Researching into State's Strikebreaking Plans

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NUPE says:

NOW sưts _ elow PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL The small bimonthly journal State Research regularly contains material which Socialist Press readers will find of great interest.

As an independent group, State ' Research systematically gathers and publishes information on developments in the policy of the state, especially in the areas of law, policing and the military.

It seeks to examine links between these areas and the operations of the ruling class.

The paper itself is well researched, presenting details of the regulations and laws under which military and police intervention into strikes take place, the organisational arrangements made by the state and an outline history of recent uses of the state machinery against strikes.

There are four major weaknesses of the report.

It fails to raise appropriate demands to mobilise action against the use of the state machinery against strikers. •It fails to take account of the limits of constitutional and democratic objections to the use of state power by the ruling class.

It fails also to give any reason for the growth in the use THE BATTLE FOR TROTSKYISM This is second edition of the documents of the opposition inside the WRP which was expelled and formed the Workers Socialist League in December 1974.

Available, price £2.70 including postage, from 1HR. of state powers against strikers by governments of both Labour and Conservative parties.

And, fourthly, it fails to account adequately for the limited response by the labour movement to the use of state powers in strikes.

Newsline, the daily paper of the erstwhile Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party, reprinted the State Research document in its entirety and without political comment.

Limitations

Certainly it is valuable to reprint and promote material of this kind,but it cannot be proper for a party claiming to offer revolutionary leadership to limit itself to reprinting material of such importance without drawing attention to its political limitations.

Despite these serious reservations the publication of the State Research document is to be welcomed as a valuable summary of current knowledge in this increasingly important area.

One of the recurrent themes of State Research is the increasing pace of preparation of the state machinery of repression.

One indication of this accel eration is in the pattern of use LOW of emergency powers.

Emergency powers in relation to industrial disputes have been used more frequently since 1970 than in their entire previous history since the 1920 Act which first created them.

Supplies

The original 1920 Emergency Powers Act, which itself enshrined previously adopted wartime regulations, has been used on eleven occasion.

It empowers the government to use the military in industrial disputes if 'the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel or light, or the means of locomotion' are at risk.

Only on seven out of the eleven occasions have troops actually been used.

The 1920 Act requires the approval of Parliament.

The 1964 Emergency Powers Act gives power to the Defence Council (a body in which ministers are outnumbered by the military and civil service) to bring out the troops, with no reference to Parliament, and apestenty as hearte when RAF tankers were driven through the picket lines) not even a public announcement of having invoked the Act. Callagiian auring jiremen's sirule has rehearsed strike-breaking role The 1964 Act was also used against the Tower Hamlets dustmen in 1970, the Glasgow firemen in 1973 and the Glasgow dustmen in 1975.

It was also the decisive factor in breaking the 1977/8 firemen's national strike.

There is no doubt that the use of troops against the firemen represented a major development in the crisis.

21,000 troops were used, covering the whole of the country. State Research argues that the use of troops under the 1964 Act was illegal, because Army Regulations under the Act only allow 'limited' and local' operations to be undertaken.

Parliament

When the 1964 Act was passed, it was made clear in debate that national operations would continue to require Parliamentary approval under the old 1920 Act procedures. The gap in Army Regulations seems to confirm this.

However, a full scale parliamentary debate would have piled enormous pressure on the Labour 'left' , who were in any case forced into a token act oi revolt, before throwing their efforts behind the massive sellout operation.

Certainly the Defence Council wasted no time in amending Army Regulations to legitimise future operations under the 1964 Act.

It is probably at this point that the WSL differs most seriously in its method from that of State Research (and with the WRP, to the extent that the WRP can any longer be said to have any method beyond that of the universal lickspittle to every reactionary dictator in the Leadership crisis We saw, and still see, the firemen's strike, and the deep crisis associated with it, not as a problem of technical preparation but as a problem of leadership in the working class.

We placed demands on the Labour left' to kick out the Callaghan leadership which had sent in the troops, and on the TUC leadership to bring forward other wage claims, pal ricularly for NUM and JPE members, so that a campi aign which would be too big for the state to control could begin.

We fought to broaden the base of the strike through the formation of local councils of action drawing delegations from working class trade union and political organisations.

It is primarily a consequence of the failures and treachery of the workers' leadership that the firemen's strike was defeated and the state proceeded to deepen its plans and prepartions for attacks on the workers.

Since December 1978 troops have been trained in a series of skills which can only be used to break strikes-tanker driving, water engineering, ambulance operation etc.

The fruits of this preparation were shown in the military strike breaking in the ambulance strikes and industrial civil service strikes of this year, and the standby of troops during the tanker strike.

The military preparation has gone hand in hand with the development of an administrative machinery, at national, regional and local levels.

While a good deal of work remains to be done in this area, it is emerging that at local levels, councils' chief officers participate in emergency powers activity over the heads of elected councillors.

No checks The State Research paper also deals with the use of police against strikes, which is less well documented because there are apparently no constitutional checks at all.

Physical attacks against pickets, and systematic harass ment by police are on the increase, as everyone who has been on strike in the last three years will confirm.

Again, the Workers Socialist League would focus attention not on the technical aspects of police operations (although we do not deny the importance of studying these) but on the role of trade union leaderships in reaching agreements with the police that limit the size of pickets and lead to desperation or demoralisation by the strikers.

The strikes at Grunwicks and Garners set the pattern for these methods and allowed the police to develop them.

A mass campaign will be needed to force the TUC and the Labour Party into action to defend workers' rights.

PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL Picketi This will only be achieved over the dead bodies of the present leaderships.

At some stage it will be necessary for the State Researchers to explain where all their studies of the state have led, and what political conclusions they draw.

Some of these weaknesses are apparent in their most recent background paper on strikes, the police and the military.

Problems

Although we would certainly recommend the journal to all Socialist Press readers it needs to be pointed out that independent groups outside a revolutionary party present certain problems.

A kind of authority can build up in a specialised journal on the basis of the quality of its research.

Inevitably there will arise occasions when the group needs to make explicit political statements and will utilise as political authority an authority which is academic or technical.

Sometimes this procedure is consciously developed -the most important case in point being the Stalinist-controlled Labour Research, which undeniably provides a valuable service to large numbers of trade union branches.

From time to time however it is obliged to put forward the CP party line, which it does without acknowledgement of any boundary between investigative journalism and propaganda.

(Regular readers of Labour Research were puzzled in December 1978 to read a straight piece of extreme right wing propaganda under the authorship of Air Vice Marshall Bennett, the patron of the British League of Rights.

This was published as part of an out of court settlement in a libel action against Labour Research. The readers were never given any explanation!)

No such problems have arisen in the case of State Research so far.

However E.P. Thompson has made use of State Research as a platform for his own antiLeninist view of the state and democratic struggles.

The latest issue of State Research should be in the possession of every revolutionary worker and the information in it should be used in as many union meetings and Labour Party branches as possible in the coming months.

By Ernie Stubbir

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Balur PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report