The Socialist Workers Party has produced a new handbook aimed at "activists who want to make the unions fighting organisations".
Given that Socialist Outlook shares that laudable aim, it should be possible to recommend the book. However, despite certain strengths it is a disappointment - although not a particularly unexpected one.
The book starts off with a useful section that demolishes the argument that the unions are finished.
Callinicos uses up-to-date statistics to prove that rumours of the unions' death have been greatly exaggerated.
The government's own Employment Gazette is quoted: "The decline in union membership overall since 1989 can thus be acby the decline in manual membership."
Callinicos effectively
makes the point that the working class contains far more people than some would have us believe -CPSA members in the DSS or school office workers are as working class as the few remaining car workers in Cowley.
There then follows a section on Rank and File organisation which is interesting as it gives an inkling of why the book has been produced - the recent turn of the SWP to creating "a network of Socialist Worker sellers" in the workplaces.
Callinicos contrasts the SWP's policy of "rank and filism " to the work of the Communist Party-led National Minority Movement in the 1920s.
Key tasks
He argues that the questions involved in building a national rank and file movement can wait for the future, meantime activists should carry out the following four tasks - build strong sectional organisation, prioritise solidarity work, work with and against union officials - and What's omitted from the list of tasks is also very important.
What about union branches, for example? Nor is there any mention of the need to link together militants to fight. Joining the SWP is the only option they are given.
It is necessary to try to unite serious activists now in the unions - we cannot wait until everyone sees the need to build a revolutionary party.
In most unions there are some sort of broad left or other left type of organisation.
Those formations are important, even if in most cases they are not as effective and open as they might be.
Organisations like the Socialist Teachers' Alliance. (STA) represent a real gain and can play crucial roles in struggles, as they did in the Anti-SATS Campaign, and can again in the fight on class cred.
Yet the SWP "new line" has been accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of SWP teachers from active participation in the STA at a national level. It ain't half sectarian, mum! SWP is splitting from Broad Lefts to 'build the party' SWP civil servants have There is no mention of also withdrawn from in- any of the attempts that have volvement in some of the been made to build links sectional Broad Lefts in the across the various unions CPSA. such as Trade Union News The book ends with some or the Socialist Movement thirteen pages of lists of "use- Trade Union Committee. ful addresses". If a civil serRationalisation vant in the CPSA wants to contact their union headquar- The book is therefore a raters they will find the number. tionalisation of a fundamenBut they will look in vain for tally sectarian turn by the the address of the CPSA SWP. Broad Left!
It is a turn away from working with the rest of the trade union left, in favour of building the SWP - to the detriment of the wider movement.
It will divide the left in those areas where the SWP have any influence. Nevertheless, the task of building the left and unifying it in action will go on - with or without the comrades of the SWP.