Policies Councils of Action

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On 31 July 1925known as 'Red Friday'the leaders of the 'Triple Alliance' unions were compelled to threaten a combined strike against further threats to reduce the standard of living of the miners.

Local pressure on them included the setting up of a "Provisional Council of Action' in Liverpool.

The Tory government had to continue its subsidy to the coal industry for a further six months in order to better prepare for concerted action by the working class movement against them.

The months between August 1925 and May 1926 were thus of considerable importance for the miners and the entire working class movement.

The Tory government set up a network of regional and local strike-breaking organisations with the help of the allegedly "independent" Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies run by local Tories, members of fascist organisations and other such elements.

The trade union leaders on the other hand did nothing to prepare for the forthcoming struggle.

Not only did they not discuss the possibility of a General Strike in May 1926 until it was virtually upon them, but they also refused to do anything to organise union members for such an eventuality.

Thus it was left to the Party to call for preparations to be made, councils of action to be set up and strike plans laid.

The Stalinist policies of the Communist Party caused them to place a reliance on the 'lefts' within the TUC which was to prove disastrous as the struggle developed.

Syndicalist

The syndicalist attitudes which the CP had only begun to eradicate also prevented them from putting forward policies either for industrial struggle or the development of its political implications which could put workers in a position to act independently of their cowardly and collaborationist leaders.

The Communist Party did however fight hard in the months before May 1926 for some preparations to be made.

Through the CP-led Minority Movement a 'Special Conference of Action' was organised at which there was discussion on what would need to be done.

The Minority Movement called for the setting up of councils of action which would be capable of 'carrying

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Popular Front leaders Leon Blum (SP) and Maurice Thorez (CP) (left and second left in this picture)

Mounted police in action at Elephant and Castle 1926 decision was made to call that any of them even out some engineers for fear considered the role of the that others who were in TUC leaders. fratorian that mana etonnard TE . 11 - Eveloped a paper outside the ontrol of the party.

Democratic centralism was political and organisational irinciple that Trotsky lefended regardless of the iossible losses it might bring the scanty forces of Trotskyism.

This fact alone glaringly bntrasts with the Pabloite United" Secretariat today, i which opposing tendencies ithin the movement are lowed free reign to publish laterial putting directly pposite positions to those of le majórity.

Leading members This fact is particularly tell known to the authors of le book, both leading lembers of the US Socialist forkers Party (which is revented by reactionary US ws from affiliating to the SFI).

They know that until a Iw months ago tendencies in ipport of the SWP inctioned autonomously in ›untries all over the world, ablishing their own papers conflict with the USFI ¡ajority positions.

Indeed Trotsky's positions innot be understood as * the essential services for b working class in the event ¡a dispute' CP members got councils action set up in Leeds and ventry and a Joint Council Action in Bolton before end of 1925 was ursuing enquiries with a w to definite preparations ing made for any national local industrial upheaval" The CP was less successful its campaign for the setting of 'workers defence ips'.

New methods 'Once the struggle started 4 May, with large sections ¡the trade union movement led out to support the ners against the wage cuts w definitely threatened, w methods of work veloped very rapidly. The St. Pancras Bulletin of May, one of many susands of such publicans, said that the strike elf had forced them to relop 'scientific organisDn': (What would have taken is in the prestrike days ek under the direct sure of the class aggle"

In virtually every town, a incil of action was ablished, in most cases der such titles as joint ike committees' or 'emercy disputes committee' I in a substantial number cases as a 'council of restricted to the national problems inside France. They relate centrally to the kind of international that is needed, and the kind of parties in each country.

The question remaining to be answered is why did the SWP choose to publish this book, which contains an implicit indictment of their own positions?

The answer lies in the factional debate within the USFI itself.

The majority tendency, under the leadership of Ernest Mandel, and counting in its ranks the same Pierre Frank castigated by Trotsky in this volume, holds a position ot angling for 'socialist unity' It is because of this that their British section, the International Marxist Group, has gone overboard in its desire to ditch the trappings of the Trotskyist programme and link up with circles of degenerate centrists and left reformists through the medium of their paper, Socialist Challenge.

The SWP-for unclear reasons of their own-disagree with this orientation. But last year they took the decision to drop their pretence of a action'.

Local meetings took place to set up such bodies in many cases with trades council executives and branches of unions on strike.

There were other arrangements, however, as at Stockton where the local Labour Party was-involved and at Derby where shop stewards committees were affiliated.

The purpose of these bodies-according the to instructions sent out by the TUC-was for Trades Councils and the union Scab work on London docks onal serious fight against Mandel, "hey and to "fuse" their supportd of ing tendency with the ded, majority tendency. s in So now the SWP seek a more diplomatic way of g to raising their differences, and the are attempting to use this Trotsky's writings for their • an own opportunist purposes. heir The editors therefore tell US: fac- "The current theory and JSFI practice of some sections of the Fourth International ncy, [they mean the USFI] of suggest that not all of their ting leaders [!] have absorbed the erre lessons Trotsky tried to teach tsky in 1935-6 about "broad" 5 a newspapers, the revolutionary for attitude to centrist groups, etc." that (p.173) the But the SWP themselves sup, refuse to absorb these its lessons! ings ime International i of left For instance they describe the the issue at stake as: per, "What, in fact is a revolLutionary party? Is it a lear collection of factions or gree tendencies each of which is last free to go its own way whension ever it fails to win a if a majority?"

branches of strikers to organise those on strike in the most effective manner for the preservation of peace and order' Such an instruction was of little help when the main problem facing the councils of action in the first week of the strike concerned the issue of 'permits' to allow union members to carry on essential services.

