National Shop Stewards’ Conference
The Socialist Party gets it half right
The decision taken by the National Shop Stewards
Network at a special conference on 22nd January to put its growing weight
behind a national anti-cuts campaign, with organised labour at its core, is
welcome news. The rising tide of popular support amongst union militants for
the proposal to break the link with Labour – first brought to prominence by the
CPGB-ML and belatedly adopted by the erstwhile Labour entrists of the Militant/Socialist
Party (SP) brotherhood – is a tide that will for the moment lift all those who
appear to be cutting the chain anchoring them to the Labour party. The cannier
Trotskyites of the SP have caught the mood of the most militant sections of the
class, demanding that resistance be founded on a refusal to countenance ANY
cuts, with no special pleading tolerated for the hundreds of Labour-run
councils preparing to wipe out jobs and services. By leading this charge from
the front, the SP have delivered what could turn out to be the death blow to
their Trot brethren in the already seriously ailing SWP, whose Right to Work
(RtW) campaign is so visibly in hock to ‘left’ Labourism. In so doing,
however, the SP is also sowing the seeds of its own eventual destruction, as
the working class learns to distinguish false friends from true.
The SP’s enthusiasm for “a new workers’ party”
is a relatively recent development, following on from years in which the
Militant line continued to parrot the notion that Labour is the “mass party
of the working class” and not, as Lenin explained, a bourgeois party
staffed by workers. Many of the SP stalwarts at the National Stop Stewards
Network (NSSN) conference harked back to the ‘80s, when Militant was prominent
in the poll tax uprisings and a Militant-run Liverpool council ordered the
building of hundreds of council homes in defiance of central government. A
great deal of individual courage and sacrifice was indeed displayed in those
struggles, primarily by the working class itself, but also by some councillors
under the Militant spell. Yet because Trotskyism throughout it all continued
to corral the movement behind Labour reformism – no matter how thick the
‘revolutionary’ gloss – the end result politically was to keep the Labour party
afloat as the first wave of overproduction crisis started to bite. This was a
tense moment for bourgeois rule, and it was precisely in major working class
strongholds like Liverpool where imperialism most crucially relied upon Labour
to keep proletarian anger running down the social democratic drain. Helping to
shore up working class support for Labour in such areas helped capitalism over
a very bumpy period.
Yet those in the SP who now announce that Labour
cannot, after all, be “changed from within”, continue to stake their
political credibility on their own supposed ‘golden age’ of the ‘80s. In this
they are in essence no different from those around RtW and the Coalition of
Resistance (CoR) who still nurse dreams of resurrecting ‘old’ Labour from the
ruins of Blairism. ‘Old’ Labour enthusiasts all take as their centre of
gravity the myth of post-war Labour’s ‘golden age’, when the Attlee government
helped the British bourgeoisie escape the spectre of communist revolution by
portraying the temporary concession of a welfare state as the New Jerusalem,
simultaneously cajoling British workers into ignoring the treatment being meted
out by imperialism to their brothers and sisters in Ireland, India, Greece and
Malaya. The Militant myth of the glorious ‘80s is no more based in fact than
the ‘old’ Labour myth of Clem Attlee’s New Jerusalem. Further, the SP’s
insistence on blinding itself to the chauvinist thread running through the more
recent Lindsey protests, acknowledging only the (clearly admirable) class
struggle aspect, shows how unready this Trotskyite party remains to challenge
the close links between the labour aristocracy and imperialism.
That the SP has not shifted from its fundamentally
left social democratic foundations was demonstrated recently during the Unite
union’s leadership election, when it refused support to the one candidate
openly questioning the union’s link with Labour, preferring to support the
Labour machine man on the spurious basis that this would avoid an open right winger
crawling in through a split in the left. Yet it is precisely this phony
argument which is used by all those whom the SP now denounces for staying in
bed with prevaricating Labour councillors: Times are hard and it’s better to be
kicked by your friends than your enemies!
The struggle at NSSN conference
The foregoing precautionary notes on the SP’s
glaring unsuitability for the job of leading the working class in the task of
emancipating itself are not intended to obscure the progressive character of
the overwhelming support – 305 to 89 – won by the resolution fielded by the
majority on NSSN’s steering committee. The majority resolution argued that
“…it is now time to … take our work ‘out to the wider
community’. We believe that the way to continue carrying out our founding aim
“to support trade unions in their campaigns and disputes” is now
clearly centred on the fight to STOP ALL CUTS whether through redundancy,
reorganisation or privatisation. We believe that two sections are key to
stopping cuts:
“1) Trade unions at local, regional and
national level (and trades councils) with the potential power of 6 million
organised workers, who can organise mass strikes and coordinated joint action.
“2) Anti-cuts campaigns against cuts in
services, and including students unions, tenants and pensioners organisations,
welfare claimants and disability groups, which can all initiate demonstrations,
occupations and other direct action without being bound by legal ballots and
other restrictions (as shown graphically by the recent student events); or they
can organise support to back up trade union actions to stop job cuts and save
services.
