John McIlroy reviews:
Inside Cowley - Trade Union Struggles in the British Car Industry in the 1970s
by Alan Thornett, Porcupine £11.95
ANYONE who believes macho management and attacks on shop stewards began with Mrs Thatcher and the victimisation of Derek Robinson should buy this book.
As you read the extracts of 1970s newspaper reports, stating that new investment in British Leyland was dependent on the hope that "militant moderate union officials can destroy the Trotskyist power base in the vital Cowley plant", you will see in a new light TGWU General Secretary Jack Jones's claim that he was transfering power to shop stewards.
Social Contract
Inside Cowley demonstrates convincingly the disastrous impact of union leaders' enforcement of Labour’s 1970s Social Contract in weakening workplace trade unionism and softening up the union membership for the brutal offensive of neo liberalism in the 1980s.
Alan Thornett worked in the Cowley assembly plant of BL from 1959, becoming a shop steward in 1963 and TGWU full time deputy convenor in 1967. The plant was unique in Britain. It harboured a factory branch of the Socialist Labour League (later Workers Revolutionary Party) over 40 strong which played a leading role in factory politics.
In his earlier book, From Militancy to Marxism, Thornett chronicled the making of militancy at Cowley, the winning of key stewards from the CP and management's strategy for regaining control, centred on the imposition of Measured Day Work to replace the traditional piecework system, and thus remove direct control over pay bargaining from the stewards.
Inside Cowley documents in absorbing detail the continuing attempts of the company to break the militant factory leadership and regain control over pay and production. Anchored in an analysis of events in Cowley, it is also an outline history of trade unionism in the car industry - and wider - in the 1970s.
1974 saw the birth of the Social Contract and the intensification of the management offensive. Removing Thornett was seen as beheading the stewards' organisation, and he was duly set up on fabricated charges. The book traces the complex interactions between membership, stewards, union officials and management.
The officials viewed militancy – and their exclusion from the plant – as a challenge to their function of accommodation with the company. Their role was to develop and finesse the attack on the leading stewards, although there were partial exceptions, notably Moss Evans.
Militancy in a car factory has perforce to be sectional at times, and often has costs for trade unionists. Management and officials were able to exploit sections of the membership who ignored the benefits strong leadership had brought them, and sometimes wives insulated from workplace struggle.
Media Witchunt
They used embittered ex-Trotskyist Reg Parsons, who had already been in touch with Jack Jones, to orchestrate an opposition in the shadow of a virulent media witchhunt against the left. Years later, TGWU full time officer David Buckle reflected on the crusade to "break the power of the Trots - we did everything we possibly could to try to break the backs of these people."
The result was an important defeat for the left: the Regional Committee split the 5/55 branch, the power base of militancy, and substituted a secret ballot of all members for election of convenors by stewards. As the media feeding frenzy climaxed, the convenor Bob Fryer and deputy convenor Thornett were removed and a new leadership around Parsons was elected.
It was nonetheless a partial defeat. Thornett retained his steward’s card and his base in the transport section because of the depth of support he enjoyed from the drivers. An inspiring section of Inside Cowley deals with the fightback, a crucial episode in the history of trade unionism in the car plants.
By December 1977, against all odds, the left around Bob Fryer and Alan Thornett had gained the leadership of the new 5/293 branch and won key positions in the convenor elections. At the heart of the matter was the fact that the Buckle-Parsons leadership opened the workforce to the management offensive: events proved militancy was the best protection.
Grass Roots
But if a key lesson of the book is that a strong base in the grassroots is indispensable, another is that it is insufficient. Lacking the resources to build adequate support at District and Regional level, the plant leadership was soon under renewed attack from higher levels of the TGWU.
The flimsy charges of "disruption" for challenging minutes; of breaking union confidence by distributing branch bulletins on the gate when management prohibited distribution inside the factory; the TGWU bureaucracy’s kangaroo courts; the attempts to ban the left from stewards' meetings; the manipulation of ballots - all beggar belief - if you don’t know the TGWU.
It hasn’t changed a great deal. If some sections of the trade union leadership fought against the bosses with a fraction of the ferocity they deploy against their own members we would be in Utopia today. But the story exemplifies, too, the imagination, determination and stamina of our best militants.
Trade unionism in Cowley was far from simply a factory affair. The Assembly plant branches were keenly involved in supporting local struggles - in the university, the hospitals and various battles for union recognition. The most notable of these were at Blackwell's bookshop and the Randolph Hotel, the Ritz of Oxford.
