Review: From Militancy to Marxism
Reviews of his booksScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
BOB PENNINGTON IN THE SIXTIES and seventics, writing bonks on the problems of industrial relations became a growth industry. Ex-Labour cabinet ministers, one-time union bureaucrats, 'learned" academics and needless to say Fleet Street jormalists, all Jostled each other in the queues outside the publishers to get in on the act. The price for their expert opinion was the rate for the job, which narurally was a hell of a lot more per hour than the troublesome workers they were writing about ever boped to get
Their conclusion varied. One lot might favour a more enlightened management — they were the employers who consuited you before they gave you the rack. Others opted lor tough management. But almost without exception, they all came down against the extremists - that "bloodyminded minority — who they insisted were leading the sane, sensible and essentially moderate British worker, down the thorny path of class conflict. It seemed to escape their notice that ever since there had been bosses and workers, class conflict has gone on.
Now from the other side of the track, Alan Thornett, 25 years a car worker at Cowley. Oxford, and 21 of those a shop steward, has written about building the union in the car industry, Unlike the former authors he makes no concessions to academic derachment or so-called impartiality. He is a committed trade unionist, a socialist and a Marxist' who knows that the class struggle determines what goes on in industry and society, and insists that what determines the outcome of conflict between management and state is the reactions and attitudes of individuals to the class struggic.
He rightly pays tribute to what I suppose Messrs Kinnock and Hattersley, would now describe as the "loony left'. These are the 36 people who built and
Alan Thomell, From Militancy to Marxism, Left View, 19.95. Trimshop women join the strike, July 1959 1956: crossing a picket line developed the trade union movement in the Morris plant at Cowley'. As he says: Some of them are still there today. fighting the same fight and defending the same principles.,. who faced and face every day, not just the pressures of the track, but both the struggle to organise and the attacks from management' He chronicles how these "unsung heroes" organised the union in the plant. It was never easy. Victimisation was like a Damoclean sword that hung permanently over their heads. In the thirties when the place was owned by the unions hating William Morris, joining the union was almost tantamount to asking for the sack.
Nor were the carly post-war years exactly haleyun days for trade unionism. It was 1956 before management were forced to stop using redundancies as a means of arbitrary sackings. A strike in the British Motor Corporation, albeir ar Cowley and Longbridge only supported by i minority, but given the powerful boost of a boycott of BMO cars by TGWU duckers. forced the bosses to the negotiäting table. Management was then lorced to concede seniority and agree to consultation before sackings took place.
But positions like shop stewand and convenor still remained high risk occupations, people like Frank Horsman the 1GWU convenor were victimised, and although the workers took strike action. the national union leaders accepted a solution that whilst stopping him losing exmployment meant he was
employed in the body plant next door, reducing his effectiveness as a trade union militant.
He was not the first, nor would he be the last to pay the penalty for the collaborationist practices of the paid officials. Thornert shows how time and time again the union militants on the shop floor did not just need to keep their eyes on the management, but also needed to keep glancing over their shouldes at what their oflicials were getting up to. He points out how "They were happy for the branch to spearhead the initial union organisation of the plant and send them thousands of pounds every month from membership dues: but when this resulted in a militant fight with management they were not so keen.
The officials wanted
icy to Marxism
consultation and negotation with the employers, which meant they saw their role, not as representing the workforce in taking over control of conditions in the factory, but as mediating between capital and labour.
What emerges from the story of Cowley and this holds truc for every other workplace, be it factory or office, is that the unremitting bartle against management, and the struggle to bring the unions under die control of the members is a herculean task. It is not something that can be left to chance, nor can it be dependent on either workers or stewards spontancously reaching the right conclusions. Even militancy, desirable and necessary as it is, on its own 1s not enough. There remains always in the author's words the constant need to link the
Strikers 1956 day to day struggles on the: shop floor to the struggle for a socialist programme'
Thornett recognised that need quite early in his trade union life and it was nor long: after starting work at Cowley that he joined the Communist Party. It was not long cither before he realised that the Communist Party did not base itseit on the methods of the class struggle and he also began to recognise that many of its members in the unions, particularly those in full-time or leading positions, were themselves enmeshed in the union bureaucracy.
Unlike many who have left the Communist Party he did not finish up sat behind the desk in the personnel office or make his accommodation with reformism. Instead he joined the Socialist Labour League at that time the largest and most significant of the Trotskyist groups. What appealed to him about the SL.L, and the same thing appealed to quite a number of other serious worker militants at that time. was its determination to turn its intellectuals and students towards building a base in the workery movement. Further more its insistence that the crisis for the working class was a crisis of icanership, accorded very much with his own experience and that of the other stewards in the factory. They only had to look at Transport House and the antics of the Labour leadership to-know that was certainly CORPOCT.
In time he was to leave the SLE not because he rejected Trotskvism, but because be Was convinced it was not serving the interests of the working cliss and had become bureaucratically degenerale. Despire its malformations and t doubted sectarian and ultra-left pracuices, the SEL. had provided accesss to the Transitional Programme and the works of Icon Trotsky. This meant that Alan and the SEL members in the Cowley plant were able to edurate themselves and were not disarmed when faced with a political ellensive from the employers. or the Tory and Labour governments. Nor were they drawn into the trap of the class collaboration advocated by the tanion officials
This chabled them to lead a fight ar Cowley against wage restraint, and against anti-trade union laws whether they originated from Labour's Barbara Castle or Edward Heath's Tory governmentUnlike many militants who could not counter the bosses! arguments that talling sales and rising costs meant redundancies, the Trotskvists at Cowley would demand open the books" and call for a shorler working week with no loss of pay
Being Marciss they did not restrect their campaigns to factory issues or the issues of British politics. They reocgnised the threat of imperialism and supported the liberation war of the
REVIEWS
Vietnamese peoples against the USA, and atacked the complicity of the Wilson government in this shameful war. Unlike the reformists, the Trotskyists in Cowley did not tell the workers leave things to us" they argued for the workers to take the authority into their own hands: Naturally this carned them the undying hatred of the bosses, the union burcaucrats, the right-wing Labourites and the press - such policies hear the hallmark of subversion.
Eventually, an unlioly alliance berwcen the media, and the union officials, assisted hy the bosses: was used to undermine the militants ar Cowley. In 1982 Alan Thurnett was framed and sacked Today management is back in the saddle and thanks to those reasonable people who believe in 'realismi' the unions are weakened, the workload has been intensified and the threat of victimisation is again in the air.
Cowler stande as a testimony of what can be achieved by political urganisation on the shop floor and equally it bears testimony ro be treachery nf the union bureaucracy. This is why From Militancy to Marxim is a book to be read. It shows the potentiai that existed during the upsurge of militancy in the sixties and seventies, and brings our how that militancy was diverted and centually betrayed by the labour bureaucracy, thus making Thatcher's anti-union crusade all that casier. For the working class the price of TUC realism' is indeed a heavy LOne
Furthermore the book shows that employers can be defeated and the bureaucracy can be swept aside, providing the marxist movement has won a base in the mass organisations of the working class, particularly in the workplace. and in the unions. Unlike the 'experts" who want to interpret industrial relations, this book if a serious attempt to show how - with the methoris of the class struggie and the use of marxiam — we can actually change them, so the working
37 class can rule society.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 2 July/August 1987