“We therefore propose to … launch an
‘NSSN Anti-Cuts Campaign, bringing trade unions and communities together to
save all jobs and services’…”
The arguments against this
were many and varied, but certain common themes emerged in the course of the
day. One such was the plaint, started by George Binette of Unison and echoed by
various RtW and CoR types, that the labour movement is so much weaker than it
was in the ‘80s and the Labour party so much further to the right that the NSSN
would simply fall apart if it failed to find a way of accommodating wavering
Labour councillors. Insofar as this argument has any logic, it simply asserts
that the only way to maintain unity in a period of reaction is to become more
reactionary oneself! The vice president of the NUJ darkened the gloom by
arguing that, with only 27% of the working class unionised, it was wrong for
the majority to talk about the “sleeping giant of organised labour” – no
such giant at present existed. This ignorant view, which assumes that all
those workers not currently enrolled in unions run for the most part by labour
aristocrats are beyond redemption, again uses the weakness of the labour
movement to justify toning down the attacks on Labour, instead of recognising
Labour as the prime architect of that weakness. In one truly comical moment, a
fellow proclaiming himself to be a “Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist” (a
mythical beast indeed) warned the conference not to follow the SP line against
Labour lest we find ourselves back with the CPGB’s Class Against Class
politics of the 1920s. Whilst this gives far too much credit to the SP, the
poor chap might have actually succeeded in giving the conference ideas!
Another recurring theme amongst the
minority was the notion that any kind of political struggle within the NSSN
threatened to deliver the shop stewards’ movement back into the sectarian
morass, killing off the dream of a united struggle against capitalism waged by
workers with actual shop-floor experience. This fear is of course not
groundless, insofar as all the most vocal trends within the NSSN are
Trotskyite, revisionist or Labour reformist in character. All are varieties of
social democracy, all spread disorganising ideas in the working class, and so
all have a track record of disuniting the labour movement.
The SP is no exception to this rule,
however hard it currently blows against Labour. But it is itself a workerist
illusion to suppose that the best safeguard against such disunity is to make
every political party leave its ideological guns out in the lobby and rely upon
a gut consensus based on what Dave Chapple of the CWU (and for four and a half
years chair of the NSSN) referred to as “the spirit of the unofficial walk out”
which had boosted the confidence of his workmates in Royal Mail. In what
sounded like a resignation speech, Chapple said that if he walked away from the
NSSN, it would be because his union branch would not take orders from an NSSN
in which all major decisions would be taken previously at SP meetings. But this
ignored the fact that a clear majority on the leading body endorsed the SP’s
stand on the question of giving leadership in the anti-cuts movement. In an
even stranger effort to turn things on their head, an RMT sister spoke of what
she saw as a division between “domination” by the SP and the “democracy”
of the rest – an original method of evading the discipline of accepting a
majority vote that goes against you, and an odd way to promote unity. Whilst
she correctly drew attention to the sectarian “turf wars” between rival
Trots as a force for disunity, the solution is not to marginalise partisan
struggle but to raise the political maturity with which it is conducted.
Breaking the stranglehold of Labour upon the unions is a crucial first step in
raising the level of political struggle in the labour movement.
Tony Mulhearne of the PCS gave a straight
answer to the complaints about SP “imposition”, pointing out that anyone
who tries to change somebody else’s mind could be accused of trying to “impose”
his point of view. To which we should add another thought, at the risk of
comparing a small development with a much larger development. For much of 1917,
the Soviets were dominated by the Mensheviks. During this period Lenin’s
Bolsheviks did not threaten to withdraw their support from the Soviets, or
raise a hue and cry about the Mensheviks “dominating” the Soviets and “imposing”
their own reformist line. Instead they persisted in their struggle to build
the vanguard party of the new type, confident that as the revolutionary crisis
matured the workers and peasants would in decisive numbers come to recognise
the Bolshevik watchwords of Peace, Land and Bread as their own, and would learn
to transform the Soviets into instruments of proletarian revolution.
Where next for the NSSN?
A week after the NSSN conference, police in Manchester felt obliged to surround the NUS President Aaron Porter in order to defend him
from the wrath of his own demonstrating student members. The free political
lesson this provided for students – on the true role of Labour careerists who
pretend to ‘lead opposition’ to cuts whilst relying upon capitalist state
protection when that pretence is rumbled – is the same lesson currently being
rubbed home in hundreds of local councils where ‘ConDem’ cuts in jobs and
services are being implemented by Labour councillors. The first obstacle
blocking the resistance of students and workers to the capitalist cuts is the
fifth column of Labour influence.
