, unfortunately confined to Busmen and to London, was broken in 1937 when their leaders where expelled from the Union. As usual Rank-and- File types of organisation were totally unprepared for such actions. Rank-and-Filism believes it to be a better representative of shop floor democracy – entrenching themselves into trade union branches, arguing that the stalwart branch attenders can be convinced that they are the representatives of an absentee membership. In reality a democracy of handfuls of members claiming to represent a mass membership.

26. The TUC leaders were keen to show that collaboration was not merely limited to Labour Governments. In the two years before the outbreak of war they gave the pacifists of the Labour Party short shrift, pointing towards national unity against the common foe. While the Chamberlain Government continued with its policies of appeasement, Ministry officials were consulting TUC leaders during 1938 and 1939 on plans for war preparations and air-raid precautions. This set the tone for the collaboration in a War-time Government of National Unity, continuing on through to the post-war Labour Government and beyond.

The Mond-Turner talks of 1928 had set the scene for these developments. The bourgeoisie knew their union leaders well. The common opposition to fascism did not lie in some fanciful vision of democracy: it was that the British bourgeoisie did not need fascism to continue to govern.

27. The TUC Congress meeting on 1st September 1939, declared fully for war and curtailed its sessions so that members could rush back to participate in the war effort. The venue turned out to be significant – the seaside town of Bridlington gave the name to an agreement arrived at by Congress. This Bridlington Agreement forbade the transferring of union members from one union to another – known in TUC circles as "poaching". This was to prevent unions which had agreements with employers, to represent their workers, being surplanted by other unions who wanted to spirit away some of their disenchanted members. This sort of competition was to be firmly outlawed, a special TUC Disputes Committee to act as a Tribunal where conflicts arise. A clear signal was sent to the member unions, growth could only take place by assimilation of smaller unions, not elimination.



Trade Unions - open Collaboration all the way

29. The War-time Government of Churchill found the collaboration of the TUC to be indispensable. The stresses and strains upon society were such that the ruling class were aware of the need to make promises that post-war society would be different, be better, than the misery of the 1920s and 1930s. The Welfare State, with state assistance "from the cradle to the grave", better education, housing, etc. was duly delivered by the Labour Government of Attlee, based upon plans drawn up by Liberals. This was the absolute minimum that was necessary to not only fight the war, but also to plan for reconstruction during the post-war period. Rather strangely, some on the left have declared all this to be a conquest of the working class, as if the Labour Government had implemented all this out of their own heads. The Labour Government was just as quick to utilise the still existing war-time regulations against dock strikes.

With the introduction of the Welfare State the appalling indignities of the Poor Law means-testing of benefits was done away with, and replaced with the principal of assistance as a general right. Pensions were available to all irrespective of work histories. Proper unemployment benefits were available for those without work, sickness benefits for those incapable of working, etc. All this was possible, and sustainable while the majority of the population was still at work. The 1950s appeared to be a quiet time as far as the class struggle was concerned, except for the experience of dockers trying to switch unions.

30. The Blue Union of the Dockers (so-called because of the colour of their union card) was an old union called the National Association of Stevedores and Dockers, based in London. The militant dockers had formed unofficial committees in the Northern Ports, being organising centres for class struggle. Finding themselves in conflict with the union they were members of, the Transport & General (called the white union after the colour of its union card), the question then arose as to how to proceed, whether to remain unofficial committees, or to try to ’reconquer’ their union. They opted not for independent existence but to join en masse the Blue Union as an organisational way of switching unions. Sometimes referred to amongst dockers as the biggest gaol break in history, the Blue Union suddenly became a National organisation. Having allowed the transfer of members from the TGWU, the NASD were expelled from the TUC. The entry of the Blue Union into the Northern Ports found its bitterest opponent not in the Port Authorities (the Government body running the docks) but in the Transport & General, because it had lost its closed shop and dominant position on the docks. The ending of the T&G’s closed shop, without collaboration with the Blue Union, meant that control over the dockers could not be asserted. That situation could only be overcome eventually with the introduction of containerisation on the docks, the marginalising of the Blue Union, and the introduction of T&G Shop Stewards. Mechanisation and Containerisation meant that the overwhelming majority of jobs on the docks would disappear. Although the existence of the Blue Union could provide a cover for the independent class struggle on the docks at one stage, it could not unite workers against containerisation, nor effectively unite workers across industries in fighting the consequences of new technology and work methods.



The Re-emergence of Class Struggle

32. But the 1960s would appear as a thoroughly restrained period in comparison to the following decade, the 1970s. The opening year of this decade, 1970, saw a short but bitter strike at the normally quiet Pilkingtons glass-making plants in St Helens. A strike provoked by a wage miscalculation was to escalate within 48 hours into more of a running fight than a straight-forward strike. This running battle wasn’t just against the employers, the workers had to fight the union in order to hold a strike at all. The General & Municipal Workers Union organised within the plants in Pilkingtons, and had an agreement with the employers that only members of their union could work in the plants. The usual arrangement for a closed shop was that a worker needed to take his union card to be checked by a shop steward before he could start. The arrangement here was simpler – it was a condition of employment that every worker had to join the GMWU, a form having to be filled in agreeing for union subscription to be deducted from wages before he could start work. The strikers found that generally speaking the shop stewards were against them, and so was the local branch to which they all belonged. A resolution passed by the local branch in support of the strike appears to have been passed, but the strike was not made official by the national leadership. From then on the strike was unofficial and in out-and-out conflict with the GMWU, branded by some as a Scab Union.

The strike lasted for seven weeks in all, during April and May, the strikers eventually setting up a Rank-and-File Strike Committee (RFSC) to run the strike, totally separate from the existing union. Strikers were asked to fill in forms instructing Pilkingtons to stop deducting GMWU union dues from their wages. About half the workers appeared to have done so. GMWU officials and shop stewards then went to everyone who filled in such a form and tried to get them to reverse their position.

