I see the question of what position an anarchist organisation should take to elections in trade unions has popped up on a couple of threads recently so I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread on that question alone. It might be worthwhile to read the WSM position paper on the unions as part of this discussion, see http://struggle.ws/wsm/positions/tradeunions.html
I'm addressing the Irish situation and Irish anarchists specifically as I don't see a point in repeating the ideological debate of the international movement here - I'm happy to do that in one of the major forums if anarchists from outside Ireland want to do so.
In terms of Irish anarchism there is no real controversy about anarchists going forward for election to 'rank and file' positions like union rep., shop steward or I think branch committee and/or trades council. ( I may be wrong about the last two - I'm just saying so because WSM members have held both positions as various times in the past without controversy. )
Likewise there is no disagreement that an anarchist cannot take a position that involves having power over the membership, as it says in the WSM postion paper No WSM member will accept any unelected position that entails having power over the membership. A few years ago we had a member resign over just this sentence because she wished to (and became) a branch official in SIPTU.
The disagreement that seems to exist is how does an anarchist organisation deal with elections to such a position in a trade union. And in particular the examples of Des Derwin and Carol Anne Duggan who were both rank and file factory workers who ran for national SIPTU positions as part of a proclaimed strategy of building a rank and file movement in SIPTU.
The WSM position paper says
We fight to change the role of the full-time officials - not to change the individuals who occupy the positions. Their decision-making powers have to be removed and returned to the rank & file membership. They should be elected and paid no more than the average wage of the people they represent. They should only serve for a fixed period of no more than five years after which they return to ordinary work. The unions will have to win the demand for jobs to be kept open in order for this to be realistic.
and
Where revolutionaries can gain enough support to win election to national officerships in large unions, or indeed small ones, this support should not be used to merely elect a candidate. Instead it should be used to fundamentally change the structure of the union in such a way as to return power to the membership and turn the officers into administrators and resource people rather than decision makers.
The Aims and Principles of Organise! don't address this question directly, but they do say
While rejecting the trade unions as beyond reform we will continue to be active in them at a ‘shop-floor’ level to fight for working class interests at work. We will however be promoting workplace resistance not standing in union elections on so-called ‘radical’ platforms.
However in person and online individual members of Organise have strongly expressed the opinion that Organise! is against any support for radical candidates running in union electiions beyond the rank and file level.
That is a summary of my understanding of the respective postions of the two organisations - it is possible I have missed policy statements from Organise! on this question although I have spent a bit of time checking their website.
It is my opinion that there is no real gap between the two organisations of any importance because there are no strong contradictory written policy expressions of such a gap. There is clearly tactical disagreement of this question but in terms of the WSM we admit that this disagreement is the subject of internal debate and in terms of Organise! we only have individual expressions of particular positions on this.
I think we should however to very wary of a tendency to seize upon the small difference between the two organisations that may exist and blow this up into a major issue to 'explain' the need for two seperate organisations. If you look at trotskyist politics you will see that happen all the time - for them it makes sense because organisation A needs to 'prove' it is the real leadership of the working class while organisation B are a dangerous set of renegades who seek to lead the workers away from their real leaders. That sort of analysis of differences is why trots often hate the trot group that is closest to them (and from our POV identical) many that any other.
So having outlined what I see as the positions and having warned of exaggerating differences I want to look at the actual question of what position to take with regard to radical candidates for non rank and file positions.
I'll start off by saying that I actually think both positions quoted leave quite large areas uncovered and contain contradictions within them.
The first question is what position should an individual anarchist take to a union election in general?
I'd argue that they are not identical to parliamentary elections so we cannot simply extend our analysis of parliament to the unions. There is a tendency in anarchism to do so and thus reject any idea of elections and indeed voting but neither Organise nor the WSM have taken such crude positions in the past so why do so here?
For the sake of argument lets assume we are talking of positions that are subject to at least some level of mandate and recall as is the case with the SIPTU examples under discussion.
There are at least three possible general positions an individual anarchist could take
1. Never to vote for any candidate, no matter how radical or rank and file.
2. Only to vote for candidates that have a track record as a rank and file activist and who are standing on a platform of greater union democracy and running as part of building a rank and file movement.
3. Voting for one candidate or another in any election where there seems to be any real difference between what the candidates stand for.
These are the questions an individual anarchist faces whenever their are elections but they are also the questions an anarchist organisation faces unless it decides simply to stop functioning as an organisation each time this question arises.
My own position as an individual is between 2 and 3 because I recognise that which individual gets elected to a post in SIPTU can have a big impact on what happens in the union in relation to what sort of support workers in struggle get from the union. But in relation to the public position of the anarchist organisation I've tended to argue for a position in the WSM that is closer to 1 than it is to 2!
As I've become aware of the contradictory nature of my own positions on this I've tended to gravitate over time to 2 as I reckon its pretty daft to do one thing but argue for the organisation to say something else.
In general I think this is one small example where the tiny and insignificant size of anarchist groups in the last decades has led us to take positions of purity on the expectation of having no impact anyway and hence not paying the price for positions that sound good but would deliver problems.
I think its useful to do a mental exercise where anarchists are no longer a tiny fringe within a particular union but instead are the major oppositional force in it. A situation where a large minority of our fellow workers pay real attention to what we say and may well act on the advice we offer.
In that situation the anarchist influenced vote might well be enough to swing most elections.
I'm presuming this is in the context of most of our effort being in building a real rank and file movement within the union - one that is capable of delivering real solidarity whenever workers go into dispute.
In that case are we better in such disputes to have a union executive dominated by right wing professional union bureaucrats trained in HR colleges. Or one dominated by rank and file workers elected from the shop floor on a program of promoting union democracy and militancy.
One such executive will work to limit militancy, restrict solidarity, isolate struggles and look for legal hoops through which workers must jump before taking action. The other may well do the opposite. Remember this would make all the difference as to whether workers in dispute are 'official' and thus qualify for strike pay.
I think if we are ever that successful the answer to the question of elections will be very, very obvious and the punishment for advocating the wrong answer will be very, very severe.
