rules
THE GROWTH OF new realism in the trade unions is bound up with the rise of the Kinnock-Hattersley leadership inside the abour Party. The most powertul allies of Sinnock and Hattersley are not actually the rightward-moving thinkers of the LCC (Labour Coordinating Committee) and Marxism Today, but the trade union bureaucrats who have the power to influence the outcome of struggles, most notably the miners' strike and the fight against rate-capping.
Inside the party, Kinnock has constructed an alliance with the right-wing trade union leaders on the National Executive and pulled Ron Todd's TGWU into line with NUPE's soft left leadership trailing behind. The goal is to persuade the trade union bureaucracy to collude with a right-wing Labour government who will control the trade unions by making use of key aspects of Thatcher's anti-union legislation such as pre-strike ballots.
This new realism has three main aspects. First, it is a strategic response by sections of the bureaucracy to the new relationship of class forces under the Tories. The starting point of the philosophy is to avoid the class struggle and any independent action by the working class against either the Tories or the state. In fact it relies heavily on the notion of 'benign neutrality' of the state in order to impose its version of Thatcher's anti-trade union laws by laying out a tramework of legal rights for the individual which militate against collective action.
As John Edmonds of GMBATU put it with almost touching naivety, 'the law should be on the side of the kitchen porter and the chambermaid and not Murdoch'. Such a strategy will hold the working class back from struggle and, in the context of mass unemployment and weakening trade unionism, lay the basis tor the creation of an incomes policy with a statutory minimum wage as the baseline.
The second goal of the so-called new realism is to unite the trade union bureaucracy behind Kinnock and the Labour leaders on the grounds that it is the only alternative to Thatcher. This strategy involves sabotaging and isolating any struggles that break out in the interest of 'unity': witness the miners', railworkers' and printworkers' disputes. Such a strategy is designed to present the Labour/trade union alliance as a real alternative for the bourgeoisie.
The third aspect of new realism, and this is also its Achilles heel, is that it is based on defeats and setbacks for the working class. INTERNATIONAL No November December 1986
labour bureaucracy. combat its influence in the trade union movement. The advance of the Labour left through the Bennite struggle and the increased radicali- sation among important sections of the trade unions in the period after 1979 was a signifi-
a stage-managed annual Labour Party conference, firmly GRAHAM TOPLEY examines the growth of the new consensus politics and proposes the outline of a strategy to OK Andyer, Moore/ Refley August conference, 1986 cant develoment. The miners' strike in parti- cular opened up tremendous possibilities for the development of a stable class-struggle current across the labour movement.
CURBS ON UNIONS SURREND
The defeat of the Benn-for-deputy campaign, however, followed by the defeat of some of the combative sections of the class by the Thatcher government, in particular the defeat of the miners, has led to the growth instead of a 'soft left'/right wing Ilance behind Kinnock. This represents ejection of class struggle methods (that is Scargillism) in favour of class collaboration.
The essential utopianism of the new realist project resides in its being based on defeats and unemployment, since it cannot therefore deliver anything to the working class. In the context of the economic crisis the room for material retorms is increasingly squeezed. A strategy which accepts the legitimacy of the bourgeois state to determine what resources are available and which
PRIVATISATIONS T&G shackles the working class to the state could be rapidly shaken by an upsurge of militancy which would bypass it completely.
It is ironic that the supporters of such policies make so much noise on behalf of the so-called 'new servant class' and the lost millions. While accepting the need to seriously analyse the restructuring of the worktorce and the question of nonunionisation, the growth of part-time and low paid work, we must reject the framework offered by the new realists and the sometimes thin ideological cover given for this by the icc/Marxism Today current.
As capitalism moves deeper into crisis full-time jobs are being replaced by part-time and temporary jobs. Employment in manufacturing continues to decline relative to jobs in the service sector. Blue collars are
GMBTU CALI SMU being displaced by white collars. Women, particularly part-ume workers, are more ikely than men to take new jobs that are going. The electricians union, the EETPU was the first to come up with a coherent response to the new trends, with its strike-free package offered mainly to electronic companies.
