Now’s the Time to Prevent Sackings on the Railway

1959 the British working class is faced with these alternatives: either a return to the bitter pre-war years of mass unemployment and all its attendant miseries; or united resistance to the Tory onslaught.

Only a united and militant Labour movement can prevent a return to the hungry thirties and end once and for all the system which causes unemployment, misery and war.

In the coming struggles railwaymen will have an important part to play. Along with the miners and workers in other nationalized industries, they will bear the brunt of the Tory offensive.

The Tories have already succeeded in getting rid of 20,000 railwaymen in 1958. This pattern is being repeated throughout industry.

All workers face this problem and in finding the solution militants in every section must grapple with colossal tasks.

Help them to prepare On the railways we have many problems such as redundancy and excessive overtime to make up for a low basic wage. We have imposed upon us a huge bureaucracy of overpaid officials, compensation idlers and, last but not least, a Tory Government with policies aimed at discrediting nationalized industries and the workers in them.

This article, written by a rank-and-file railwayman, puts forward policies for discussion. I hope it will help my fellow-workers to prepare for the coming struggles.

We railwaymen cannot afford to fall for these splitting tactics. As workers in nationalized industries we have a‘stake in the future of the miners.

If we allow our leaders to repeat the London bus sell-out and leave the miners to struggle in isolation, we shall find when confronted by the British Transport Commission and the Tories that we too are in isolation, with the result that we will be subjected to the same harsh measures as the Tories now hope to force upon the miners.

The public mind is being carefully conditioned so that it will be ready to join in the vilification and slander against tailwaymen, miners, dockers and transport workers when they are forced to defend their conditions.

These are the Tory tactics. For us they are poison.

The thing the Tories fear most of all is solidarity. Our futures depend on it.

Only the united action of miners, railwaymen, dockers and transport workers can dash Tory hopes of a repeat performance of 1926. A united fight against sackings in the pits today will mean a united fight against all sackings tomorrow.

Leadership Twenty thousand railwaymen sacked in 1958. This is the price paid for the acceptance by our leaders of the strings attached to the 3 per cent. pay rise.

When our leaders ran out on the London busmen and accepted these strings they did not receive the backing of rank-and-file railwaymen.

The rank-and-file attitude was expressed in repeated resolutions from some of the largest district councils of the National Union of Railwaymen, such as Manchester and London, calling for the rejection of the 3 per cent. and its strings.

Today the Tory Transport Minister, Harold Watkinson, talks of further sackings and these same leaders, with the help of the BTC, haggle over a six-months-old pay claim.

We are told now that they have got down to cases, that joint investigating committees are looking into our wages and conditions. But what are the odds that any improvement to wages and conditions will involve sackings?

The big question facing railwaymen now is: Are we going to stand by this time and Iet our leaders open the door for a further 20,000 to be kicked out? Or do we put up a fight?

First of all this cowardly retreat by the leaders must be stopped. It is weakening our fight and helping the Tories in tha: theirs.

Concessions, compromises, sell-outs Of all the problems we have in common with other workers, this crisis of leadership is the most fundamental. We hear of concessions, compromises and sell-outs by various union leaders. Their whole outlook and attitude in this period is one of weakness and treachery.

It is they who have created the conditions that now make it necessary for rank-and-file trade unionists to call for a fight.