STALINISM AND LEADERSHIP IN THE UNIONS Some lessons of the recent miners' strike by Cliff Slaughter

SPOKESMEN of the employers, from the Tory Party conference to Lord Stokes at the Motor Show and "The Times' newspaper, are renewing the campaign for direct state control of the trade unions.

Mrs Barbara Castle and Mr Harold Wilson are going ahead in this parliamentary session with the re-activation of Parts I and Il of the prices and incomes legislation, giring them statutory powers to delay wage increases for four months and to have all wage increases referred to the Prices and Incomes Board This pressure will continue, despite the withdrawal of the anti-union legislation under working-class pressure earlier this year. It will continue under a Labour or a Tory government because it reflects the direct interests of the big monopolies and banks.

The motor industry is to be the main target of the campaign for government intervention. Already the union leaders, including the 'lefts' like Scanlon, have capitulated by agreeing to productivity deals and accepting the Ford "penalty clauses', but more is to come.

Lord Stokes, chairman of British - Leyland, concerned about his £70 million invest ment programme at the Oxford plant, is openly calling for state control to stop unofficial The balance of payments crisis and the so-called 'national interest' are being brought to the fore as a weapon to hit at the workers in this export industry.

This is why Aubrey Jones, PIB chairman, said in Liverpool on Monday October 27 that militant unions 'are not automatically acting in the public interest, and indeed may be acting unfairly to other sections of society. Naturally he chose Liverpool to make his speech.

All these proposals are advanced in the interests of big monopolies like GEC-English Electric, which received grants SOCIAL CLUR lutionary party.

from the government totalling over £30 million, in order to be able to 'rationalize' and put out of work thousands of workers who voted Labour and paid taxes to the elected Labour government!

Who exactly is 'acting fairly to other sections society'?

Strike struggles Not only in Britain, but in Northern Ireland and all over Europe, the millions of lowerpaid workers and also workers in declining industries like coal mining have now thrown their strength into strike Lawrence Daly : accepted NCB offer.

struggles which have previously been dominated by the better-paid workers.

The working class is not going to allow the big trusts to go on to bigger and bigger concentrations of wealth and power, leaving workers condemned to the insecurity and penury which is always their fate under capitalism.

The British working class turns in the present phase of struggle to its own strength in the factories and to its trade unions.

But such is the character of the crisis of capitalism that these economic struggles alone cannot provide the answer to the class enemy, who use their economic and political (state) power to try and create the conditions for a new period of super-exploitation of the working class.

First they must ,smash the organized strength of the working class.

What Trotsky wrote in 1926 about the British trade unions is true for the unions in all capitalist societies today:

"The decomposition of British capitalism inevitably leads to the impotence of the trade unions. Only revolution can save the British working class and its organizations together with it. In order to take power, the proletariat must have at their head a revolutionary party' ('Where Is Britain Going?', p. 112.)

Either the trade unions become integrated into the capitalist state and work as an instrument of the ruling class or revolutionary leadership wins out in the unions and leads the working class forward to the conquest of power.

The role of the TUC rightwing leadership under Victor Feather is to try to shackle the unions to the needs of the capitalist state and the monopolies.

Feather and the General Council are trying to do this while at the same time retaining a semblance of union autonomy from actual state They think they need to be left free for the delicate job of handling their members in the manner which they consider they have perfected.

Hence the complex arguments about the mutual rights and responsibilities of particular unions and of the TUC itself in relation to government departments when it comes to regulation of inter-union disputes and all new proposals for legislation and 'trade union Not defended In these matters the trade union bureaucrats are not defending their members but defending their own semiindependent social positions as trade union bureaucrats.

To the extent that the strength of the working class and the emergence of a new leadership threatens equally the capitalist state and the union bureaucracy, the latter two will come more clearly together, drop their 'differences' and eventually merge totally.

When the striking miners returned to work after consultations with Feather on Thursday to Friday, October 23 and 24, some commentators considered that the TUC's role was perhaps being rehabilitated.

smithereens The reality was of course that Feather and • the TUC were instrumental in stopping a strike which was of historic importance: it had brought the miners back into the front line of the economic and political struggle of the British working class. 1926 reared its ugly head!