Now GMBATU under John Edmonds purports to take up the challenge of developing a new strategy for the changing labour movement. The unions are being advertised as offering help to individuals such as advice with mortgages, cheap holidays and so on. Edmonds is clear that the unions should not promise what they can't deliver, that is: an end to low pay and the prevention of job losses.
Wapping
For the realists like him struggle through collective action should be abandoned in favour of some nebulous concept of the needs of the individual. What is emerging is a strategy of individual rights backed up in law as a clear alternative to collective trade union action. Ihe mass meeting and participation would be replaced by pre-strike bal.
ots arbitrated by management and the state. Not very reassuring for the security of the 'new servant class'. perspective between out-and-out right wingers such as Hammond and, to a lesser extent, Bill Jordan of the AEU, there are moves in Hammond's direction. Edmonds accepts that much of the approach of the EETPU towards more clearly defined 'business unionism' cannot be ignored. His own white collar section, MATSA, has adopted a package of services to attract potential recruits to the high-tech sector. While Edmonds refuses to concede that deals should contain any so-called 'nostrike' clauses, he does accept binding arbitration, flexibility of labour and single status for workers. He is quoted as saying that "The EETPU has set an example and we have to follow them' (Financial Times 22/3/86). A recent agreement by Panasonic in South Wales is an example.
Edmonds is not alone or even particularly original in identifying structural changes in the workforce, but he is alone in taking his perceptions to such rigorous lengths. He plays on the fact that the movement is, in his view, male, craft and activist (sic) based and recommends new forms of organisation. Clearly the organisation, structure and internal democracy of the unions would have to change in order to accommodate, for example, the influx of part-time women workers. But the new realists' only meaningful step in this direction appears to be the adoption of key aspects of the Tories' anti-union legislation!
In fact, Hammond's role as the right-wing battering ram of the new policy of consensus cannot be underestimated. He rejects class-based industrial conflict in favour of mutually beneficial cooperation, pragmatically embracing social and technological change. The problem for the left is that the EETPU, along with the AEu is no longer alone. Edmonds, as we have seen, is prepared to launch glossy single union agreements to complement the individual rights angle; and even Todd and Morris at the TGWU are talking about the union adjusting to a changing labour market—-new realist speak for rejecting the class struggle in favour of class collaboration.
In the 1970s Barbara Castle and Harold Wilson had to withdraw the then Labour government's proposal tor reform', In place of strife, on the grounds that it threatened the independence of the
unions. Callaghan, a decade later rounded on the 1980 tuc Congress to ask 'What can you offer? Can you offer anything to a new partnership?' Kinnock now realises that he does not have to offer a real partnership to organisations which don' nave the power or the ability to deliver on it Unemployment and structural change have INTERNATIONAL No 7 November/December 1986
weakened the union movement. It has already accepted the leadership's belief that it must proceed with 'respectable caution'. Ron Todd as leader of the biggest union and formerly on the left, summed it up; 'You cannot put the clock back. We are at another part of our history' (quoted in Nere Statesman, 29/8/86.)
The crucial question, however, is whether the new realists are correct in their assessment of the plight of the labour movement, and the short answer is that they are not. Of course, over the last ten years there has been a decline in employment in industry as op posed to the service sector -- although it is
'Hammond's role as the
right-wing battering ram of
the new policy cannot be
underestimated' less pronounced than is usually assumed. In Britain there has been a cumulative decline of 17% over 11 years from 1972-83 (See International Viewpoint No 96). But does this inevitably mean a weakening of the organised workers' movement? There is a relative increase in the weight of wage earners and unions in the public sector, but why should this automatically mean a weakening working class militancy or strength?
