[XRILOAMATED SOCIETY OF ENGINEERS, MACHINISTS, HILLNRIGHTS, of one…]

Scan page 6

XRILOAMATED SOCIETY OF ENGINEERS, MACHINISTS, HILLNRIGHTS, of one of the 'new model unions which organised the skilled trades. Amalgamated Society of Engineers (1851): a membership certifiIn the British Leyland Body plant in Cowley, where the e the right wing leadership has been under heavy pressure from workers as they collaborate with management over speedup, and hold back a wages struggle on the annual wage review, the entire strategy of the right wing has been to attack minorities.

Every action by a group of workers against speed-up or in defenc of their conditions is taken to a mass meeting where they are label led a 'minority and voted down.

This of course is notconfined to Cowley. The right wing have developed the technique throughout the trade union movement.

The campaign against minorities begins with the employers, however, and is essentially an argument of capitalism. British Leyland preceded the victim isation in Cow.

cy with a prolonged campaign against minorities. But it finds its reflection in the actions of the lackeys of capitalism in the labour movement.

It is important to recognise that is not just the right wing and the employers who attack minorities. The revisionists of the IS and the IMG, through their 'rank and file positions, arrive at the same point. In the recent tuners' strike at Cowley for example - a dispute which very much reflected the strength and combativity of the working class - the IMG attacked the tuners for a "sectional dispute" (i.e. a minority) and criticised them for splitting the 'unity' of the plant. This attack came at a time when the only basis of any real unity was through full support for the tuners and through their victory, strengthe ning the whole plant.

Wilson uses the same terminology as the IMG in his attack on British Leyland workers on January 3rd, when he said: "We cannot afford any avoidable surge in production costs, which would work through relentlessly to household costs, caused either by thoughtless or by calculated sectional demands for higher living standards which are unrealistic in the vear or two ahead Today, therefore, as the working class moves into struggle against both the employers and their own social democratic and stalinist leaders, a clear understanding of th relationship of both the revolution. ary party (the advanced revolution. ary minority) and the advanced layer of the working class to the broad masses is crucial to the development of leadership.

RANK AND FILEISM

Rank and fileism means in practice the subordination of the advanced minority to the spontaneous movement of the working class as a whole. This is a centrist conception, wavering between open reformism and revolution, It prevents a clear understanding of the role of minorities and is thus in line with the requirements of the employers and the tasks posed for them by the crisis.

In attacking minorities in the inte rest of 'unity' the revisionists make the issue of unity into an abstract principle, a quantitative question -starting from agreement between the largest number of workers They are unable to understand the development of consciousness of the masses through contradiction and conflict between the advanced minority and the mass of workers, and within this struggle, the fight of the communist workers for programme through the building of the revolutionary party. Today the victimisation of militant workers is on the agenda as the employers are forced to implement speed-up, short time, redundancy and plant closures. They know that to carry out such attack against the resistance of the worKing class brings the prospect of all out confrontations, of sit-ins, or occupations and the struggie of workers to estat lish workers control over production and to defend jobs.

The employers also know that central to all these struggles is the influence of the most class conscious section of the working class - the advanced minority -which forms the focus of the resis.

tance around which less conscious layers rally, and around which, as spontaneous struggles emerge, the fight for leadershin and programme EMPLOYERS' MOVES Central to the employers strategy therefore, is the need to victimise this minority and attempt to isolate them from the broad layers of workers.

In this the ruling class are moving in a number of different ways.

Firstly by direct action of the employers in the factories, where strengthened by the emergence of the right wing in the Tory Party, the victimisation of individuals and ONITED Waittend da SMIZES, AND PATTERN MAKERS The cate small groups of workers has escalated dramatically with workers being driven to speed-up by the instant victimisation of any individual or group of workers who resists.

The employers also carry out well prepared victimisations of key workers in which they are pr pared for bitter conflict and to which they assige considerable resources, knowing that if they win, a blow is struck at the very foundation of shop floor organisation. The road would then be opened to speed-up and rationali sation. The victimisation struggl in Cowley last April (carried out with the collaboration of the trade union leaders) was an example of this.

The other line of attack is the direct use of the capitalist state through the law to deal with mir rities' as with the imprisonment of the Shrewshury builders picker and the arrest of Franco Caprino, the young Italian worker arrested under section 42 of the Immigration Act after being involved in picketing.

The main attack comes on the political minority, in particular those workers fighting for revolutionary leadership in the working class. Last Wednesday a motion was introduced into the House of Lords by Chalfont.

