Exeter wildcat postal strike

This discussion is very useful. The communist position on the trade unions is one of the hardest for the majority of the working class to understand and that difficulty undoubtedly feeds back on the ability of communists themselves to understand it and explain it.

Just a couple of points:
- from the standpoint of bourgeois ideology, all talk of a ruling class is seen as a kind of nutcase conspiracy theory. The very idea that there is a bourgeoisie with a certain degree of class consciousness, compelled to organise its forces against the working class, goes against the basic premises of democratic bourgeois ideology;
- the same goes for the question of the state
- revolutionaries can certainly fall into conspiracy theories, but they can also fall inito this democratic concensus according to which all the different parties and organisations act quite autonomously and for the motives that they proclaim
- as has already been pointed out, it is not necessary for the whole of a bourgeois state apparatus to be involved in the whole 'plot' for the plot to exist. On the contrary, bourgeois state organs go out of their way not to involve all the members of the apparatus in the most important decisions
- equally, for the machine to work effectively, especially when it is a machine for controlling social conflicts, which is what the unions have become, there has to be a layer of honest footsoldiers who sincerely believe in what they are doing. The machinery and its ideology have all sorts of mechanisms for ensuring that the good intentions of the honest footsoldiers are turned against the interests of the working class and, in the case of shop floor representatives, against the class interests of those individuals as well. To return to 'Hegelian' (actually, marxist) mode, this is an expression of alienation and doesn't require conscious plotting at every turn.

I would say that the Exeter strike is a perfect example of this. Maybe the guy really didn't believe in the union line he felt obliged to forward to his fellow workers, but the effect is the same: as a representative of the union, he has to come out against the struggle.

yeah, but the point i made which you haven't addressed is that he's legally obliged to say those things (afaik), and he may well have been very active in the wildcat, with or without union backing - i.e. it could have been the case that he got disciplined, the union didn't want to know, and he spoke to other workers about it and they walked - and because he hadn't resigned from the union he still had a legal obligation to urge a return to work. Even if this isn't the case its a plausible hypothetical, which seems to undermine your point that he was neccessarily acting against the working class on the basis of a compulsorary public statement.

thats gold dust, the communist position is so difficult to grasp that communists don't even grasp it themselves! reason is cunning

but yeah, bourgeois ideology presents all sorts of things as unthinkable, but its not mentioning 'the ruling class' i'm saying comes off as conspiracy nut but saying that even low level union types are actively conspiring with the bosses, which you seem to admit is not the case (neccessarily even).

Written before I saw the previous two posts.

This doesn’t surprise me at all, and I would see that it is quite typical. When the 1989 national postal strike ended the workers were informed that the union had made a deal, and that the strike was over. Actually they were left to negotiate the return to work separately at their own offices. As a result they workers went back to work in dribs, and drabs. This is something that is very difficult to challenge. Even though there were regular mass meetings in most Post Offices, the workers didn’t have their own organisation that was capable of taking over the leadership of the strike. In our office, we had a mass meeting to discuss/be told about the return to work. Many workers were angry, and I argued along with others that we should continue the strike. The branch sec. argued that the deal wasn’t great, but that we couldn’t continue the strike on our own. Of course I argued that we should send delegations to other offices, but I think that this was the point, which won it for the return to work. The workers did not have the confidence to take control of the strike for themselves. After the strike their was a lot of anger including one of our neighbouring offices holding a one day strike against the unions decision, and marching down to UCW (as it was then) House to throw eggs at the building, and union officials. Obviously things like this show that there was a great deal of anger against the union’s actions. There is a huge leap though from protesting against the union to actually forming a network of strike committees that are capable of assuming the leadership of the struggle.

In the present period, workers taking things this far in small strikes is difficult to imagine. Nevertheless the task of revolutionaries is to argue for mass meetings, and then for the mass meeting to elect a strike committee to run the struggle. Also it is important to remember that behind every strike lies the potential of the mass strike, and behind the mass strike lies the spectre of the workers’ councils. Mass struggles can just erupt seemingly out of nowhere.

Joseph writes:

Yes Joseph, you are right. We are not at the crunch, and the fence will support a lot of people. It is not the task of communists, however, to sit on the fence. I think that it is very easy for militants to be drawn into a unionist dominated ideology (not that I am accusing you of this here). In fact if you look at the CWU today I can remember its leader Billy Hayes being a leading member of the ‘broad left’. Even those who advocate a more radical ‘rank-and-filism’ can end up acting as a left cover for the actions of the union. The task of revolutionaries is to consistently argue against the unions, and the ideology of unionism.