The paralyzing of telecommunications centres, just as hard as shutting down the mines, the steelworks or even the car industry. Obviously some working class bastions have been weakened, but many still remain. There has been no fundamental weakening of the trade union movement as a whole. There has been a decline in the rate of unionisation,
but it is less than the drop in employment. In comparison with the 1930s the weakening of the trade unions is nowhere near as severe.
We reject any idea that nothing can be
done in the unions except battening down the hatches while waiting for an upturn. The left today, while not abandoning the fight inside the Labour Party itself, must engage in the fight for leadership inside the trade unions. We cannot rely on a policy of fighting inside the party while relying on the friendly support for some left allies in the unions. Serious consideration needs to be given to the project of building real roots inside the trade unions, to the creation of a class struggle current across the labour movement, prepared to fight the reformist bureaucracies all the way.
To combat the drift towards new realism the left needs to develop a programme to resolve the crisis in capitalist society through demands for workers' control of industry Moore and by mobilising the interests of the working class which are independent of the bourAndrew geoisie. There is a clear need for revolutionary socialists to develop a long-term strategy towards the trade unions and not short-term projects with no permanent basis in the movement. * We should reject the division between the Labour Party and the trade unions. Struggles inside the trade unions confront the same politics as those in the Labour Party. * We should be building support at the base; campaigning for rank-and-file democratic control must be at the centre of any programme for the unions. We should advance a programme of democratic retorm based on the right to mass meetings, workplace branches and the right of women and Black workers to organise autonomously within the union. * The demands of women as workers and trade unionists should become more central in campaigns and activities. Such a programme would include relating to questions of discrimination, equal pay, unionisation, nursery tacilities and detence of the VHs. * We must develop demands for a shorter working week with no loss of pay, work sharing, a genuine programme of job creation and a minimum wage at a realistic level, not tied to an incomes policy. In short a programme of anti-capitalist demands which meet the needs of the working class and begin to resolve the crisis in its favour. * Any strategy for socialists has to be based on workers' control as opposed to 'social ownership' and 'freedom and fairness'. The new realists have addressed themselves to some fundamental problems within the labour movement today. However their solutions are dangerous and provide cover for a dritt to the right. Our starting point must be the independent interests and activity of the working class and the need to act collectively. New realism goes in the opposite direction — towards an industrial strategy in the interests of the ruling class.
South Africa still refuses to release the black box flight recorder mounting. JOANA FERREIRA examines the impact of Machel's
Piers Cavendish/ Reflex THE DEATH OF Mozambique's president Samora Machel on October 19 in a plane crash on South African soil raised an immediate question: was this another of the outrages carried out by South Africa against Mozambique, (and country after country in southern Africa) over the past decade and more. The conviction of South Africa's guilt in this latest tragedy was echoed in declarations and demonstrations in the region, from among the oppressed population within South Atrica itselt and - unpreceden-
- in a violent demonstration by Mozambican youth against the South Afri-
Omission building in Maputo. Whether the international commission of inquiry into the crash will be able to prove South Africa's culpability or not, however, is actually secondary to more fundamental considerations.
South Africa has been waging a large-scale war of economic and military destabilisation of Mozambique for years. This has included direct military attacks — South African Defence Force (SADF) bombings and commando raids — as well as economic pressure such as the strangulation of the railways and harbour system that had been a major earner of foreign currency for the Frelimo government. Most damaging, however, has been the war waged by South Atrica through the so-called 'Mozambique National Resistance (MNR). Trained, supplied and organised from South Africa, the muR have been attacking Mozambique's transport and communication networks, energy supply lines, agricultural and mineral production units, and the rural population itself, with terrible effects.
Even after Frelimo was forced into signing the mis-named 'non-aggression' Nkomati Accord with Pretoria, in March 1984, South Africa's war of destabilisation has not let up. The capture of documents and other material evidence at the MR's Gorongose headquarters, in central Mozambique, in August 1985, provided incontrovertible proof of the continuing direct involvement with the mur of top-level South African political and military figures.
The South African response was to shift the main rear base of its muR operations into 10 Malawi in an attempt to mask its own conti-