The book charts how principled support for these and other struggles incited the rage of somnambulant full time officials in a variety of unions. It depicts as well as the fortunes of the left on Oxford Trades Council and the fight for solidarity with groups of workers throughout the country. The fight against the social contract continued in the plant and at TGWU conferences.
As the social contract lost the support of union members, "left" union leaders, such as Jones and the AUEW’s Hugh Scanlon, imposed it through devices such as the "one increase every year rule" and "an orderly return to free collective bargaining".
Again, Thornett sees in the undermining of union democracy and the crucifixion of groups like the BL toolmakers who challenged wage restraint, the seeds of division and disillusion amongst union members which were to blossom under Thatcherism.
In a similar way the Ryder Report on BL, with its establishment of corporate bargaining and introduction of participation bodies disarmed the unions in BL. It also prepared the way for a new boss, Michael Edwardes, who would make more ruthless use of the ideology of joint interest.
The left lost crucial battles for plant-level pay against corporate bargaining – which was advocated by members of Militant, who espoused an abstract concept of workers’ unity divorced from the reality of the time.
Corporate bargaining developed the process – which commenced with the abolition of piece work – of removing economic conflict further from the control of the rank and file and the point of production. This strengthened the ability of full time union officers to horse. In turn the three tier "participation" structure at plant, divisional and national level sought – with some success – to imprint leading stewards with the logic of capitalist production and recreate them as cheer leaders for competitiveness and speed-up.
Very soon key stewards like Derek Robinson from Longbridge were pronouncing in Cars Council reports "we can grab that extra bit of the world markets and give ourselves the reputation we undoubtedly deserve."!
Fighting off sustained attacks by the leaders of their own union, the Cowley stewards had wage war on wider fronts.
Inside Cowley documents in macabre detail how Edwardes obtained the consent of convenors and officials for sackings and closures. Combine committee leader Derek Robinson built on Communist Party (CP) support for participation by leading a standing ovation for the BL undertaker.
Jones and Scanlon appeared with Edwardes in adverts captioned: ‘We’re all on the same side of the fence'. Once again there was a price to pay, commencing with Robinson's victimisation, ironically for signing a pamphlet supporting militant policies he had opposed in the combine committee. The AUEW leaders' sacrifice of Robinson again prefigured the future.
The CP was another important actor in this story, and as a former member Thornett well understands its role. The party claimed to have 48 members in a factory branch in Cowley in the late 1960s and early 70s. This provokes serious incredulity on the part of those who were around at the time. Whoever they were, they certainly didn’t punch their weight at Cowley.
As I write I have in front of me a copy of the CP's Comment April 29 1978. A letter complains: "For weeks now the ultra-left presses have been screaming about the threatened victimisation of Alan Thornett by right wingers in the Midlands TGWU. Hardly a peep from the Star".
The reason for the absence of coverage was not, as the complainant believed, because of the Morning Star's inadequate coverage of the labour movement. It was of course because the CP was in partnership with the TGWU bureaucracy in witch hunting Thornett. At Cowley, as this volume demonstrates, CPers were conspicuous by their absence, emerging at crucial points to cast their votes for participation.
When the Robinson affair erupted, the response of the CP Midlands secretary was to call on the Combine to organise a ‘deputation’ to management at Leyland House, Coventry. Their 110 per cent support for participation and its key ideological component, company viability meant the CP were unable to mobilise members to defend Robinson once Edwardes played his key card, claiming it was a choice between Robinson or closure – and the AUEW took the threat at face value.
After years of living with the daily possibility of victimisation, Thornett's career inside Cowley ended in anti-climax as he was sacked in 1982 for failure to renew his HGV licence. As he observes, those immersed in wider problems often neglect their own. By now, as Thatcherism developed, the ground was slipping away from the left. Thornett's dismissal opened the way for further victimisations and the drastic rundown of BL’s operations in Cowley.
The book might have benefited from some account of the organisation of production and working conditions inside the plant, the essential background to the struggles depicted here. It has little to say about the development of the Workers Socialist League which Thornett established after his break from the WRP in 1974. No matter.
A major strength of Inside Cowley is its insistence on the need to ponder experience to learn lessons from history. It has some useful points to make on the struggles against sexism and racism. It demonstrates in numerous ways how the lessons of yesterday can help counter today’s attempts by management to mobilise individualism and self-interest against collectivism in the working class.
Inside Cowley is a significant contribution to the story of workplace organisation and a valuable addition to the history of Trotskyism. It is a chronicle of past struggle and a handbook for future battles.
The conditions for remaking militant trade unionism exist, the fundamentals propounded here still apply. Suitably fashioned for new contexts and cultures, new generations and new problems. Inside Cowley is indispensable reading for all trade unionists facing this challenge.