Demogorgan303 writes:

I agree with this fully. I do think that it is important to stress the point acting, and it is also important to point out why this happens. I think that to suggest that the branch secs. are conspiring against the workers does not explain our position clearly, and can in fact make it look quite ludicrous.

He continues:

I agree with this too. The union officials even at the top though will justify there actions as being on behalf of their members, and lots of them will believe what they are saying. Our task is to show that the interests of the working class are actually opposed to those of the union, and how shop stewards however radical they talk, will be forced to either attack the working class or to break with the union.

To summarise, yes, the union often workers together with the management against the working class, but there are also times, many more I would say, when the unions own independent dynamic leads them to act against the workers. I think that the ICC often oversimplifies this process, and that a clear explanation of the dynamics involved would convince more people of our position.

Devrim

Alf,
You seem to agree with what I am saying. What I am asking people in the ICC is whether they could express a little better the fact that:

Joseph,

The things that you write about the Exeter strike are only one example, and a very small one at that:

He is legally obliged to say these things, but comments like this do not do anything to advance the stuggle. In fact I would say that they act against it. This is just one small example from one small strike. As the struggle intesifies what else will he be 'obliged' to do? In fact I believe that whatever their intentions union officals are 'obliged' to act against the working class.

Devrim

Hi again Joseph

What difference does it make what the reasons behind the statement were? It speaks for itself: workers shouldn't go on strike without "their" union. This position is that of the bourgeoisie and it doesn't matter if it's Tony Blair, a dedicated militant or an alien being from Venus saying it. The position defends the class rule of the bourgeoisie regardless. Even if we take the line that the postal workers all knew "what's really up", what about all those other workers outside that immediate struggle? What does it say when a worker, in public, spits on the solidarity shown to him by his comrades? How does that push forward the class struggle??

The other question posed here is how to militate to workers that are trapped in the illusion of unions. Do we pander to those illusions or do we expose them? If this was a question of racism, you would be undoubtedly disgusted if concessions were made to racist ideology because "that's what workers think". In today's age, unionism is every bit as destructive as racism, sexism, nationalism, etc. and, in fact, more so because the dangers of the latter are more obvious while unionism is far more insidious. The idea of going along with workers' illusions is a fundamentally leftist practice and opens the door to all sorts of anti-proletarian practices. Why should some illusions be "tolerated" and others not?

as far as i'm aware i haven't said otherwise, thats just an off-the-shelf left communist truism

Dev, while i see your point thats just plain reductio ad absurdum. the point i'm making is precisely that its entirely possible that simply being obliged to say these things is exactly the kind of straightjacket that will piss off decent militants and so provides a potential point of rupture with the union apparatuses, and labelling such militants conspirators is (a) false anyway since as you say what is so insidious is the institutional dynamics and not old-fashioned plotting and (b) not likely to convince a fellow worker come-low level union type that there is a contradiction in that dual role

Hi Joseph K..
While I agree with the left-communists that unions as organisations are not on the side of the workers, I would also argue that in some cases they are not on the side of the bosses either, some unions, such as tube drivers, seem to be pretty militant, largely because they are in a position of strength, I think we need to recognise that the main aim of a union, like a political party, is to support and expand itself.
Sure the union rep will be obliged to do things, but workers are obliged to do things every day. It is a question of how much compromise can we accept, I'm not sure if being a union rep is worth it, but it is worth joining the union in many cases, simply for legal support in case of injury/dismissal. Although when push comes to shove they probably won't be too helpful.

ok, but there was a tendency to collapse 'the unions' into a homogenous unit with the implication that the stewards being disciplined are just as guilty of scheming as the apparatus themselves - Devrim called you on this too, pointing out unions in general, and stewards in particular, don't generally think like that, and thats how the system works.

you're attaching a lot of weight to his words, which as far as i'm aware are on pain of punishment - sure he should have resigned from the union, joined the wildcat, sent delegates to call others out and sparked a social revolution, but ffs he just said something the law made him - i don't think we can condemn someone as an agent of the working class everytime they don't openly defy the law, otherwise we're going to have a pretty long list of people up against the wall

The issue is how such requirements could help distinguish the decent militants from the future bureaucrats, and how the unions using unofficial actions for their ends could open up autonomous unofficial actions, since their control has to be indirect or hidden. these are the important points for communists, the potential for rupture with the business union, the potential for straightjacket experiences to spur on workers to act alone etc, not just denouncing people as agents of the ruling class left right and centre.

btw, if you want some real leftism to denounce:

link - if that quote is accurate should we denounce the workers as agents of the ruling class?

I think we all agree with this. But the point remains that in order for a "decent militant" to act as such he or she must leave the union.