Although the Government had set up a complex local network in order to break the strike, TUC leaders had prepared nothing.

Their concern was not to work out a system which would make the strike effective but to ensure as Jimmie Thomas of the NUR put itthat power did not go "out of the hands of those who would be able to exercise some control"

Thus Thomas together with Bevin of the TGWU devoted much energy to developing strike organisation based on individual unions.

They set up a National and a London Transport Committee which were supposed to be in complete control of the issue of permits for the movement of goods.

This arrangement was quite unworkable, and led to endless confusion.

The Chatham Strike Committee wrote: "NUR telegram But in essence Trotsky was arguing on the nature of a revolutionary international.

And the SWP has proved that it believes an international is simply a collection of factions and tendencies that can ignore majority votes.

Hermaphrodite

They clearly do not accept Trotsky's dictum that "International discipline prèvails in every case over national discipline". (p. 152).

Nor, for fear of disrupting their new found 'unity' with Mandel do they draw out the content of Trotsky's fight on the notion of a "broad"

Trotsky termed the new paper La Commune, launched by the opportunists Molinier and Frank "a hermaphrodite He attacks its refusal to break from the centrist Marceau Pivert, whom Trotsky describes as, the "extreme left of the People's In analysing the opening appeal for La Commune Trotsky strikes a note that should echo for every reader of Socialist Challenge today:

"But here is where the permits. TUC directs full permits. What is to be worked to?"

In most cases the local strike committees of transport unions decided to operate under the authority of the councils of action, though in Darlington, for example, the railwaymen remained separate.

At Bristol the competing committees were persuaded to accept one authority by 7 May, but on the same day the National Transport Committee asked the TGWU and NUR locally to review' the issue of permits.

By this time the problems had become so acute that most councils of action had abandoned the permits system, concentrating on other aspects of the strike.

Virtually all of them issued strike bulletins despite the ludicrous request of the General Council that they should 'refrain from making public statements of any sort' and should add 'nothing in the way of comment and interpretation' to what the TUC said.

The local councils of action also went beyond TUC instructions by calling out some new groups on strike though there were usually special reasons for this.

most important part begins:

"La Commune is not going to add itself to the multiplicity of tendencies in the workers' movement." What sovereign scorn for the "multiplicity of existing tendencies! What What does that mean? If all the tendencies are wrong or insufficient, a new one has to be created, the true one, the correct one. If there are true and false tendencies, then the workers must be taught to distinghish among them. The masses must be called on to join the correct tendency to fight the false ones. But no, the initiators of la Commune somewhat like Romain Rolland, place themselves "above the battle." Such a procedure is absolutely unworthy of Marxists."

"And here is the high point: "La Commune is launched by militants belonging to various tendencies to bring about the rise of a great army of communards." What does this mean, this unknown crew of anonymous, unknown "various tendencies"? What tendencies are involved? Why are they (still unknown) grouped outside and against the other tendencies? The purpose of creating a "great army of communards" is laudable.

But it is necessary not to forget that this army, once created (1871), suffered a terrific catastrophe because that magnificent army lacked a programme and a leadership.

Of course most of the self-proclaimed 'Trotskyists' of the International Marxist Group will no doubt turn a blind eye to the similarity between Molinier-Frank's attempt to bring together "militants belonging to various tendencies" and Socialist Challenge's invitation to join a broad-based class struggle tendency", which "should be non-exclusive in character, grouping together militants holding a wide range of political views"

But to those concerned to preserve the principles of the movement, Trotsky's ringing advanced denunciation of 'socialist unity' must strengthen their fight:

.. the methods of La Commune are diametrically opposite to all my conceptions of the organisation of a revolutionary party.

In Leeds, for example, the one car were suppeu might be isolated and subject to victimisation.

The councils of action were also compelled to act independently after the General Council betrayed the struggle on 12 May by calling off the strike without having secured any guarantees.

They had to keep some workers out in order to prevent the victimisation of others, and indeed there were probably more on strike the day after it was called off than at any previous point.

No domination"-in other words, no programme. "On the basis of parity" means parity in cynicism with regard to principles, a scarcely enviable kind of parity. A "mass paper" is in reality an imitation of l'Oeuvre, dressed up in slogans borrowed from the right and the left and aimed at radicalising petty bourgeois who are not even able to understand that the preparation for civil war begins with the elaboration of a programme and that a "mass paper" can be nothing other than one of the instruments of this programme"

Mandel The Mandelites continue to turn their backs on these crucial lessons. And the SWP, by its new political alliance with this majority leadership, has revealed yet again offers no alternative line.

Perhaps the most obvious Mandelite attack on Trotsky comes in the appendix by Pierre Frank, who declares:

"I do not believe there is any reason to reply to the argument that was put forward at the time, that with the appearance of La Commune we abandoned Trotskyism. Today this accusation raised by Rous and others seems grotesque."

But, though the SWP do not draw this point out, the book makes clear that among the "others" that made this charge was Trotsky himself.

Despite the factional stance of its editors, by showing Trotsky's method of approach to these problems of the Popular Front period, to the questions of political independence and revolutionary discipline, this new book makes a valuable contribution to serious forces fighting for the reconstruction of the Fourth International.

It was only at this point Ine Newcastie Council of Action issued statement that:

"Never in the history of the working class strugglewith the exception of the treachery of our leaders in 1914-has there been such a calculated betrayal of working class interests as has overtaken us this week"

Docherty