The RFSC started as a ginger group (traditional rank-and-filism) which aimed to change, or more correctly improve, the union leadership. Obstructed in this aim, they tried the Dockers tactic, that is switching unions. Negotiations began to join the TGWU en masse [the irony of the situation should not be ignored, the same Union the Dockers deserted], the initial discussions seemed to be favourable. Then the TUC Disputes Committee ruled against such a transfer. Finding the union switch option ruled out, they set up their own union, the Glass & General Workers Union and talked about trying to enter the TUC. The RFSC did not see this union they were setting up as anything different in structure from the one they were leaving, except that it was more responsive to their needs. The Glass & General was not recognised by Pilkingtons, although some unofficial negotiations took place over problems as they arose. At the beginning of August there was a fight for recognition, and it was in this fight that the break-away union was destroyed. Those who went on strike were told that they were discharged, but could be re-engaged on the employer’s terms as new workers (losing continuity of employment, pension rights, and so on). Although there had been enquiries from other workers to join the break-away union, the Glass & General soon folded and those still on strike returned to the name of RFSC, while public appeals went out for the sacked workers to be reinstated. The adoption of the old title implicitly recognised they had lost the fight to escape the influence of the GMWU.

33. The Heath Government brought in new laws to curb industrial disputes, which it then tried to implement. It included a National Industrial Relations Court, which was very similar to what the previous Labour Government had tried to introduce. But the Heath Government was soon caught up in the fierce battles breaking out everywhere, virtually simultaneously. In the docks, the issue of containerisation was again causing problems. This time the law was used to prevent dockers picketing outside their own dock areas. Court orders were served on five dockers to stop such picketing. They refused and so were duly arrested. The Pentonville Five, named after the gaol they were taken to, started off a national dock strike, with an unofficial general strike breaking out, which the TUC only just managed to bring within the bounds of safety. The Government quickly backed down, with a seldom heard Official Solicitor stepping in, asking the Courts for the Five to be released, and the Courts were only too happy to be off the hook. It was either that or the gaols would have been filled to bursting point with strikers, official, unofficial, sympathetic, in fact any name one would care to give them.

34. The 1970s was a decade of fierce class struggle, a mixture of official and unofficial strikes, the bulk starting as unofficial. The most significant official strikes were those wage claims of the Miners Union which systematically defeated the Tory Government of Heath in 1972 and 1974. It was as if the Miners wished to repay the Tory Government for the appalling tragedy of 1926, and they went to it with a vengeance (this re-match was to lead to Thatcher’s preparation for the even more decisive defeat of 1984-5). Under the leadership of an unofficial strike committee in Barnsley, in which Scargill was a motivating force, flying pickets were sent out to picket other coal depots, transport, etc. The decisive struggle to close the Saltley coke depot, part of a generating power station in Birmingham, was achieved not by the remorseless actions of fighting pickets alone, struggling day after day. It was the police who closed it down when faced with tens of thousands of workers who had marched out of their factories in the Birmingham area to march on Saltley Coke Depot. This tipped the balance of forces decisively in favour of the strikers. To have continued the struggle to keep open the Coke Depot, the police would have turned parts of Birmingham into a battle zone. That is why the police officers ordered Saltley Coke Depot closed. The state learnt these lessons well, for the battles fought a decade later would be in quiet Yorkshire country roads, or at least places well away from urban areas.

35. The listing of strikes during the 1970s would in itself be a formidable task. Suffice it to say that they not only did great damage to the Heath Government, but also to the subsequent Wilson and Callaghan Labour Governments as well. These Governments were caught between financial and economic crises on the one hand (the oil crises being just one of the issues they had to deal with, a factor behind the accelerating inflation), and the increasingly defiant working class, which needed to struggle over economic issues, precisely because of raging inflation. It was during the latter part of the 1970s that the ruling class took a decision that they were going to end the Keynesian notions of maintaining as buoyant an economy as possible, and experiment with the alternative notion of monetarism. Actually, it was introduced by the Labour Government of Callaghan, in an infamous speech where he said that from now on the country must live within its means. Callaghan, and especially his economic advisers, set the scene for Thatcherism.

36. The significance of events of the 1970s was that struggles were beginning to escape from the control of the unions. The fact that in most industries the overwhelming majority of the workers are in the existing trade unions is part of their stability – their so-called strength. This makes the role of the union leaders important as far as the ruling class is concerned. It is in the general interests of the ruling class that this should remain. There is little interest amongst capitalists for union busting.

All workers in a particular sector / trade can be members of a union, there being no political bars to everyone joining, as long as they pay their subscriptions and don’t cause too much trouble. They can believe any ideas they like – branch resolutions mean nothing much anyway. As the union branches and meetings are incapable of affecting the policies of the unions, because the membership can not declare an official strike, the workers are not able to take union matters into their hands. That is most why, generally, strikes and other actions commence as unofficial strikes, after which the union officials move in to try and keep the strike in some sort of order.

Workers on strike confront two barriers within the unions, the shop stewards and union officials (full-time employees of the union). The shop stewards are those who are elected by the membership in a particular workplace. Between them, the shop stewards and union officials try to get the workers back to work, irrespective of the issues involved, or how passionately the workers feel about the strike. The workers, if determined to continue the strike, will continue to vote in their mass meetings against a return to work. The strikers would have their own agenda, their own issues to be discussed and their own minimum requirements for a return to work. But it is not just a simple question of removing the existing shop stewards – bitter experience has shown that replaced shop stewards then have to go in to negotiate with the bosses, to face a hostile mass of strikers, to start the same manipulations and double-dealing which the previous stewards had fallen into.

37. The reaction to this type of movement, an unofficial type that threatened to break out of sectional boundaries, was to shift the balance of forces against the workers onto a general social level. This found its expression under the name of Thatcherism. The Thatcher Government still found itself against fierce class struggle – only a battery of legislation could control the workers. The new laws kept the lower ranks of the unions in line, it was quite sometime before it had an effect on the masses of workers who had to be bludgeoned by more drastic measures.

