1930s: Unemployment Fight Marches Down Blind Alley

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by most workers.

While both the TUC and the Labour Party stood back wringing their hands in anguish, the National Unemployed Workers Movement took to the streets, mobilising hundreds of thousands.

Wal Hannington, one of its leaders, jailed many times for his militant organising of the unemployed, spelled out many times the way in which unemployment was used to smash the solidarity of the working class,: drive down wages and demoralise workers. - FOr example, criticising the various voluntary' labour schemes and work camps of the time he pointed out:

Hunger March "1. That it distracts the unemployed from organised struggle against the government for better standards and conditions;

2. That it encourages the idea of work without wages, and thereby undermines the spirit of trade unionism.

3. That it helps the government to escape its responsibilities for providing work under normal conditions for the unemployed;

4. That it encourages the idea that unemployment is a subject for chanty; and 5. That to the extent that it keeps the unemployed quiet and free from militant leadership it assists the government in carrying through new attacks their standards and rights » "Pon So, far so good. But for Hannington, a member of the Communist and the ane NUWM the leadership of the answer remained confined to protest.

So the Hunger March of 1932, which brough 100,000 onto was organised present a petition to ment demanding the abolition of the means test.

And it was followed by ... more Hunger Marches, more petitions and more protests-all designed to win concessions and reforms from a capitalist class who were prepared (as they did in Germany) to plunge into the deepest barbarism to solve the crisis of their bankrupt system.

His failure to begin from an understanding of the capitalist Unemployed i crisis and the in to solve it excel of the worl Hannington to !

"I am cont much can be d capitalism rem to mitigate t relieving the providing empl Thus, CP member ber of... trading e Like the m its ludicrous F 80s' campaign left' with its omic Stratin i men on Waterloo Bridge lability of capital pt at the expense king class • led say: vinced that very lone, even whilst lains, effectively he problem by distress and oyment." annington the came an advocate states! odern TUC, with forward Into the and the Labour Alternative EconHannington saw ¡erms of a better organised capitalism. Later, he thought, would come socialism.

In this way, the massive movement of the unemployed of the 1930s was reduced to a pressure group rather than becoming, in alliance with the employed, a challenge to the whole existence of the bourgeois state and its parasitic ruling class.

A number of absolutely correct demands were raised by the NUWM: for trade union rates for all work; for spending on a programme of usetul public works to genuinely employ the unemployed; for the abolition of the work camps and the ing of the means test.

But they were all made into mere pleas for mercy, because they were separated from a parallel struggle for workers' management and control of In massive industries like steel and ship-building, the fight for workers' control was posed time and time again (notably at the Palmers shipyard on the Tyne which was closed by government edict and barred from production for 30 years.

But the absence of a revolutionary workers leadershipwhich could unite workers behind class demands which began from the immediate needs of those workers-opened the door to defeat.

It was such defeated groups of workers who then became the ragged veterans of the Jarrow March.

Today we need to learn from such experiences. Already we can see the first steps through the YOPs and Manpower Services schemes towards unpaid, unorganised labour. And, as in the 1930s, the TUC has collaborated with these first attacks.

At the same time, in the interest of capitalist 'viability? union leaders have hundreds of thousands of jobs down the river.

But unlike the 1930s, the working class today has not suffered a massive historic defeat comparable to that of 1926.

The willingness of workers to fight if given even a meagre lead has been demonstrated time and time again-the steel strike being just one example.

What is required this time, however, is not protests but a programme which challenges the rights of the bosses to drive workers onto the dole, slash their living standards and increase exploitation.

That means fighting for every last job; it means demanding the opening to workers' committees of the books of those firms who scream the need for viability'; it means exposing the profiteering of bankers, suppliers and contractors; and it means ending the secrecy of the employers' dealings and exposing the bankruptcy of their rotten profit system. It means fighting closure with occupations to prevent the break up of plant and the transfer of equipment, and campaigning for supporting strikes and demanding the union leaders organise support, for those in occupațion.

YOPS

It means organising workers' control of supplies and distribution within industries where closures and redundancies are threatened while fighting in the individual workplace for work-sharing on full pay.

At the same time, in order to unite employed and unemployed we have to begin to build the mass organisatión of the unemployed, forcing unions like the TGWU and GMU to give the unemployed full trade union rights.

The YOPs and MSC schemes must be unionised as the basis for a co-ordinated fight of all layers of the labour movement for full trade union rates on such schemes coupled with the demand that the TUC immediately take up that fight and outlaw the rogue profiteers who use YOPs schemes as cheap sources of labour.

Public Works Labour councils should be called on to make a stand against 'unemployment by extending direct labour organisations and initiating programmes of useful public works in defiance of the Tory barons of big business.

Unemployed workers, whether • through unemployed workers' unions or through their own trade union branches must be involved in every struggle to defend jobs.

In that way a real unity of employed and unemployed in struggle can be forged. Unemployed workers unions can play a vital role in defeating schemes for voluntary redundancies because they present in real, harsh terms the realities of the alternatives.

Finally, if we are to learn the crucial lesson of the 1930s it is necessary to say here and now, capitalism has nothine to offer the working class.

There are no reforms left in the bag to hand out. Capitalism in crisis can onlv attack the working class, and capitalism is a system of crisis.

Therefore, the task in each struegle to drive back the attacks of the ruling class is to prepare the way for the building of genuine organs of workers' control and power.

State Power Factory committees and local councils of action which unite all sections of the labour movement can become: the sotarhead of the strugele to defend the indedendent interests of the working class by challenaine the richt of the bosses to retain state dower.

For, ultimately, what unites the emploved and unemployed is the fight for a workers government, a government based directly on the organisations of the workine class.

But for that we need a prorramme not protests. Item 1 on that programme should be the bringing down of this Tory