INDUSTRY

Part Iii: A Future Programme THE extraordinary thing is that Robert Willis (LTS General Secretary) is also a progressive in the eyes of the Daily Mail. An editorial of September 9 entitled ‘New note on strikes’ says:

‘The Trades Union Congress has heard some responsible people talking sound sense. The speakers we have in mind are Mr Robert Willis, Sir Tom Williamson and Mr Alan Birch. They recognized the problem of senseless and wasteful ““The trade union movement might possibly have to find a new method of solving industrial difficulties without resorting to strikes,” said Mr Willis.’

It is obvious that Willis and others are preparing for a new period of Mondism: the name given to the practice of class peace in industry proposed by Sir Alfred Mond of ICI as 4 result of the 1926 strike.

Mond’s peace _ The peace, of course, was all on the side of the trade unions. Everyone knows that those years were years of hardship and suffering for the working class.

This part of Willis’s speech, calling for the abandonment of the strike weapon was not referred to by the Daily Worker. _ That other ‘left’, Mr Cousins, has just written an article for the Financial Times Annual Review of Industry. In this article Cousins talks about co-operation. He says:

‘Even as far back as 1927, while there was still some hesitancy about the part unions should play in the comparatively new field of relationships, the Trades Union Congress, speaking for the unions, agreed that the evolution of trade unionism depended on the workers accepting a positive role in promoting an efficient economic and scientific development of the productive system .

‘This basic thinking, in the formative years, has been invaluable, and many industries have developed good understandings between management and men which have enabled them .to resolve productivity problems satisfactorily. The unions, both collectively and individually, have sought to further good relationships by participation with bodies such » s the National Production Advisory Council on Industry. :..

Recently, the appropriate Committee of the Trades Union Congress, again pointed out how essential it was for the trade union movement to recognize the need for additional numbers of their officers, and representatives at works level, How is it possible to work within disputes machinery that is geared to allow the employers victory every time? In fact it is now clear that unless the rank and file have a machine of”

their own in the form of newspapers, committees and so on, then they have no hope of winning back control of the unions or of defeating the employers.

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It is necessary that the Marxists in the trade union movement fight much harder for a programme of defence of the right of the workers to strike, and that a strike should be judged not by its label, whether it is official or unofficial, but by the strength of the issues involved.

We need to accelerate the building of a powerful revolutionary movement a hundredfold to lead the fight against the reformism of both the Right-wing and the Stalinists. — Revolutionary alternative There are a number of factors. that will greatly assist in the development of a revolutionary alternative. In the first place the Right-wing trade union leaders have used the. argument ‘Let’s wait for the return of a Labour government’ to hold back demands on wages and hours.

Gaitskell at Blackpool had made it quite clear that a Rightwing Labour government will concentrate on ‘expansion’ with the working class making the. necessary sacrifices to expand a capitalist system.

At the same time big monopolies will press forward with demands for wage reductions.

In such a situation under either: Tory or Labour the working class will swing back to industrial action as.a means of solving their problems.

transform ‘such A sharpening economic situation can seen erence caesar A struggles from being purely defensive and economic to ones in which the problem of power will be posed. The.Tories are terrified that they may have to meet an economic crisis on the scale of 1929 without first having smashed the working class as they did in 1926.

Neither the Right-wing nor the Communist Party will be able to offer any real leadership in this situation. It: is here that the great attractive power-of the. aoa Labour League can be seen.

This programme of uniting workers in struggle for. higher i oa wages, the 40-hour week, for the extension of nationalization and against the H-bomb, is the only one that -can solve the problems of the working class in a socialist sense.

The National Assembly of Labour will take place at a critical moment in the development of the struggle. It can usher in a new ‘Mionrity Movement’ based on the trade unions and Labour Party that will lay the basis for the defeat of the Right and the emergence of a working-class based on 1 Marxism.

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