38. One of the most fundamental parts of the strategy of the Thatcher Government was in preparing the ground before taking on a significant section of workers. They would deal with one industry at a time, make an example of them and then move on to the next. The isolating of industry by industry was a key to the success of Thatcher. They ran down the steel industry, reducing the need for coal, before dealing with the miners. And even before the start of the miners strike they made sure they had two key resources, large coal stocks, and the ability to turn to burning oil in order to generate electricity. The miners were to be made an example of in front of the rest of the class.

39. But beyond the defeat of the miners, in order to subdue the mass of workers, wholesale butchery of industry was needed. A key part of the monetarist theory was that state subsidies to industry was itself iniquitous. Those industries which were unprofitable, the "lame ducks", should be allowed to go to the wall. But more than that, because of the capitalist crisis, industries were to be run down, and unemployment increased. When there are millions of unemployed, workers should be grateful on having a job. And those who have jobs should be in as temporary employment as possible, in small scale units of production, in service industries rather than large scale production. It is an illusion, to which the bourgeoisie is hopelessly infected, that the workers are fundamentally loyal, that it is just some unknown disease which causes disaffection, maybe the product of handfuls of malcontents who cause trouble. They can not see that the source of the confrontation lie in the economic relations themselves, in the wage labour conflicts which stem from them. The bourgeoisie can not eliminate the class struggle without dispensing with wage labour exploitation altogether – this is impossible, for without the exploitation of wage labour, where would their venerated profits come from?

40. As well as having wrecked industry, they have created an even worse nightmare: a near bankrupt economy. For all the fanciful monetarist notions that the economy would some how adjust itself, in reality the destruction of industry has undermined the solvency of the much vaunted service industries: the reduction of the buying capacity of the working class is leading to a spiralling down of the economy itself. The Tories have been storing up even more economic problems for the future, and it will be this which will cause the forthcoming upward turn in the class struggle. The ineptitudes of Thatcher’s replacement, Major, does not lie in the individual, but in the economic situation to which he has inherited. A crisis-ridden Tory Government is the product of the economic situation in which it finds itself, not the foibles of this or that person.

41. The existing unions usually embrace the majority of the workers in a particular industry. Militant minded workers seldom leave the unions, but sometimes form rank-and-file or unofficial groups to fight over particular issues. Because of their nature they tend to be temporary, for the purpose of a particular issue, and disappear – those involved in these unofficial groups hardly ever leave the trade union concerned. This is also because of the sectional, limited nature of the issues concerned. Since a particular trade / profession are often concerned with genuine problems of that category, this type of organisation does not contain the capability of breaking out and being the basis of fresh proletarian expressions. As workers, they go back to being individuals within the trade union concerned, although some may be victimised by the employers or disciplined by the unions concerned.

That is why Communists encourage all forms of struggle which tend toward transcending narrow sectional interests – solidarity and financial contributions are not enough, proletarians need to organise themselves into class-wide economic expressions.

42. There are from time to time attempts to organise oppositions within the unions or in the workplaces in order to fight the class struggles. They can have at the present no other characteristic other than being minorities – an expression of the present consciousness of sections of the more determined and combative workers. They either see themselves as political movements in their own right, or tend to be reduced to the level of rank-and-filism, claiming to be better representatives of a dubious democracy, or more responsive to the feelings of workers (perhaps more adaptive, whether for good or bad). They have no perspective, in the end, of being other than electoral canvassers for the next generation of trade union leaders (who to their great ’surprise’ and disgust turn out to "betray" the union members). The final role is one of a loyal opposition within the unions, for which they cease to have any interest for the majority of the workers in any case, and slide into boredom and oblivion.

Rank and file movements, base groups and the like tend to disintegrate and go out of existence. Some say that is how it should be, as they have extreme suspicion of workers organising themselves during this phase of capitalism. Unfortunately, it is not just these groups which disappear, but also those workers who were involved become politically disorientated, demoralised and mostly leave politics of any kind. That does not mean to say that we stand to one side, waiting for them to disintegrate in due course. Wherever possible we take the fight into such movements to see if they can be turned outwards, embracing other workers’ struggles.

43. We not only assert that there is a fundamental need for proletarian economic expressions in order to fight out the class struggle. There is also a need for those revolutionary forces who understand the importance of a Communist perspective to constitute a Communist Fraction within these economic expressions, in order to drive forward the organisation and the process of understanding of what is required. Such a Communist Fraction must have as its task participating in all types of struggle in which workers are engaged, to strengthen them and heighten the struggle. It is through such a process, in which the Communists represent the line of march along which the proletarians must proceed, that leads ultimately to the proletariat taking power, and ending exploitation for ever.















THE TACTIC OF AFFILIATING

THE CPGB TO THE LABOUR PARTY





In the article ’Intorno al Congresso Internazionale Comunista’, published in "Il Soviet", 3/10/1920, a representative of the Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the Socialist Party of Italy commented on the "big question of the affiliation of the English communist movement to the Labour Party" debated at the 2nd Congress of the Communist International. It was noted that: «Supported by Lenin, this proposal was approved in the face of strong opposition. We will limit ourselves for now to saying that we agree neither with Lenin’s methodological criteria nor with his evaluation of the English political situation. We recall also that comrade Pankhurst put forward the decisive objection that the English left communists aren’t out to separate themselves from the masses, seeing that they assert the necessity of working in the trade unions, but merely wish to stay outside the labourist political party organisation represented by a congress of petty-bourgeois counter-revolutionaries». Seeking to influence workers in the economic organisations rather than in confusing alliances with the social-democratic parties marked out the Italian left from its very beginnings.

Lenin made his speech "On Affiliation to the British Labour Party" to the 2nd Congress of the Communist International on August 6, a few days after the Communist Unity Convention had met in London on July 31 – August 1 and officially formed the Communist Party of Great Britain. At this latter meeting, whilst the question of affiliation to the Third International was soon settled, the question of affiliation to the Labour Party gave rise to serious differences of opinion, and a strong minority, including Pankhurst, a section of the Shop Stewards and the Socialist Labour Party, argued against the policy and did not join the new party. The absorption of these anti- affiliationists in the following year would mean the humiliating fawning to the Labour Party by the CPGB could continue unobstructed; a policy forged precisely at a stage when the CPGB was still very unsteady on its feet and a maximum differentiation between itself and the Labour Party was required.