When NSSN campaigners at a Coventry
against the Cuts meeting suggested putting pressure on the local council not to
implement cuts, Labour councillors popped their heads up to protest. By all
means have a crack at the ConDem government, they said, but leave the Labour
councils alone. Opposition to council cuts was not realistic as there was
nothing local councillors could do. According to an SP report (which we have no
reason to disbelieve) this resistance to a campaign against all cuts was then
backed up by the SWP, who protested that “there are many Labour voters and
most people aren’t opposed to all cuts”, so “for us to demand we’re
opposed to all cuts at this stage would be a mistake”. The report
continues: “Emboldened by this attitude from those opposing the NSSN, the
Labour councillor announced that the local Labour Party had coordinated with
local trade union leaders to launch a joint Labour/Trade Union anti cuts
campaign in Coventry” – a campaign, that is, NOT to fight all cuts, and
designed to drive a wedge into the existing Coventry Against the Cuts effort!
If the NSSN sticks to its
guns and faces down all efforts by Labour careerists and their allies to sow
division in the anti-cuts campaign, this will be a major step forward in the
struggle to break the link between organised labour and the Labour party.
Role of the RMT
A word remains to be said concerning the role of
the RMT, which took the leading trade union role in founding the NSSN back in
2006. Bob Crow’s attacks upon the anti working class record of Labour have not
lost their edge since the collapse of the last Labour government, and he has
repeatedly called for a campaign of non-cooperation with the cuts involving
both unions and local communities. The General Secretary was not present at
the NSSN conference, however, his place being taken by the union’s President,
Alex Gordon.
It certainly helped the majority cause that both
Crow and Gordon gave the seal of approval at the eleventh hour, but Gordon’s
speech served to remind us that breaking organisationally with the Labour party
– the RMT has long been disaffiliated – does not neatly equate with breaking
ideologically with social democracy. Gordon earned warm applause by saying that
the NSSN should remain inclusive and non-sectarian in line with its founding
principles, and should not “take a spectator seat” in the campaign to
resist the cuts. But when the NSSN spurns the spectator seat and enters the
anti-cuts fray, what should be its attitude to those whose continued promotion
of ‘left’ Labour threatens to weaken and disunite the working class, as is
threatened for example in Coventry? Should it lead the rout of the Labour
sectarians? Or should it link arms with them – in the name of “non-sectarianism”,
naturally.
Gordon appeared to suggest that the
central purpose of founding the NSSN was to lend support to a campaign, led by
the ‘left’ Labour MP John McDonnell, to push through the Trade Union Freedom
Bill (TUFB). The idea was to persuade parliament to moderate some of the worst
aspects of the union-bashing laws put on the statute book by Thatcher and
refined and consolidated by Blair. This snowball in hell had as much chance of
hitting its target as the latest left-Labour wheeze, a Bill to close some of
the legal loopholes through which company lawyers are able to secure court
injunctions against strikes. In all such cases now the only real purpose
served is to send militants off on a wild goose chase organised by ‘left’ Labour,
distracting attention from the need to build workers’ resistance without
kowtowing either to the courts or to Labour.
The TUFB distraction did indeed detain the
NSSN briefly at the start of its life, but to suggest that it was the NSSN’s
defining issue is to skew history somewhat. If all that the NSSN had been set
up for was to do a little parliamentary campaigning on behalf of the starlets
of ‘left’ Labour, it would not have survived and grown as it has. The spark
which has kept the NSSN alive and kicking so far has been the crying need to
build unions that are prepared to fight for the working class. In practice,
this can only happen by facing down opportunism within the unions’ leadership,
and that cannot but entail a struggle to uproot Labour party influence – not a
path down which the McDonnells and Corbyns of this world are about to lead
us.
However, Gordon’s
skewed version of NSSN’s genesis will of course suit those who, despite RMT’s
disaffiliation from Labour, set great store by the union’s special relationship
with its “friends” at Westminster like McDonnell and company. The quid
pro quo for the occasional union-friendly early day motion engineered by
these friends in high places is, of course, the steady backwash of social
democratic influence exercised upon the union.
Gordon shares with the SP a common refusal
to acknowledge the existence of the “British Jobs for British Workers”
chauvinism which compromised the class-struggle thrust of the Lindsey protests,
preferring to flatter the spontaneity of workers rather than help release them
from the burden of chauvinism put on their backs by Labour imperialism. Worse,
he is on record as supporting an Iraqi trade union federation which actively
canvassed delegates to Labour conference NOT to call for the immediate
withdrawal of British troops. He is also on record as dismissing the Iraqi
resistance as “shadowy bodies of armed men”. Indeed, he actually
managed to bounce his own union branch (Bristol Rail Branch) out of affiliation
to the Stop the War Coalition for a year by his fanatical portrayal of
anti-imperialist forces like Hizbollah as “terrorists”.
All this makes it clear that, Labour party
or no Labour party, Gordon’s track record of “awkward squad” militancy
needs to be understood firmly in the context of his continued enslavement to
social democracy. Whilst the RMT’s leading role within the NSSN is to be
welcomed, workers will be well advised to remain vigilant against attempts from
any quarter to steer the movement back onto the social democratic rocks.