The failure of the left' leaders of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering and Foundryworkers (AEF) and Militant Yorkshire miners lobby their union executive calling for the resignation of Sir Sidney Ford, NUM president. the Transport and General Workers' Union (T&GWU), Scanlon and Jones, to carry out any fight against the plans of the TUC right wing in June was a warning.

Their line is to 'make the TUC undertaking work', in order to have a case against further government action and legislation.

Instead of relying on the strength of the working class to break the employers' and government's attacks on trade unionism, these 'left' leaders collaborate with Feather and the right wing to strengthen TUC against trade unionists who are in struggle.

In effect they are collaborating in putting the TUC in better shape for the integration with the capitalist state. Implications Because they fear the revolutionary implications of mobilizing the full strength of the working class, they draw back from struggle and play this role, a counterrevolutionary role of strengthening the capitalist state's preparations against the working class.

The work of the Communist Party in the trade unions has for years been to pursue an alliance with the like of Jones, Scanlon and Daly of the National Union of MineThis 'left unity' is in line with the Party's perspective of a peaceful, 'democratic' path to socialism.

Such a way does not require the organization of the working class to smash the capitalist state.

On the contrary, tied as it is to the system of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, it must fight against the revolutionary mobilization of the working class.

That was the secret behind the betrayal by the French Stalinists in France in May-June 1968.

Stalinism in Britain 1s now, through its line of 'left unity' with the lefts' in the trade union bureaucracy, consciously and openly collaborating in the counter - revolutionary preparations of the ruling class.

The Stalinists are providing the political cover for Daly, Scanlon and Jones to 'make the TUC discipline work', instead of fighting the proposals for legislation against Ten days before the end of the miners strike, a special committee of the TUC General Council met opposite numbers from the Confederation of British Industry.

A joint statement was issued about determination to deal with industrial disputes. It was greeted by a CBI spokesman as 'a major breakthrough' in industrial relations.

Besides the inevitable rightwing signatories such as Feather and Hayday, the CBI was joined in its declaration by Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers' Union.

Legislation was defeated in June, but by October the TUC leaders, left as well as right, are dealing directly with organized big business to prepare against strikes!

And those are the leaders supported by the Communist Party line of left unity!

Indeed, the inevitable consequence will be direct service to Victor Feather. The first open sign of this is the Communist Party's line on the miners' strike.

Obstacle The miners, through strike action, had won the full wage increases demanded by their union, and the obstacle to their winning 20 minutes off the day for 60,000 surfacemen was that this would have offended the government's Taken together with the 27s. 6d. increase it would have meant a total increase of 13 per cent, which was out of proportion with the 9 per cent productivity increase in mining.

In other words once Robens' offer had been made on the first Friday of the strike, the concern of everyone who is anxious to prevent the working class moving into a political struggle with the state was to get the miners back to work.

The search was on-by the leaders of the TUC, by the 'left' and 'right' of the NUM, both Ford and Daly, by the government, by Lord Robens, and by the Communist Party -for a formula to end the strike after all the fine words about 'principles' on the eight-hour day.

The role of the capitalist press, welcomed by 'leaders' who did not want to lead, was to create the impression that the miners were drifting back to work.

There were in fact only very isolated returns o work, and they were short-lived.

They occured because the leadership deliberately confined the strike picketing to small numbers of branch officials and failed in any way to explain the full scope and significance of the struggle.

It is necessary to be perfectly objective about the situation this created.

Thousands of striking miners came into the struggle and soon realized its political implications; their seriousness took the forn of a political hesitancy lying behind the industrial and class militancy.

The decisive element was When striking miners returned to work after consultations with TUC general ictor strike of tremendous historic importance was halted. develop the political issues in the strike, to turn the hesitant memories of 1926 and the doubts about an alternative to the Labour government into a positive fight for a socialist alternative in the coal industry and throughout the economy.

That leadership was present only at rank-and-file pit level in part_of Yorkshire, where the All Trades Unions Alliance was being built.