Most enthusiastic of the supporters of the affiliation tactic were undoubtedly the former members of the British Socialist Party, an organisation which had been affiliated to the Labour Party on two occasions. The predecessor of the BSP, the Social Democratic Federation, had been a founding organisation of the Labour Party but had broken away in an attempt to build a rival Party, based upon ’political struggle’ as against economic issues. It was during this phase that the SDF castigated the involvement of the SLP in the class struggle as ’syndicalist’! The fusions of the SDF with other bodies (invariably on the right) led to the formation first of the Social Democratic Party, then the BSP. The continual fusions was to build an organisation to displace the Independent Labour Party as the main organisation in Britain in the Second International. The initial recommendation of affiliation of the BSP to the Labour Party was by Kautsky, as an organisational solution to the existence of various bodies affiliated to the Second International. There were no political problems to affiliation at that time as the BSP was a defensist, reactionary organisation, led by Hyndman. Only towards the end of the First World War did the BSP start taking a shaky anti-war stance. The BSP, whose members constituted a majority in the CPGB, especially in the first year, had, after years of affiliation to the Labour Party, become used to adopting a very placatory stance towards the Labour Party, and in general its politics consisted of a propagandist approach which played down the importance of industrial organisation.

In February 1920 (before the formation of the CPGB) a certain J.F. Hodgson represented the British Socialist Party at the meeting of the sub-bureau of the Communist International in Amsterdam, and it is revealing that he opposed the Bureau when it carried a resolution calling on all communist groups to unite on the basis of uncompromising opposition to the parties of the Second International (amongst which was the Labour Party). Upon his return to England he protested against the unrepresentative character of the meeting and held that its resolutions were not binding. At the founding conference of the CPGB in 1921 it was none other than this same Mr. Hodgson who moved the resolution in favour of affiliation to the Labour Party and saw it carried by 100 votes to 85.

The adoption of this policy, and the resulting kowtowing to the Labour Party which was the inevitable upshot, has resulted in a legacy of misunderstanding and confusion amongst the British Left which is still very much with us today. And since Lenin’s name is so frequently invoked to defend this stance, it is useful to examine particularly his justification for pursuing such a policy.

As Lenin’s speeches on the affiliation tactic at the Second Congress of the Communist International are particularly relevant to our enquiry, namely: Speech on the Role of the Communist Party and Speech on Affiliation to the British Labour Party, we will concentrate on those. Quotations are taken from Speeches At Congresses of the Communist International, Progress Publishers.

The 2nd Congress, as we have noted, took place a few days after the formation of the CPGB in Britain. Characterising the Communist Unity Convention as a "Congress of the British Socialist Party" where the BSP had decided to "change the party into a communist Party", Lenin outlined a strategy where the new party, consisting mainly of the old BSP, would just continue to be affiliated to the Labour Party as before ( "I have come to the conclusion that the decision to remain within the Labour Party is the only correct tactic"). Lenin surely could not but have known how the British Socialist Party had operated in the pre-1918 period: it never attempted to mount an organised and concerted campaign against the Labour establishment, and had it done so, it would almost certainly have been expelled. The syndicalist and communist left in Britain, which had not been slow to criticise the BSP in the past and had no intentions of suddenly dulling its criticisms now, compelled Lenin to try and meet their criticisms in order to get them to join the new party. In reply to Sylvia Pankhurst’s view that it was impossible for communists to join a party affiliated to the 2nd International, he argued:

"It should however be borne in mind that the British Labour Party is in a very special position: it is a highly original type of party, or rather, it is not at all a party in the ordinary sense of the word. It is made up of members of all trade unions, and has a membership of about four million, and allows sufficient freedom to all affiliated political parties".

Lenin concluded his attempt to allay Pankhurst’s concerns by portraying the Labour Party as an organisation which is "half trade union and half political" which allowed criticism of the leaders (and therefore, by implication, the possibility of a communist fraction to organise separately within it), and also point to the fact that the question of affiliation to the Third International had been raised at the Labour Party Conference, which had obliged all party branches and sections to discuss the matter. But Lenin’s reply failed to answer Pankhurst’s question adequately; a question which in essence expressed fears about the effects of fudging of the distinction between 2nd and 3rd International parties, and raised fears about the substitutionism inherent in Lenin’s argument i.e. substituting the Labour Party for the Communist Party as a quick fix; a quick way to influence the masses.

Lenin’s remarks show that he saw the Labour Party as predominantly a trade union body, with affiliation offering the new communist party in Britain the chance to influence the vast mass of workers, which he mistakenly saw as organised in the Labour Party. This is a point of view he emphasised further in the "Theses on The Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International" where he suggested that the Communist groups of Britain should join the Labour Party while it preserved its character of a federation of all trade union organisations of the working class. In the Speech on the role of the Communist Party he said "with regard to the British Labour Party, it is simply a matter of collaboration between the advanced minority of the British workers and their vast majority" and he added that "we categorically insist on the British Communists serving as a link between the Party, that is, the minority of the working class, and the rest of the workers". Lenin’s argument about the minority linking up with the majority is a formula which is far better applied in the trade union organisations themselves, and it is interesting that in the rather ambiguous passage which follows, Lenin’s clarifies that his policy is conditional, and is to be pursued until "it is refuted that the British Labour Party consists of proletarians".

In fact the figure for Labour party membership of four million was accurate on paper but it is important to consider that the major portion of this figure was trade unionists, paying the political levy. This levy consisted of an automatic deduction from trade-union dues towards Labour Party funds, which also conferred automatic membership of the Labour Party on those who paid it. It is telling in this respect to note that in 1927 the Conservatives introduced a new law where trade-union members instead of ’contracting-out’ if they wished not to contribute to the Labour party had instead to ’contract-in’ if they did wish to. The result: the paying trade-union membership of the Labour Party almost halved! Whilst indifference had previously prevented workers ’contracting-out’ in the same way indifference prevented workers from ’contracting-in’!