Unofficial actions that remain connected to the unions are a sign that the movement is still weak, still lacking confidence in its own strength. The grip of union ideology retards the movement at every step. Now this is not to say that the mass of workers - and even union stewards - cannot come to a full consciousness through these class confrontations. Throughout the Eighties, all over the world strikes began to take on a far more dangerous anti-union character and union membership began to decline.

The point here is not that workers can break outside the union - they clearly can. The point is really that they have to, if they are to advance their struggle.

When someone acts against the interests of the working class what should we do?

To bring back my Army analogy, there's a difference between grunts, NCOs, officers, and generals. Each level has a different level of assimilation into the ruling class. Shop stewards are the NCOs of the union, enforcing immediate discipline, even if they're not privy to the machinations of the top levels etc. It's obvious not everyone can be an NCO. Of course, if workers completely identify with the union structure then their potential for any autonomous action is crushed and their struggle is defeated.

It's also worth noting in this specific case, how isolated the strike was. It never spread beyond the sorting office, and even delivery staff didn't get involved. Did the union try to spread the strike or were there other union reps saying "no, no, you can't go on strike with them ... horror of horrors, that would be illegal and they might blame the union!". I know which bet my money's on.

I think that we, and the ICC are in agrement here. I certainly agree with what you have wrote above, and I suspect Joseph would too. My point is that the ICC, are not always this clear, and do end up simplifying things. You yourself wrote about this strike:

Devrim

For me, that the trade unions are the main enemy of the working class is clear.
For those that doubt the role of the unions, the intelligence of the bourgeoisie and the unity of the bourgeoisie faced with the working class, look at Poland, 1980.
There was a massive strike wave building up internationally in the 70s. Its tendency was to spread and overflow the unions. In 79, I was in the Midlands where thousands of striking steelworkers from the north and Scotland were on the streets. In France there were massive and violent strikes. Automous strikes broke out in Poland, self organised by the workers and directed against the state. Political demands joined economic demands and vice versa. There were strikes in other countries of the eastern bloc. The east and western bloc, at dangerous loggerheads on the imperialist front (the west was about to undertake its programme of "forward defence", ie provocations into Russia controlled air-space), suddenly, in the face of the Polish strike, joined up, acted in a coordinated way, and created, through money, diplomacy, the church, all the offices at their disposal and coordinated at a high level, the Solidarnosc trade union. Just as the "victorious" bourgeoisie had created unions out of nothing after 1945 in Germany and Japan, the bourgeoisie (not all of them but those that counted) were well aware that trade unions were their weapon against the working class.
In the past (after the unions were integrated into the state around WWI), in the present, and most certainly in the future, the trade unions will be the main defenders of the national interest against the working class. Nationalism is the greatest enemy of the class, Devrim suggests. But who have been the greatest purveyors of nationalism but the unions? You could say it was the far right of the bourgeoisie but the far right only take over when the unions and the left have completed their nationalist tasks of defeating the working class. And if you talk about the nationalism of the far right today, BNP for example, their influence in the working class is so small as to be insignificant. But the union's influence....?
I liked Magnifico's post, 11.9. about the "double life... of a union official". I was a convenor of stewards for the T&G representing a number of factories during the 70s. We were all very militant, strikes, demonstrations, meetings, etc., but I felt schizophrenic. Going along with and fighting alongside militant workers was great, but the whole involvement of the union machinery, its officials, its politics, the "negotiations", activities, showed a finely tuned attack on the workers from a structure masquarading as their "defenders". The higher you went in the unions the clearer this became. They loved the militant stewards, this was the union's credibility, and they knew they would ultimately have control over events because of the tried and trusted framework of the trade union structure as it had been developed in decadent capitalism.
Where I work now there are dozens of union committee members and stewards. Some of them are creeps after lower management jobs (from whom they are indistinguishable) or after extra money of kudos from meetings, etc. Some are genuinely trying to fight for the working class, but they are fighting a losing battle, despairing and hemmed in on all sides, subject to the pressure that the trade union structure is so good at.
Before I became a steward, we were involved in a spontaneous wildcat, organised by ourselves for an immediate economic demand. No one out of hundreds of workes, apart from a handful of hacks, were union members. The management soon had the union in (they didn't want to know before) to sign everyone up. After a decade becoming well involved in the unions, I fortunately came across the positions of the ICC and my schizophrenic contradictions were resolved. It has made sense ever since and makes even more sense in a historic and revolutionary perpsective.
And just a post script: at the time I understood the role of the unions and resigned from its activities (soon after the bosses "invited" me to leave), many of the workers I worked with were tearing up their unions cards after the umpteenth union "sell out".

