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LRC: Help develop a Political Life in the Trade Unions!

Marie Lynam
14th September 2010 at 18:58
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There is a powerful movement developing in Britain in opposition to the attacks against the workers and the population by the current coalition government. But Britain is not isolated. It forms part of a world balance of forces favourable to the workers and to the resistance against capitalism and its wars.

This is why the Cameron government is aware of its own weakness. It fears the mobilisation of the British workers, because it sees the mobilisation of the masses in Greece, France and South Africa among others. And it senses this world balance of forces.

Clearly capitalism and imperialism are in total crisis, whilst the Workers States and Revolutionary States - such as Cuba, China, Venezuela, Bolivia and Iran – advance. Also – and this is of crucial importance – the experience of the Russian Revolution and of the Soviet Union have not been lost. It was because the USSR was superior that capitalism made the Marshall Plan. It was to compete economically and socially with the Soviet Union that capitalism in Western Europe adopted certain ‘democratic’ measures (like allowing Communist MPs) and measures of nationalisations that provided capitalism with rational, efficient and cheap infrastructures.

The working class has a historic memory of what it can create and build. The fact that it is entirely victimised and excluded in capitalism highlights the obvious fact that capitalism cannot incorporate the working class in the leadership of society. Capitalism accepts no class pluralism. It is its interests that concerns it, and only its interests. It talks about ‘pluralism’ - and does not mind the communists and socialists making pluralism with it. But capitalism never makes any pluralism with the political representatives of the working class, unless it has something to gain - like defeating the workers somewhere else.

There is a lack of a political leadership to discuss these matters. The workers are looking for a political leadership; and as the Labour Party gives none, they turn to their Trade Unions, making the Trade Unions play a degree of political role.

For example, the Tube workers’ strike organised by the RMT and TSSA Trade Unions shows a certain level of political consciousness because it is concerned as much with public safety as with jobs. These Unions seek to make links with the general population, and the same goes for the PCS Union as it defends the public services.

The TUC gen. sec. Brendan Barber has recently announced that a campaign is to be launched ‘calling on the public to join Unions in defending public services and jobs’. This is certainly positive inasmuch as it shows that the TUC cannot remain passive in the face of the present situation. The question now is: How is this to be done?

It can only be done by organising functional Popular Committees of Trade Unions, claimants, Labour left and progressive organisations.

What limits the workers is that they cannot intervene directly. There is no genuine democracy in the Trade Unions because there is a bureaucracy that impedes the ordinary workers’ intervention. There is a Union bureaucracy resting, in part, on capitalism. The invitation of Mervyn King of the Bank of England to the TUC Conference proves the point.

But it is not enough to denounce the Trade Union bureaucracy. There have to be proposals for full workers democracy in the Trade Unions. For example, this means the right of instant recall of all representatives, for them to be elected directly and only receive the average workers wage; above all, there is a necessity for a political life of discussions in the workplaces, the Trade Unions and the wider Labour movement. The LRC comrades need to become political envoys of the Labour Left in all the anti-cuts organisations and Trade Unions anti-cuts activities. They need to create groups of Union-Labour activitists who show that the revolutionizing of Labour demands the entry of the workers in Labour, from below. A little like the firemen in uniform entering the Norfolk Coalition against the Cuts: The workers - in their capacity of the builders of everything and as Trade Unions - need to enter Labour from below. When this is achieved, those who propose the formation of a New Party will drop this idea and join in; and I have no doubt many of them will be very useful.

There are those in the Trade Union leaderships who want to give the impression that the class struggle does not exist; and that somehow there is a common interest between workers and bosses. This is why the TUC makes relationships with people like Cameron, Clegg and Cable. This is also expressed for example in the attitude of Sally Hunt of the TUC and of John Monks of the ETUC who said that the Israeli attacks on the Marvi Marmana was ‘disproportionate’ and ‘out of all proportion’. These Trade Union leaders, and the layers that support them in the Unions’ structures, do not oppose capitalism. They only think that capitalism goes a little too far. With them at the helm, the transformation of the Unions is impeded and most importantly, the penetration of the opinion of the ordinary workers inside the Labour Party is blocked. Such leaderships are the gate keepers of capitalism in Labour.

But despite the existence of such leaderships, workers and dockers have intervened on a world scale, from California to Malaysia, refusing to handle Israeli ships. This has to be discussed in the Trade Unions. And the LRC comrades need to bring such discussions themselves in the Trade Unions, calling for democracy; repudiating the bureaucracies that are imposing their inoperative reformist ideas on the mass of the workers. And getting for themselves comfortable lives, fortunes and places in the Lords, as rewards.

There are elements of an anti-capitalist programme in the resolutions passed at the TUC Conference. The same goes for the programme of the Peoples Charter and in the Peoples Agenda. Crucial to such a programme would be the expropriation of the banks under workers’ and Trade Union control; but for this to be envisaged, and eventually applied !... there has to be a transformation in the functioning of both the Trade Unions and the Labour Left.

Clearly the Trade Unions need to discuss politically; but they cannot substitute for the Labour Party. No Trade Union can tackle the question of the use of nuclear energy (versus wind, water or coal energy), for instance, by itself and without political representation. Therefore the Unions have to turn towards the Labour Left. And the Labour Left, the LRC in our case, must base itself on the Trade Union mobilisations. In this process new and more powerful forms of workers’ organisations will be created, revolutionizing the apparatuses that keep the Labour Party and the Trade Unions presently submitted to the capitalist agenda.
Marie Lynam for the Posadists in Britain, 14.9.2010

Tags: prepare the lrc for the class struggle. (1)