Again addressing Pankhurst, and Gallagher (1) too, another opposer of affiliation, Lenin stated:

"They cannot refute the fact that, in the ranks of the Labour Party, the British Socialist Party enjoys sufficient freedom to write that certain leaders of the Labour Party are traitors; that these old leaders represent the interests of the bourgeoisie; that they are agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement. They cannot deny this because it is the absolute truth. When Communists enjoy such freedom, it is their duty to join the Labour Party".

This line follows from the first assumption: that there are workers in the LP who might be won over to communism by hearing the coherent criticisms of the Labour Leaders. In practice this would consist of denouncing the leaders in the branch meetings and in Labour Party congresses, rather than in the workplace. In fact, in these settings any criticisms would inevitably be absorbed into debates about Labour Party policy, and rather than drawing workers to the Communist Party, they would instead instil in them illusions about the possibility of changing the Labour Party into a revolutionary instrument to replace the Communist Party.

Herein lies the real error in Lenin’s prescription: he thought agitating in the Labour Party was in some way equivalent to agitating in the trade unions. He confused the Labour Party with the trade unions. At the same time though he was keen to refute the notion that the Labour Party was the "political department of the trade unions". He explained that the Communist party was the party of the workers in the trade unions. Now whilst of course this is true in terms of communism being the final logical outcome of workers’ economic struggles, the Labour Party is nevertheless still the "political expression of the trade unions" in another sense: it is the political expression of the trade union bureaucracy and Labour aristocracy. This is what the Left in Britain was getting at, and why they were so opposed to joining the Labour Party.

Lenin was in any case wrong about how easy it would be to accomplish affiliation. At the first meeting of the provisional executive of the new CPGB, the proposal that the Labour Party should simply be informed that the BSP had changed its name was turned down; the new Communist party was prepared to court rejection by adopting an uncompromising approach. And despite Lenin seeing the LP as: "a highly original type of party... it allows sufficient freedom to all affiliated political parties", in fact, by 1920 the Labour Party had moved away from its previous less rigid structure and was fast becoming a plain social-democratic party, with a very rigid constitution which specifically ruled out illegal and revolutionary action, and only permitted exactly the amount of flexibility needed to accommodate the viewpoints of the different sections of the bourgeois labour aristocracy. In Lenin’s speeches [at the 2nd Congress] there was no mention of the fact that in 1918 the Labour Party’s constitution had been drastically changed, that the hitherto federal structure had been replaced by a much more tightly controlled set-up (which in 1932 would eventually compel even the mildly leftish ILP to disaffiliate).

In his speech on the role of the Communist Party at the 2nd Congress Lenin was at great pains to point out energetically that "We must say frankly that the party of the Communists can join the Labour Party only on condition that it preserves full freedom of criticism and is able to conduct its own policy. This is of supreme importance".

In the February, 1920 issue of The Socialist, the organ of the Socialist Labour Party, J. T. Murphy (2) outlined his ’Ten Points’ countering arguments for affiliating to the Labour Party. One of these points consisted of the bald statement that the federalism of the Labour Party was in any case an anathema to Communist principles. Certainly we can say that Lenin wasn’t recommending federalism as an internal structure for the communist party itself, but nevertheless, by urging the CP to join a Labour Party which was allegedly a federation he was paving the way, especially for those who were prepared to take his remarks out of context, to a very compromised interpretation of the policy of the united front in the years to come.

It is no wonder then that many of Murphy’s points which criticise the policy of affiliation can serve equally well as a criticism of the united front policy. Thus against those who thought that affiliation would provide a fine opportunity to influence the Labour party through participating in its annual conferences and getting socialist resolutions passed, Murphy replied: "This implies that the Communist Party is either intent on capturing the Labour Party or passing revolutionary resolutions for the reactionaries to carry out. If the first, the policy is fundamentally wrong because the Labour party, in composition and form, is not a revolutionary organisation; its members are neither communists nor revolutionaries, and it is structurally incapable of mobilising the masses for revolutionary action. It is a product of capitalism, and is to be used only for the maintenance of capitalism. If the second, then the masses are betrayed and their revolutionary fervour used to strengthen the forces of reaction. This proposition also indicates that the BSP does not clearly understand the functions of a communist party in the struggle for power. It is evidently content to be a spur to another party for whose actions it refuses responsibility instead of being a strong revolutionary party leading the masses into action". Blindly applying Lenin’s tactics, given that the original justification for them is false, indeed proved to be very damaging to the independence of the Communist Party, and ended up blurring the differences between revolutionary marxism and reformism.

Feelings ran very high in the period immediately before the formation of the CPGB in 1920, and the left in Britain, who had had first hand experience of the opportunism of the Labour Party, warned Lenin of the damaging affects of pursuing the line of affiliation, but their assertions received a flat denial: "Comrade Gallacher is wrong in asserting that by affiliation to the Labour Party we shall repel the best elements among the British workers," claimed Lenin, "We must test this by experience." And so it was, with disastrous consequences. It alienated the overwhelming majority of potential members. The SLP, in the forefront of the organisations wanting regroupment, immediately withdrew from negotiations. The WSF [Pankhurst’s group] also stood aloof, as did most of the shop stewards, including the Scottish Workers’ Committee. And although these groups joined the party the following year, by this time the damage was effectively done.

A large section of the Left in Britain was not only opposed to affiliation to the Labour Party but to the entire policy of parliamentarism. But Lenin’s assumption that the parliamentary tactic would be as relevant for British workers – dulled by decades of participation in Parliament – as it had proved to be for Russian workers in the newly formed and highly volatile Duma, won the day in the debates at the 2nd Congress, with the Italian abstentionists taking the rostrum to speak against the policy. This is a subject which merits a separate treatment (but see the "The Italian Left and the Communist International" in this issue), suffice it to say that the Abstentionists main contention was that electoral activity tends to exclude revolutionary organisation, which slowly becomes marginalised as illusions of achieving gains for the proletariat through parliament slowly, but inevitably, gain ground. And even the use of Parliament as a propaganda platform is a very shaky one: what is the point of making stirring speeches in Parliament to the bourgeoisie? And why rely on the bourgeois press to report stirring revolutionary speeches made by parliamentary communists? Surely the Communist party should rely on its own means of information and propaganda.