The longer the strike continued, the bigger the prospect of that leadership, working through the Workers Press, being built.

But the actual leadership at Yorkshire area level was in the hands branch officials elected long before the present phase of struggle began, mixture Labour Party supporters and a few Communist Party members and ex-members.

Political struggle However firmly they were originally convinced it was necessary to fight on the eight hours, and however disappointed they were in Daly, they were at a dead-end as soon as the union leadership refused recognition and the spread of the strike brought 130,000 men right up against government policy.

Confidence in the NUM Executive was at its lowest ebb and Robens himself had embittered the miners.

Feather's intervention was welcomed, therefore, by all sides except the striking miners, who were driven to return by the collapse of leadership.

the promise " that Feather would seek to get a court of inquiry established, the return to work was agreed. Once the Yorkshire area council voted (66-23) return, the other coalfields followed.

What role did the Stalinists play?

Their supporters and allies among the strike leaders in Feathers solution along with to 'normal' in the union getting Daly off the hook.

But this bureaucratic manoeuvring has all the reactionary implications we have describec Thus the Communist Party's 'Morning Star' for Saturday, October 25-the. day the Yorkshire Council voted to return — referred to Feather's intervention in the following terms:

'Yesterday's breakthrough came after five hours of talks between eight miners' representatives and Mr. Vic Feather, the TUC general secretary... Neither miners' president Sir Sidney Ford, who was in Durham, nor the general secretary, Mr.

Lawrence Daly, who was unavailable (!), took part in the meeting.

'An independent inquiry could see a breakthrough for the miners. During this summer's British Steel Corporation strike at Port Talbot, it was only after an independent inquiry had reached its decision that the steel workers gained their demand.

"The setting up of an inquiry will provide help to all sides in the problem.

chairman, would be able to grant the miners' demands without losing face with the government — as he would have done it he had paid it off his own back' (Our emphasis.)

In this article we find exemplified the whole case we have made out against the political line of the Communist Party in the trade unions.

It is impossible to draw any other conclusion than that the best way to resolve strikes today is to return to work with nothing and to have confidence that Mr Victor Feather will organize a genuinely independent inquiry sure to see justice done!

Further, if the workers do not behave in this sensible and citizen-like way, left-wing gave 'binding undertaking'.

leaders like Mr Daly will be very embarrassed, right-wing leaders like Sir Sidney Ford will be disturbed, genial bosses like Lord Robens will 'lose face', and the government will be out in front in every wages 'Help all sides' To avoid all these things, we must find a solution which, as the 'Morning Star' puts .. will provide help to all sides'.

This 'Morning Star' article was in fact the 'explanation' of all the manoeuvres of the previous three days, in which the Communist Party and its left allies, together with the right wing and Robens, behind whom stood Wilson, used Victor Feather LO get the miners back to work.

Once the men were safely back at work, of course, the 'Morning Star' dished up for its bewildered supporters the old left-sounding hash:

'The fight for the eight hours goes on', etc.

It is not out of the question that the recent show of strength force a concession on the hours.

But, as the 'Murning Star' itself said (Friday, October 17), strike involved problems faced by the miners, and brought them sharply up against the political question the whole future of the nationalized industry.

It was this aspect of the struggle which had to be removed, from the point of view of the capitalist class.

The lessons of this experience cannot be repeated too often.

The miners have returned to the front of the class struggle on wages and hours questions precisely at a time when these involve political questions, a struggle against the governThis political struggle requires the building of a revolutionary party which will lead the struggle for power.

A central task in building that party is the fight for Marxist leadership in the unions.

The weakening of the Stalinist faction in the NUM and the loosening of the hold of the raditional right wing, particuarly in parts of the Yorkshire area, had been apparent for several months and was openly revealed in the recent strike the preceding Cadeby strike.

Politically-conscious miners, like workers in all unions, will be strengthened in their conviction of the urgency of building alternative political leadership throughout the industry.

There is no substitute for the building of the All Trades Unions Alliance, the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League.

This is the task, through meetings to expand the circulation of the Workers Press, upon which we call all our readers to concentrate.

PAGE FOUR Tuesday, November