THE TORIES may have privatised British Rail, but privatising London Underground is all New Labour's own work. For all the talk of a "Third Way", it is clear that John Prescott's plans are no different than the Tories'. When BR was sold off, Knapp led the RMT into a dead end -with a policy of holding back on any action, waiting until Labour is in office and hoping everything would be put to rights. The bankruptcy of that strategy is now obvious to all. This time round there can be no excuses. The only way to defend tube workers is through industrial action.
The RMT will announce the result of a ballot of its LUL members on June 3. A positive result will lead to action.
The task of winning the ballot has been made harder by Prescott's strategy. Instead of a clear sell-off he has opted to focus in the first instance on privatising the LUL infrastructure workforce. Train crew and station staff are being fed the lie that their jobs will be protected. But leaked documents from LUL management show that all staff will ultimately be affected, and that even in the short term they have been given the green light by the government to launch an attack on all tube workers' jobs and conditions. Every worker is threatened by privatisation. RMT activists have pumped that message out over the last weeks. But a successful ballot is by no means the end of the story. LUL management, with government support, are talking of a legal challenge on the grounds that any action against privatisation is by definition a political strike and thereby unlawful. Whilst the RMT leadership is confident of its legal arguments it must be prepared to stand up to any such challenge by organising action in any case. The RMT has been prepared to sponsor campaigns against the Tory (and new Labour) anti-union laws and has long had policy to oppose them in action. In Leaked this instance it documents from has no alternaLUL management tive.
Knapp's stratshow that all staff will egy of quiet be affected by lobbying of the government has privatisation clearly failed: not even one of the RMT's sponsored MPs was prepared to come out in opposition to Prescott's plan. Industrial action co-ordinated with action by the ex-BR engineering workers gives the best hope of success. Whilst it will not be easy, postal workers around the country have already shown that it is possible to organise effective action outside of the legal framework. Indeed, in the recent LUL Northern Line dispute the RMT pickets turned back many other tube workers who were thereby technically in breach of the anti-union laws. Part of the settlement of that dispute was an undertaking from LUL that all disciplinary action against any such tube worker would be dropped. The RMT rally against privatisation on April 30 was used by Knapp to try to defuse tube workers' anger. A sorry affair, it saw MP speaker after speaker attempt to bore the RMT membership into submission.
On June 11 the RMT's LUL Regional Council will be holding its own rally. This will be a different affair. It must be used as a springboard into action, defying the law if necessary.