Lenin’s other rationales for joining the Labour Party build from the mistaken assumption that there was a trade-union membership there to be influenced; and a federal structure to exploit to carry out this aim. It is in this context that he urged the CPGB to affiliate and criticise the labour Party leaders. Thus Murphy’s rebuttal of the use of the Labour Party as a public Platform is particularly relevant when he points out that: ’The workers are always accessible in the workshops, the streets, the unions, and the creation of an independent communist platform is better than going cap in hand to the Labour Party for a hearing’ (...) ’The Labour Party is not the working class organised as a class, but the political reflection of the trade union bureaucracy and the petty bourgeoisie. Contact with the working class is not, and never has been, dependent upon contact with the Labour Party’.

Murphy’s 10th point (we have not included them all, as some address some very arcane ideas... like the Labour Party being equivalent to a soviet!) addressed the argument of those who favoured affiliation as a temporary tactic. To them he replied that sudden shifts of policy were liable to confuse and lessen the confidence of the masses in the Communist Party. Perhaps this is the most damning of all criticisms of affiliation since confusing the workers’ is in the interests of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie only.

There is in any case an important rider clause to Lenin’s statements about affiliation to the Labour Party made at the 2nd Congress. "Let the Thomases and other social-traitors, whom you have called by that name, expel you. That will have an excellent effect upon the mass of the British workers". And "If the British Communist Party starts by acting in a revolutionary manner in the Labour Party, and if the Hendersons are obliged to expel this party, that will be a great victory for the communist and revolutionary working-class movement in Britain". Affiliation then was no Sacred Cow for Lenin. It could be sacrificed if the needs of the class and the Communist party dictated it.

Thus clearly Lenin did not want to risk any confusion of the policies of the Communist party with the other currents which sheltered under the ’federal’ umbrella of the labour Party; a demarcation which, we will repeat, even the ILP would eventually be unable to achieve within the confines of the Labour Party.

The spirit of Lenin’s arguments about the ’Hendersons’ being obliged to expel a communist party ’acting in a revolutionary way’ were in fact taken on board to a certain extent by left-wingers in the party. Surely the refusal by the Labour Party to allow the CPGB to affiliate was in all important respects equivalent to an expulsion; therefore the CP could court rejection by presenting a forthright declaration of communist principles which would ensure that the door would be slammed in their face? This would have the advantage of preventing any necessity of ’bending’ communist principles in order to make the CP really acceptable to the the Labour Party. But if this was the original intent that motivated the drafters of the first application for affiliation (as we have seen, the policy of just informing the Labour Party that the BSP had changed its name to the CPGB was rejected), the policy of emphasising the differences between the LP and the CP was slowly eroded in pursuit of the united front policy.

This policy, adopted towards the end of 1921, and justified on the grounds that having communist parties alone wasn’t enough to achieve victory since it was necessary to conquer the masses, and in order to conquer the masses the influence of the social-democrats must be fought on the terrain of demands which are understood by all workers, took only a year to evolve into a policy of support for so- called "Workers’ Governments", a policy which was propounded at the 4th Congress at the end of 1922. The Italian Left was damning in its criticism of this policy, and in the ’Draft Theses’ presented to the Congress of the Italian Communist Party, held in exile at Lyon in 1926, its spokesman asserted the following in the section: Tactical Questions up to the Vth Congress.

In the resolution of the tactical problems posed by the situations mentioned earlier in the international field, mistakes have been made, generally analogous to the organizational ones, which derive from the claim of being able to deduce everything from the problems dealt with by the Russian Communist party in the past.

The united front tactic mustn’t be understood as a political coalition with other so-called workers’ parties, but as a utilization of the spontaneous demands which arise from situations in order to increase the communist party’s influence on the masses without compromising its autonomous position.

The basis for the United Front must therefore be sought in those proletarian organizations which workers join because of their social position and independently of their political faith or affiliation to an organized party. This has the double purpose, firstly, of not in any way preventing communists from criticising other parties, or gradually organizing new elements, originally dependent on these latter, into the ranks of the communist party’s own framework; and secondly, it ensures that the party will be understood by the masses when it eventually calls on them to mobilize behind its programme and under its exclusive direction.

Experience has shown us many times that the only way of ensuring that the united front is applied in a revolutionary way is by rejecting the system of political coalitions, permanent or transitory, and of committees to direct the struggle which include representatives of different political parties, and also that of negotiations, proposals for common action and open letters to other parties by the communist party.

Experience has shown these methods to be fruitless, and the abuses to which they have been put have nullified any initial effect they might have had.

The political united front which is based on the central demand of the seizure of the state ends up as the tactic of the "workers’ government". Here we not only have an erroneous tactic, but a blatant contradiction of the principles of communism. Once the party launches a watchword that backs the assumption of power by the proletariat through the representative organisms of the bourgeois state apparatus, or even if it just refrains from explicitly excluding such an eventuality, then the communist programme is abandoned and denied, not only because of the inevitable bad repercussions of such a move on proletarian ideology, but in the very ideological formulation which the party is enunciating and supporting. The revision which the 5th Congress made to this tactic, after the German defeat, hasn’t proved satisfactory, and the latest developments in the realm of tactical experimentation justify calls for the abandonment of even the expression: "workers’ government".

As far as the central problem of the state is concerned, the party can only issue the call for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for there is no other "workers’ government".

This latter watchword leads to opportunism, and to opportunism alone: that is, to supporting, or even participating in, self-styled ’pro-worker’ governments of the bourgeois class.

None of this is in the least contradicts the slogan: ’All Power to the Soviets’ and to soviet type organisms (representative bodies elected by workers) even when opportunist parties predominate in them. These parties oppose the assumption of power by proletarian organs, since this is precisely the proletarian dictatorship (exclusion of non-workers from the elective organs and power) which the communist party alone will be able to accomplish.