This motion called attention te "subversive and extremist elements in our society". Chalfont said his main concern is not the IRA: "My intention is to concentrate upon other forms of subversion and extremism which although not yet as spectacular as the indiscriminate violence of the IRA, nevertheless constitute, in my view, at least as sertous a threat to the security of this country? He went on to talk of the "disproportionate power wielded in the unions by members of the Communist party" and "ultra-left revoluttonary organisations," and of the increasing influence of extremists in the Parliamentary Yet all this is only a beginning the employers - a test run for much bigger struggles which must he fought if the capitalist class is to restore profitability to bankrupt industry at the expense of the wore king class, OPPRESSED CLASS Under capitalism production takes place only for profit - for surplus value extracted from workers in the production of commodities. Al wealth in society is produced by the working class. For this reason, and because the working class is an oppressed class, it is a revolutionary class and the only force which can end capitalism and establish socialiSm.

The working class has more than enough strength organised in the trade unions to remove capitalism form the stage of history, but of itself it cannot do it. The enormou economic strength of the working class requires political leadership if it is to be the instrument of revolutionary change. The lack of such leadership has held back the working class from all out struggle for power during successive capitalist crises. As Trotricy says: "Were the proletariat as a whole capable of Revolution would come simultaneously with the proletariat (Marxism and the Trade Unions, In the development of capitalism the working class first appeared as a force in history without any form of organisation. Yet even in the early stages impressive displays of working class unity took place, particularly on economic questions -such as wages, conditions and hours Under the harsh conditions of expanding capitalism, in the years 1800-1850, the repressions of the employers made building unions extremely difficult. Yet throughou this period small groups of workers dedicated themselves to the struggle for independent organisations for the working class, prepared to risk sentences of transportation (as in the case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1884) or jail and fines for organising against the employers.

These small groups, though a mino ity, reflected the historic strength of the working class as a whole, anc contained its most conscious elements. The employers attempted all kinds of tactics to defeat them. Yet the principles fought for by these first trade unionists laid the basis for a broader development of unioni sation following 1850.

The minority fought the first battles, marking out the way for the masses. Similarly the gains won from this initial organisation of skilled sections then constituted a base for the struggles to establish general sunions in the period from 1880 onwards.

Today, as in these early days, the strength of the majority is reflected through the determination of a class conscious minority to fight for principles and for class independence - which is the backbone of the trade union movement.

Again as Trotsky wrote:

"Would not a trade union mass organisation, not containing a class conscious minority, be a purely tormal and meaningless rganisation? (Marxism and th US 024.

Trotsky goes on: "For it is only through its class conscious minonty that the working class gradu:

ly becomes a factor in history."

CONFLICT To win this active minority to the revolutionary party means that the Marxist party must come into conflict with the historically rooted reformist and syr dicalist illusions deep-set in the thinking and daily activity of de union militants. Lenin in at is to be Done? dealt with Ute conflict between the revolutionary party and the daily trade union and "economic" struggles of the working class, which is dif ferent in its origin and content from scientific socialism: "We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic "For it is not enough to call ourselves the 'vanguard the advancea contingent; we must act in such a way that all the other contingents recognise and are obliged to admit that we are marching in the vanguard. "

Lenin in What Is To Be Done p. 83 [i.e. revolutionary consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all contries shows that the working class, in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism however, grew out of the philosophical, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the it wine very reasonableness and moderation of the majority coupled sometimes with lack of action, which allows determined fanatical minority groups to manipulate events in the interest of extreme political cults.

Thatcher - speaking to Tory trade unionists - last Saturday March Ist.

ropertied classes, by intellectua y their social status, the foundr of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intellig entsia." (pp 31-2)

In Britain the working class has a long history of reformism, of precisely trade union consciousness. The historical advantage of British imperialism - the first country to undergo a bourgeois industrial revolution and develop a capitalist economic system -was that it could exploit the Empire for cheap raw materials and sweated labour. This meant that although the employers fought the working class every inch of the way, they were when necess ary, able to make considerable concessions in wages and conditI0ns.

IMPERIALISM

Trotsky says: "Britain had far earlier based her capitalist development upon Imperialist plunder. She gave the upper layer of the proletariat an economic interest in her domination over the world. In upholding its interests the British working class confined itself to pressure upon the bourgeois parties which had in tarn accustomed it to the idea of capitalist exploitation of the backward cou ntries. It began to start upon the path of an independent policy only as Britain began to lose her positions on the world market, being squeezed out in the process by her main rival, Germany..... (Trotsky Writings on Britain.

Voll pp13-14 )

This has had a contradictory effect in the workers movement. On the one hand it has established conditions and living standard which are now unsupportable by a capitalist economy, and which have to be attacked by the empl oyer-conditions which will be detended in the coming revolutionary struggles.

Yet these same concessions have strengthened the illusion that these conditons can be defended by trade union militancy alone. that politics should be kept out of the unions, and that the system. can be reformed through the pressure of the Labour partywhich is a workers party with bourgeois leadership.

Continued

Scan page 7

RASS Pare

----- pull-quotes -----

grasping its historical task, it woulc need neither party or trade union.