These Leaders are an Obstacle to Socialism

WirHouT a doubt the main abstacle to achieving socialism is the use by the capitalist class of its fuil State machine (police, courts, armed forces, Parliament, House of Lords, radio and television, Monarchy etc.) plus such instruments as the Church and the Press.

In times of deep crisis armed fascist thugs are used as well.

But despite these obstacles the economic system, pressing heavily down upon the working class, forces it time after time, in defending its standards, to challenge the whole capitalist system.

Every national wage struggle today threatens to broaden out into a major political struggle against the Government and the ruling class.

This is because of the precarious position British capitalism is in. It is also due to the fact that the Tory Government repeatedly intervenes in. strike struggles on behalf of the industrialists. - :

This is where the other major obstacle to the sweeping aside of capitalism comes in: the workers’ present leaders.

The present leaders transmit capitalist ideas into the trade unions and Labour Party. At every critical stage théy hasten to the aid of the employers by resort to ‘arbitration’, calling This is the third in.a series of articles on socialism off large-scale strikes, settling for measly pennies without the slightest reference to the members who provide them with their comfortable salariés. Why do they do this?

The fundamental answer is that they themselves have a privileged’ stake in maintaining capitalism.

They are a conservative bureaucracy. Over the years their salaries have been pushed much higher than the wages of the workers they represent. ;

They move into another circle: joint boards with the Capitalists in the day-time, frequent banquets with the rulers at ‘social functions’.

Frank Cousins, the leader of the Transport and General Workers’ “Union, when: asked by the Press how he would describe: his status in society with regard to his own standard of living, quite brazenly said: ‘Middle class.’ Much anger was caused among rank-and-file trade unionists at the reports about members of the Trades Union Congress General Council living in £7-a-day hotels in Blackpool at the 1957 TUC—£42 for a week’s stay, nearly four times the wage of engineers!

Or take’ this little exchange from last Monday’s News Chronicle: .

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‘Puffing a cigar Mr Tallon [of the Amalgamated Engineering Union] was in philosophical mood.

“There are too many titled people in the union business,’

he mused. ‘Far too many “‘Sirs”.”

Mr Hill [of the Boilermakers’ Society] eyed him sourly.

“What do you mean?’ he demanded. ‘I could have been one of the first “Sirs” if T'd wanted to be. ll be a baron by the time I’m through.’

© THESE people, however militant some of them used to be, become corrupted and conservative by their mode of existence.

Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (T.U.), r.o. 180 Clapham High St., Londoa, "232 ~ es By HARRY FINCH Forgetting what it was like to live as an ordinary worker they begin to resent large struggles that threaten ‘their’

standing with the employers as respected ‘peaceful negotiators’.

‘ From resentment to outright opposition or conscious betrayal (as in the 1957 national engineers’, strike, the Covent Garden strike and the London bus strike) is only a short step.

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The trade union leaders also sit on the national executive of the Labour Party and their ‘stay as we are’ mentality, coupled with the similar outlook of the parliamentary leaders, is translated politically into an opposition to all forthright, socialist policies-in the Labour Party.

By using trade union block votes without finding out the wishes of the rank and file, the leaders forced through a policy at last year’s conference which said that the next Labour Government would merely buy some shares in private capitalism.

This would. perpetuate capitalism; it goes counter to the ;

constitution and aims of the Labour Party.

© To change this state of affairs in the Labour movement, it is vital to build up powerful rank-and-file movements in the unions and bring them into the working of the Labour Party.

Rank-and-file trade unionists are already starting to build such movements in preparation for the big battles ahead.

Their policies are finding a growing response in the unions.

It is often argued that the Communist Party trade union leaders are somehow different from the Right-wing leaders.

It is true that they often offer militant words, but it is deeds that count.

In practice these leaders often line up with the Right wing ; or do the apologizing for them, All through the Midland redundancy strikes the Communist Party leaders covered up for the Right wing. As a result, the infamous ‘one week’s compensation’ for the sack has become the general practice.

Praise from Palme ‘Dutt In Labour Monthly R. Palme, Dutt called the TUC leaders -—the men who stabbed the busmen in the back—‘respectable, conscientious, serious, hard-working, responsible officials, genuinely trying to do their best, according to their lights, for their membership’.

The opportunism of the Communist Party leaders flows from their need to protect their own trade union privileges and from the fact that at all times they protect the bureaucracy that has grown up in Russia—which also wants things to remain as. they are.

Many rank-and-file militants in the Communist Party are as disgusted with the actions of their own leaders as with those of the Right-wing leaders.

They, too, are willing to unite in a rank-and-file movement whose aims are to stop all bureaucracy so that we can go forward to the overthrow of capitalism.

The. fight to transform the unions and Labour Party into democratic, militant organs of class struggle, the fight to control leaders and make them live like the rank and file and subject to recall, are the paths whereby the workers “will not only prepare for the removal of capitalism but also prepare themselves for direct control over all leaders when the working class takes power.

Published by The "Newsletter, 180 Clapham High St, London, SW4.