We don’t need to spell out here the formula of the dictatorship of the proletariat with its one and only synonym, namely: ’the government of the communist party’.

In fact, even before the 4th Congress had officially endorsed the "Workers’ Government" policy, the 1st Plenum on March 4th 1922 issued its ’Resolution on the English Question’ and stated "The Enlarged Executive invites the CPGB to request affiliation to the Labour Party so that it can be in a position to contribute to the political unity of the working class, working specially in view of the next elections to oppose to the coalition of the bourgeoisie a workers’ government. Whilst requesting affiliation to the Labour Party, the CPGB will nevertheless retain complete freedom of propaganda. With the same aim, though taking the latter reservation into account, the CPGB is invited to support the Labour Party at the general elections". The ’political unity’ cited as the reason for this tactic soon proved to be heavily weighted towards a reformist unity rather than a communist unity; and the ’separate’ propaganda of the communists nevertheless simply appeared to workers as expressing a left-wing position within a broad reformist alliance. Now whatever justifications had been made for affiliation before became confused with that of specifically trying to forge alliances with the labourites and to support their Governments.

In 1924, Gallacher (now a fervent pro-Moscow man) reassuringly explained: "The Communist Party does not attack the Labour Party. The Communist Party strives all the time to make the Labour Party a useful organ of the workers in the struggle against capital". And Challinor(3) notes: "At the 1922 general election, when Gallacher unsuccessfully stood at Dundee, he gratefully received the assistance of prominent left-reformist politicians and trade unionists. Lieutenant-Colonel [!] L’Estrange Malone MP took the process of accommodation a stage farther. ’There are still a few differences between the Communist Party and the Labour Party,’ he declared. ’I am glad to realise, however, that this will soon be settled by affiliation’".

The failure to secure affiliation led the CPGB to take the still more disastrous option of trying to influence Labour Party policies by means of individual party members; for until revisions of the Labour Party constitution were introduced, nothing stopped CPers from being individual members of the Labour Party. Thus: "at the 1923 Labour Party conference there were 430 communist delegates. In the December 1923 general election, the CP put forward nine candidates, seven of whom stood under the Labour Party banner. Indeed, the party even had two members of Parliament, Sallatvala and J.T. Walton Newbold, returned as Labour MPs" (Challinor). It is difficult to overestimate the damage that must have been wreaked on the newly founded Communist Party by pursuing such a policy. Murphy, even though he supported ’revolutionary Parliamentarism’, gave a stinging rebuke [in 1920] to those who defended affiliation on the basis that it might provide the chance for electing Communist MPs on the Labour Party ticket: ’This is sheer parliamentary vote-catching opportunism and a repudiation of independent political action. It is also confusing the masses’. If the masses were likely to be confused by a Communist party formally affiliated to the Labour Party indulging in such measures, how much more confusing it must have been to have individual communist party members, disguised as Labour party members, doing the same thing.

Meanwhile Individual communists in the Labour Party tried to recruit Labour Party members to communism in the setting of the Labour party branches, which in fact were generally tiny cliques, preoccupied with elections, not centres of mass struggle involving large number of workers. In the words of Challinor: "To enter their dismal committee rooms and become involved in the routine of electoral intrigue would merely waste revolutionaries’ valuable time and energy, which could be better spent elsewhere".

The Italian Left soon found itself alone in rejecting the united front tactic, and with it the policy of affiliation. Even after the General Strike, Trotsky, despite articulating a number of damning criticisms against the Comintern directives during the strike (see ’Stalinism’s Victory over the Oppositions’ in this issue) remained preoccupied with the affiliation tactic and failed to realise the part it had played in weakening the development of a resolute and independent communist Party. Thus in the Resolution on the General Strike presented to the Central Control Commission joint Plenum in July 1926, Trotsky wrote: "The Comintern’s tactics, which were worked out in all essentials under Vladimir Ilyichs’ leadership, ought to remain hard and fast". He went on to enumerate three main planks of this policy, and cited the second as being "The necessity for British Communists to enter the Labour Party and to fight against being expelled from that organisation, since the experience of the past five years fully confirms what Lenin said on this question at the Second World Congress of the Comintern and in Left-wing Communism: an infantile Disorder". In the light of the above, we find ourselves unable to agree.

The CPGB continued to pursue the policy of affiliation and humiliate itself at a number of meetings with the Labour Party where the latter insistently pointed out that joining the Labour Party meant observing the Labour Party constitution and that the communists loyalty towards it would be expected; a constitution diametrically opposed to the Communist programme and one which effectively negated it. The policy of the communist delegation at the 2nd meeting on affiliation at December 1921 in fact adopted the only viable way around such a serious obstacle: it attempted to convert the Labour Party delegation to communism before the end of the meeting! By 1925 however the Trade unions were prevented from electing CP members as delegates to Labour Party meetings, and eventually a bored Labour Party tired of the unwanted attentions of the CPGB and in 1933 simply proscribe organisations including communist members. But even this would not put a stop to the affiliation tactic which still finds considerable support amongst various "left-wing" groups today, which, quoting Trotsky quoting Lenin, instead of quoting Lenin himself, still greatly enhance the importance and prestige of the Labour Party in the eyes of present day workers by flattering that organisation through resorting to the lowest and most ridiculous measures to ’penetrate’ it.

The views of the Workers’ Socialist Federation, and their representative Sylvia Pankhurst, strongly opposed to both parliamentarism and the policy of affiliation, are usually consigned to footnotes when these matters are discussed. The final word is invariably left to Lenin. We will redress the balance for once and let Pankhurst conclude our exposition with some passages from an article, written before the formation of the CPGB, in the WSF paper Workers’ Dreadnought (February 21, 1920) entitled ’Towards a Communist Party’.

