TRADE UNIONS WORKING CLASS

The determination of the Tory government to utilize the legal provisions of their Industrial Relations Act has fundamentally changed the relationship of class forces in Britain. Even the capitalist press admit that things can never be the same again.

When Sir Tohn Donaldson pronounced judgements on Transport and General Workers' Union and the railmen's 'goslow', ', he shattered for all time the structure of compromise which has dominated the relations between the classes since the days of Chartism.

For the affairs of trade unions are no longer to be decided by their Courtmembers, but by a High presided over by the Tory judiciary wielding enormous legal power in the interest of the capitalist class.

There has been understandable confusion in the rank and • file created by the open capitulation to the National Industrial Relations Court by the right-wing Labour and trade union leaders. But this effect can only be temporary. The thrust forward of the economic and political crisis which motivates the Court's rulings, will quickly act as forcing house to push the masses into greater battle against the Tory government.

The fight for more wages which embraces millions of trade unionists, as well as the resistance of tenants to the Tory Rent Bill, can no longer be waged in isolation from the main political issues of the day. Central to these is to mobilize the working class to make the Tory government resign. All major struggles ahead will almost immediately De transformed into political trials of strength.

For revolutionary Marxists the decisive test is how to analyse and intervene within the working-class, taking advantage of the considerable changes which are now taking place.

Britain is the home of trade unionism. From the Industrial Revolution workmen have orgahized together in their craft societies and later in their general unions to protect and improve their wages and working conditions.

'As schools of war', Engels wrote in his 'Conditions of the Working Class in England', 'the unions are unexcelled. In them is developed the peculiar courage of the English.' This pioneering role of trade unionism has its negative aspects, in .. that it strengthened the tendency towards individualism within the working class rather than class consciousness. In those countries, where trade unions were founded by social-democratic leaders, the working-class developed a much more pronounced class-consciousness.

The zeal with which they fought against the brutal injustices during the rise of capitalism was inter-mixed with the determination of the Puritan tradition which has imparted certain contradictory characteristics.

One of the most important of these is a conception of "fair play' and social justice. In appearance this takes the form an aggravating conservatism when contrasting with the revolutionary elan of, say, the French working class. - One can find, even today, pockets of working-class opinion which will talk abstractly about 'fair play' even for employers. But such backwardness needs to be negated with an earlier experience of the small land holders of the 16th and 17th It wasn't that they coveled the land owned by the aristocracy so much, but they fought like tigers when the same aristucrat and his middle-class kinsmen of the towns tried to evict them from their small holdings and the common lands.

Fair-play and social justice then became the symbols of largescale peasant uprisings.

Trade unionism is today virtually the working class itself. When they see the role of the NIRC as one which destroys the unions then, like their ancestors, workers will fight tooth and nail to resist the legal bandits of the Tory government and the class it represents.

Of equal importance is an understanding of the historic relationship between the working class and parliament.

Unlike the French • working class in the Revolution of 1789, its English counterpart campaigned in the latter part of that century for its representatives to sit in parliament.

Following the Combination Laws (1800-1824) this campaign was renewed in the Chartist Movement (1837-1848). The campaign was not only successful, but the main points of the Charter itself were eventually legislated by parliament.

The evil fruits of imperialism, which provided the resources for initiating such reforms, now placed what seemed to be the all-powerful obstacle of approximately 122 years of class compromise before the working class.

Here lies the reason for the powerful reformist and parliamentary traditions which constantly aggravate the confusion of impressionists and idealists. Within this reformist tradition, however, is its opposite-the age old conception of rights and social justice.

Now that the Tory governTop: Chartist demonstration Above: Engels who wrote 'As excelled. In them is developed ment has dropped the parliamentary mask by deciding to legally destroy the trade unions, which the working class have built, those features of reformism and class collaboration which in the past have restrained the working class from taking the revolutionary road, now become transformed into their opposite.

Workers see the Tory government as their main enemy and this destroys the individualism which in the past has characterized the sectionalism of the wages struggle. They see their democratic rights being taken lington Common April 10, 1848. ols of war the unlons are uneculiar courage of the English'. away by parliament and this invokes the revofutionary aspects of fair play and social justice.

So the English worker is well on the way to becoming a politically, class-conscious worker as distinct from his previous trade union, reformist consciousness.

Herein lies the essence of the great change ushered in by the National Industrial Relations Court, sponsored by a Tory Government, itself plunging deeper and deeper into the depths of an insolable economic crisis.

CONTINUED TOMORROW

Paul Newman In 'Never Give an Inch' Interesting sidelight on power of the press as wiel ded by his eminence, Lord Th omson of Fleet.

This is report of an exchange in the House Lords:

Lord Shackleton said that Lord Thomson of Fleet had said it was not true that newspaper influence in sound broadcasting would result in a slanting of the news.

'But looking at "The Times" its report was so selective that Lord Denham (the government spokesman), Baroness Phillips (Lab) and Lord OrrEwing (Con) among others, were not rej sorte I at all, but one of the columns of report, by an extraordinary coincidence, gave Lord Thomson's speech.

I know that his editors enjoy freedom under his control. I accept that, but it does cause some of us a little bit of concern,' he said, amid laughter.

Lord Thomson intervened:

'He should give consideration to the astuteness of the editorial direction of 'The Times" in picking out the very important contribution I made to the debate.' (Laughter).

I am fully experienced in these matters, which Lord Shackleton is not, and it was very important that the things I said should have been recorded in full.'