At no point did I suggest that the unions were not anti-working class, and I certainly wasn't only talking about the nationalism of the far right. In fact I suggested that what is the greatest danger is a bit of a stupid discussion:[=Devrimquote]As for Baboon's quote about them being the 'main enemy', I would argue that nationalism is. We had an internal discussion a few weeks ago about nationalism and religion with me arguing that nationalism was the most important danger, and them arguing that religion was (more relevant to Turkey than Britain). We quickly agreed that it was a very stupid discussion.

What my main point was is whether the ICC are sometimes not clear enough on this issue. I tend to speak too much group speak.

Devrim

I know this is current affairs but it's turned into a thread on the unions.
Devrim, when I said "you" in relation to the union question, I meant "one", ie, somebody could say. I wasn't ascribing those views to yourself but making a general point. I have seen enough of your posts - one (you) doesn't have to look at too many - to see you have a consistent method taken from marxism. If we disagree, this would seem to be a minor point, but I don't really see any great disagreement in our positions.
The "greatest danger", the "main enemy" of the working class could be different things at different times, in different places, changing with particular circumstances. But I think overall, in agreement with the previous post, that the trade unions are the main enemy of the working class, not least from the point of view of its organisation and revolutionary perspective.
Just some personal reminisces in order to underline this point. In 1984, as a minor part of the intervention of the ICC in the miners' strike in GB, a pivotal moment in the class struggle internationally, I went to South Wales, Yorkshire and Lancashire. In South Wales, though there were many demonstrations involving other workers, the unions kept them locked up and the miners isolated. There were rumours at the time, confirmed later, that P.M. Thatcher had done a deal with the ISTC steel union to keep the giant Llanwern steel plant open in exchange for the unions keeping the workers at work. Union discipline prevailed and the steelworkers, on pain of the sack without union support, carried on working.
The division of labour between Thatcher and the Trade Unions against the working class was a masterstroke. the bourgeoisie spent five years preparing for it, right up to the provocation to strike. The slimy, ex-claims lawyer, Scargill, had his "left wing" image deliberately boosted by the ruling class and its media and his (and his union's) "defend the NUM" was a trap the workers were unable to break out from. In South Wales, there was plenty of feeling for the miners among workers, but it didn't translate into active solidarity on any scale.
Arriving in Yorkshire was incredible. There were police road blocks on all major and most minor roads into the county. I wasn't worried about getting nicked but I didn't want to lose the leaflets I had and the police were also confiscating cars. I stayed at the pit village of Dinnington, near Rotherham with an old mate. Dinnington was where the National Coal Board offices were flattened by a giant bulldozer driven by striking miners (the unions denounced them). I thought of the amount of armour the miners had available - massive fork trucks, JCB's, bulldozers, it would have taken artillery or an air strike to stop them, and they would have certainly turned the police around.The bourgeoisie had also ruled out the army, not least because active soldiers on leave were joining their fathers, uncles, brothers and comrades on picket lines and demonstrations.But what was really lacking was the extension of the struggle and the development of class consciousness. This was locked up in "defend the NUM", ie, defend the trade unions. To go against this was only real road to even a partial victory, but the workers were locked in a false defence. This was confirmed in discussions I had with miners in Yorkshire. A dozen years earlier, the NUM officals had been attacked by South Wales and Yorkshire miners, knocking them aside in spreading their struggle. Scargill needed a police escort because he was being attacked by miners. Now he was inflated into a hero to the miners, made thus by the media from the right wing press to the trotskyist rags. "Defend the NUM" swung the outcome of the strike in the bourgeoisie's favour.
In Lancashire, among other things, I was stopped from entering a power workers' union meeting. Workers wanted to strike in support of the miners, but again the electrical supply unions said any wildcat would result in instant dismissal. It was the NUM's "business".
The railway unions were the same. They organised meetings of "solidarity" with the miners with the latter carved up and boxed in at the back.
The miners' strike in Britain, 1984, clearly emphasised (on top of all the other union defeats, one after the other) that the unions were the main enemy of the working class. They remain so and certainly will be in the future. The trade union influence, not to be underestimated, will be a negative force on the working class up to the revolution (and possibly beyond). In fact part of the revolutionary perspective, part of the development of class consciousness, lies in the struggle against the unions. In the 84 strike, the miners and other workers who joined them, show enormous courage, elan and spirit and even when they were roundly defeated, one wanted to keep with the dignity of the working class. But the lesson was that this was a crushing defeat and that the trade unions were behind it. The workers, all workers, have to at least tend to confront the unions and their constriction, extend their struggle and develop their consciousness. But the unions, the NUM and all the other union structures, as much a part of the state as the right wing government they said they were against, strengthened their grip as time went on, and led this strike to a decisive defeat that was felt internationally.