"The social patriotic parties of reform, like the British Labour Party, are everywhere aiding the capitalists to maintain the capitalist system; to prevent it from breaking down under the shock which the Great War has caused it, and the growing influence of the Russian Revolution. The bourgeois social patriotic parties, whether they call themselves Labour or Socialist, are everywhere working against the Communist revolution, and they are more dangerous to it than the aggressive capitalists because the reforms they seek to introduce may keep the capitalist regime going for some time to come. When the social patriotic reformists come into power, they fight to stave off the workers’ revolution with as strong a determination as that displayed by the capitalists, and more effectively, because they understand the methods and tactics and something of the idealism of the working class.

"The British Labour Party, like the social patriotic organisations of other countries, will, in the natural development of society, inevitably come into power. It is for the Communists to build up the forces that will overthrow the social patriots, and in this country we must not delay or falter in that work.

"We must not dissipate our energy in adding to the strength of the Labour Party; its rise to power is inevitable. We must concentrate on making a Communist Movement that will vanquish it.

"The Labour Party will soon be forming a Government; the revolutionary opposition must make ready to attack it".



(1) William Gallacher: member of the BSP, syndicalist and chairman of the shop stewards organisation, the Clyde Workers’ Committee. Gallacher was one of the main opponents of affiliation and the parliamentary tactic until he underwent a no-holds-barred conversion after meeting Lenin in 1920. A fellow shop steward, Harry McShane, reports in his autobiography No Mean Fighter how surprised everybody was when Gallacher, not long back from the meeting with Lenin, appeared at a meeting called by John McLean where he "jumped up (...) and pointed out all the anti-parliamentarians, and said that none of them was eligible to join the Communist Party!". The slippery slope in Gallacher’s case would be particularly steep. He would become a loyal slave of Moscow, becoming the first MP to be elected as a communist in 1935, and eventually receive his promotion to the presidentship of the CPGB in 1956.

(2) J. T. Murphy: Active in the pre-war syndicalist movement. A leader of the Sheffield shop stewards, and regarded as the theorist of the whole movement. Joined the Socialist Labour Party in 1917 and as a member of its executive committee was actively involved in the Communist unity negotiations which began in 1919. Although originally one of the most articulate opposers of the policy of affiliation, by 1925 he had become a fervent stalinist and anti-Trotskyite. He left the party in 1932 and joined a centrist organisation... in the Labour Party.

(3) The Origins of British Bolshevism, by Raymond Challinor.















STALINISM’S VICTORY OVER THE OPPOSITIONS

Translated from ’Appunti per la storia della sinistra’ (notes on the History of the Left) in our Italian review Comunismo, no. 26. This part of the ’Appunti’ precedes the part on ’The battle against the Destruction of the Party’, also translated from Comunismo, which appears in Communist Left no.8.



The meeting of the 6th Executive Committee in 1926 was the last occasion in which the voice of the Italian Left was heard within the International. Within a year, the Italian left, along with all other opposition currents, had been expelled from the International. From that moment on, membership of the Comintern was conditional on accepting the "theory of socialism in one country", adding up to a clear departure from the very programmatic principles on which the International had been constituted, even though, as Trotsky pointed out, the "official adoption of socialism in one country signified the theoretical sanction to changes that had already taken place".

It was during this world congress that the Italian Left said that it was necessary for the parties belonging to the International to rush to the aid of the Russian Party and repay it for all the theoretical and political contributions it had made to the other parties. In order to make their contribution, the Italian left asserted that the Russian Question had to be placed on the International’s agenda of discussions.

But the truth was it was absolutely impossible for the International sections to make this essential contribution. In 1926, thanks partly to the "Bolshevisation" which Zinoviev brought about at the 5th Congress in 1924, the leading cadres of all the parties had been radically altered. The Comintern’s enslavement to the Russian State was now a fait accompli. The communist parties of the various nations, instead of moving towards the one genuine objective of the revolutionary struggle against their own capitalisms, were manoeuvred, as pawns in Russia’s diplomatic game with the other powers, into making the most bankrupt compromises whenever required with the forces of social-democratic opportunism and the bourgeoisie.

A clear example of this type of politics is the "Anglo-Russian Committee".

The 5th Comintern Congress, and 3rd Profintern Congress, had proposed that the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) be merged with the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) by way of a unity Congress. As we will see, the Italian Left was definitely opposed to this proposal. It was one thing to struggle for trade- union unity on a national scale, but quite another to propose fusions with the IFTU, which wasn’t a proletarian organisation, but a bourgeois organisation linked to the International Labour Office and the League of Nations; in short, the IFTU was an organisation which the proletariat would never be able to win over to its cause.

A further step was taken at the 6th Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) with the ratification of the resolution elaborated by the organisational conference "on the organisation and structure of the communist fractions in the trade unions". This resolution asserted that the communist fractions should be formed in all unions "within the bounds of the statutes and decisions of the respective unions". It was also asserted that "if unions of different tendencies (Red, Amsterdam’s, syndicalists) existed in the same sector, it was necessary to form a fraction in each organisation according to its particular structure and – it continues – it is necessary to organise fractions even in Christian, Liberal, Fascist and syndicalist unions". It was also laid down that the fraction was obliged to carry out its activity strictly on a trade-unionist level with "the task of entering into contact with the supporters of the trade-union opposition who aren’t in the communist party". The line to follow, the political directives, would be decided by the leading organs of the Party and them alone: the fractions could "take up positions only regarding problems in their own particular sphere of activity".

What this all meant was simply the death of communist activity in the trade-unions. It not only prevented comrades working in the trade-union organisations from engaging in any kind of political activity inside class organisations, but it ordered them to carry out a type of trade-union activity which both remained within the bounds of the statutes, and was compatible with the decisions of the respective unions. When we consider that communists were also supposed to join Liberal, Christian and Fascist unions, such directives can only be considered as a total disarmament of the working class.

The IFTU Council turned down Moscow’s proposal after defining it as an "impractical and damaging fantasy". But whilst this prevented the merger on a general level, nevertheless, after a year or so of contacts with Purcell, president of the TUC, representatives of the Russian and British unions met together in London in April 1925. At this meeting a joint committee was formed. The achievement of this "Anglo-Russian Committee" was presented by Zinoviev at the 14th CPSU Congress