TRADE UNIONS MIDDLE CLASS

Trade unions in Britain are the form through which the working class, as a class, has emerged in its struggle with capitalism.

Past relations between the employers and the unions have been regulated by a voluntary negotiating procedure. This is now replaced by the compulsory legal powers of the Industrial Relations Act.

A Tory High Court has powers to enforce its will on the trade unions whenever it thinks this is necessary. Every important wages dispute is thereby transformed into a political issue.

Under circumstances like these, unity on the basis of a common wages policy, such as we saw between the three railway unions, is totally inadequate. Once the government invoked the Court, such unity, no matter how effective it might have been in the past, was unable to challenge the political implications of the government's action.

The working class derives its knowledge from the different class-struggle experiences which throughout its history reflect the actual relations between the employers and their trade unions.

During the reformist era of voluntary negotiation, the workers relied on the unions to act on their behalf and the consciousness of the militant vanguard within them rarely rose above a spontaneous leftist trade union level.

Although the advent of the National Industrial Relations Court has drastically changed this relationship, the working class cannot immediately break from its old form of thinking.

Their consciousness lags behind objective developments. While it is true that within the present crisis there is a leftward movement of hostility to the government and to those trade union :cretary of leaders who have capitulated to it-by itself this is not enough.

What we see is a centrist type of development which, as Trotsky said, 'reflects the progress of evolution of the working class, its political growth as well as its revolutionary setback'.

Since all consciousness develops from practice, the working class can only be broken from the old forms of trade union practice by a new form of practice. The essence of this new practice is outlined by the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International on pages 14, 15 and . 16, New Park Publications edition.* The Socialist Labour League refuses to tail-end even the most left expressions of trade union conscioasness. This would be nothing more than a capitulation to the present spontaneous centrist evolution of the working class.

The struggle for minimum wage demands is inseparable from the struggle to make the Tory government resign.

This will greatly strengthen the working class and open the door to the election of a Labour government, in which the rightwing leadership would be more and more exposed.

This would be undertaken through the struggle to force them to apply a programme of transitional demands which would lead towards the conquest of power and the emergence of the mass revolutionary The Socialist Labour League campaigns continuously along these lines to provide the leadership which will enable the working class, through its practical experiences, to break from the old forms of trade union consciousness.

Now let us look at the role of our middle-class political opponents, such as group capitalism in the USSR, the International Socialists (IS).

They confine themselves to purely left forms of trade union militancy and solidarity actions. The one-day strike is a favourite here. Each group deliberately avoids like the plague campaign-TIT 10] the working class to utilize its strength to force the government to resign.

One of the best examples this middle-class tail-ending Jo the working class is contair 1ed in programme printed in 'Socialist Worker', weekly pal per of the IS group, on April 15.

Titled 'A Policy To Win', The USE of the courts defeat the dockers can beaten by:

1. Maintenance of the blacking and continued boycott the Industrial Relations Court. Keep blacking Heatons in reprisal for its use of the law.

2. Non-payment of the fine. The T&GWU should call official strikes if its funds are seized.

3. Solidarity action from TUC. Break off talks with the Tory government.

4. Continued total non-cooperation with the Act by the TUC.

Massive official a one-day strike uo May Every demand here is deliberately tailored to fit within the framework of trade union consciousness. They are designed to keep trade unionists confined to industrial issues pue sidetrack them from mobilizing their forces from the political struggle against the Tory government.

The IS talks about a revolutionary party, but in effect it has something mind 'Socialist Worker' April 22, explains what that something else is.

'We are living in a highly unstable situation. Unless, in the not too distant future, the employers offensive is decisively beaten, the British working class faces a whole series of defeats. And the offensive will not be beaten unless a powerful grass roots organization of militants can be built.' So there it is. We need a left reformist trade union programme and an organization of 'grassroots militants' to carry it out.

Here we see the professional centrisin of these middle-class revisionists. Sensing that - the workers are moving from reformism to the left, they step in to wall off their development from the revolutionary road Although they will verbally criticize the right wing, they in fact have no confidence in the possibility of the working class establishing its political independence from the right wing and reformist politics. They just provide a left centrist cover to keep it where it is.

The cynical contempt with which they treat the working class knows no bounds. Elsewhere in these two issues they advertise a meeting at which Tory Cliff and Paul Foot are to speak under the title 'Bring down the Tory government'. But this is on May Day when presumably it is the 'in' thing for centrists to let their hair down in a spate of left speechmaking.

Just as the Is use the slogan of 'Bring down the Tory government' for holiday occasions, they use the term 'revolutionary party' in the same way. That is why it becomes so easily interchangeable in their press with syndicalist terminology such as 'grass-roots organization'. One does not have to adhere to . Marxist principles to join such an organization; it is sufficient to support whatever group protest and trade union demands which are in vogue at the moment.

*The Minimum Programme and the Transitional Programme The strategic task of the next period - a pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization — consists overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of 077 older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation). It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.

Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its programme into two parts independent of each other: the minimum programme which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum programme which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum programme no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no Relations Court has drastically changed workers' relatlonshlp to their unions. Above: Heatons brothers who took out the inJunction against the T&GWU leave the Court. need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying. The Comintern [Stalinist] has set out to follow the path of Social Democracu in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, here can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of the masses' living standards; when every semous demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.

The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups, should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.

The Fourth International does not discard the programme of the old 'minimal' demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers. But carries this day - to - day work within the framework of the rect actual, that is, revolutionary perspective. Insofar as the old, partial, 'minimal' demands of the masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalismand this occurs at each step-the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands. the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old 'minimal programme is superseded by the transitional programme, the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution. (Pages 14-16, Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.)

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