Wapping assault
As we go to press the printworkers continue to fight for their jobs. DAVID JONES looks at the negative consequences of the print union leaders' "sweet reasonableness" in their conduct of the strike. MAY DAY demonstrations, organised to support the sacked printworkers, erupted into violence as the police ran riot at Wapping. Even the normally cautious Brenda Dean was heard to denounce the police for their vicious attacks on the pickets, their families and supporters. Yet despite the genuine outrage voiced be Dean, the print unions were back in court that very week to purge their contempt. This act was almost symbolic of the 'softly-softly' approach adopted by the print union leaderships in the vain hope that this would curry favour with public opinion'. It is precisely this approach which sees the print unions staring defeat in the face.
The possibility of such a defeat would have been inconceivable five years ago. The mighty print unions seemed impregnable, with massive financial reserves and the strength to force the Fleet Street managements to accept high wages and restrictive practices. Yet now they seem about to allow a multinational media baron to chuck them unceremoniously out of 5000 jobs and recognition rights on key daily and Sunday titles, in return for miserly compensation and a worthless, uneconomic printing plant.
This sorry state of affairs is another blow to the labour movement as a whole, still reeling from the defeat of the miners. Whatever brave face may be put on the eventual deal' with Murdoch, it will be a major defeat. It is clear that the bottom line for Murdoch is refusal to grant recognition rights to the NGA & SOGAT in the Wapping plant or to take back any of the militant workforce that have been sacked. The result has already been felt throughout Fleet Street with each management in turn imposing drastic cuts in the workforce, the introduction of new technology and an end to traditional work practices. Each workforce has felt powerless to oppose their employer, fearing that walking out on strike would mean walking out for ever.
The carrot dangled in front of the print union leaderships is the 'gift' of the Grays Inn Road printing plant to start their own paper. But without massive investment or subsidy, such as News International could provide if it so
wished, any labour movement paper produced from the plant, especially one born from such inauspicious conditions, would be bound to falter. The union management would end up sacking its own members and the whole idea of a labour movement paper be discredited in the process.
Needless to say the most keen on the idea of the union selling out their members in return for the plant has been the Labour leadership. Kinnock's office immediately issued a statement cautiously welcoming the idea, when even TUC chief Norman Willis bad attacked the notion. Such an approach is entirely consistent with the Labour leadership's support' for the print unions over Wapping. This has been as unstinting and inspiring as the support' given to the miners strike. Labour has a sorry record on the media. Instead of campaigning for its stated policy of breaking up the media monopolies, the Labour leadership kept silent when Robert Maxwell launched his bid for the Mirror. A press statement trom Kinnock's office attacking the bid was abandoned after pressure from Hattersley and a 'phone call from Maxwell. Maxwell has returned the favour by vicious campaigns against the party s left wing, and of course numerous sackings, lockouts and threats against his workforce.
The Labour Party's wretched role in the Wapping dispute was not entirely unexpected, nor was the capitulation of the TUC. Faced with the open connivance of the EETPU leadership in Murdoch's union-bursting operation the only serious defence of the union movement would have been to expel the EETPU from the TUC, and if necessary organise those loyal to the TUC into a new affiliated union. There is evi. dence that the EETPU leaders were not fully prepared for expulsion from the TUC, fearing a revolt in their own ranks and a damaging split with their other
right wing allies in the TUC. It is possible that such a move would have influenced the balloting in the AUEW elections against the right's candidate Bill Jordan, possibly further isolating the EETPU in the labour movement. But the principle of unity of the union apparatuses was placed above the principle of basic union solidarity in struggle, aud the EETPU has been given further breathing space to foster business unionism within the TUC.
More disappointing has been the pathetic response of the print union leaderships to the dispute. Years of inter-union bickering and job poaching had weakened the potential for a united response to the Murdoch gauntlet. His heavy-handed style of threats and sackings was a public relations gift to the print unions, whose public image was somewhat tarnished by the legendary wages and conditions on Fleet Street. Yet their obsession for staying within the law and sweet reasonableness resulted in the central tactic of a boycott of Murdoch titles. This has been a complete failure, with some titles actually registering an increase in sales since the dispute began. Alternative approaches of encouraging broad labour movement mass pickets, or drawing in the test of Fleet Street have been dismissed and discouraged. No one would pretend that the latter course of action would have been easy given the climate of fear amongst other Fleet Street workers. But a determined campaign for escalating solidarity action from the union leaderships would have generated much greater confidence than the empty calls to stop reading The Sun.
Now another traditional bastion of the trade union movement stands on the verge of defeat, as a ruthless employer threatens it with naked class warfare. Union leaders will no doubt conclude that even greater capitulation to the employers is the only answer. Others in the labour movement will draw the opposite conclusion and begin to organise within the unions for an equally ruthless class response against the employers. Meanwhile with the print unions weakened we can look forward to our daily newspaper diet being served up by ever fewer and more powerful press barons freed from any pressure from their workforce over media standards and impartiality. We can expect more Gotcha's, Mein Fuhrer's and Thrilled to Blitz's and more anti-union press crusades. We must make sure that any future Labour government not only repeals the Tories anti-union laws which have been used against the print unions, but alsotakes radical measures to reform the media itself.
INTERNATIONAL No. 4. Maylune 1986
Just how far rightwards is Marxism Today prepared to go? The evolution of Britain's two-bit 'curocommunist' sect would be irrelevant were it not for the support for their pernicious ideological 'innovations' in wide sections of the labour movement. PHIL HEARSE looks at the issues. MARXISM TODAY has become a br-word in the labour movement for putting forward right wing ideas as a new ind 'creative' strategy for the Icht. Typically Marxism Today has polemicised not only against far lett groups like the sWl', but also against a whole range of left wing forces, including Eric Hetter and Tony Benn, the Campaign Group of Mrs, Arthur Scargill and the NUM leadership and others.
But Marxism Today writers have often been cov about the precise political concluvons of their analysis. In some of Eric Hobsbawm's articles it has seemed that d coalition with the sor was beg advocated, and indeed Marxism Today recently carried an article by Mike Rustin which explicitly advocated such a course. Now it has begun to spell our the consequences of its ideas for the trade unions, in articles by John Lloyd (March 86) and Communist Party industrial organiser Pete Carter (April '$6).
John Lloyd, a writer for the Financial Times, discussed the problems and opportunities for the trade union movement in the light of the print dispute at Wapping. Llovd suggests that there is a straight choice facing the unions either the road of Arthur Scargill and confrontation class struggle or, alternatively, the road of Eric Hammond and the EEPTE! what Lloyd calls 'market based trade unionism. The strong implicaton of Lloyd's argument, since he makes it very clear that he regards Scargill-style class struggle as an unmitigated disaster, is that the trade union movement has no alternative but Hammondism with all that it entails. Iloyd adds that since Kinnock wants innovation and efficiency on the Japanese model, then there is no alternative to Japanese-style trade unionist as well -- business unionism. He says:
'In embarking on a productivist crusade
whose slogan is efficienot, productvity
and output, and whose role model is the
Japanese, Kinnock... will need as an
indispensable, but far from sufficient
condition, a collaborative style of in-
dustrial relations which -- as the
Japanese one seems to do •-- subordin-
ates nearly all cconomic needs to the
needs of the company, and above that,
to the needs of the country? (p. 16)
This may well be the logic of Kinnockism, but is it the position of Marxism Today? Indeed it seems almost obscene for a journal which claims to be Marxist to publish, at the INTERNATONAl No. 4. Mayiune 1088r
The miners' strike created a real broad popular alliance