Democracy undefended
A spectre is haunting the Trade Unions—the spectre of the Communist Party. All the powers of “Labourism” have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre; Trade Union chief and Labour leader, Deakin and Lawther, T U.C., and Labour Government.
Faced with the problem of a series of unofficial strikes, the Trade Union chiefs and prominent members of the Labour Party lay the blame at the door of “Communist agitators” and threaten a variety of disciplinary measures such as fines and expulsion from office in the unions. In October and November. 1948, the T.U.C. issued two statements in a pamphlet entitled “Defend Democracy,” and, more recently, they published a further pamphlet on the same subject entitled “The Tactics of Disruption, Communist Methods Exposed.” The Communist Party replied with a pamphlet, “Defend Trade Union Rights.”
At the Biennial Delegate Conference of the Transport and General Workers’ Union held at Scarborough in July this year, the following resolution was discussed and carried by 426 votes to 208: —
“That no member of the Communist Party shall be eligible to hold any office within the Union either as a lay member or as a permanent or full-time officer, this rule to take effect from the beginning of the 1950/1951 electoral campaign.”
Throughout that Conference, from the address of welcome by the Mayor of Scarborough and the opening speech by the chairman. Brother E. Fryer, to the discussions on the last day around such matters as the withdrawal of British troops from Malaya, the Communists were challenged, threatened, accused and sneered at.
The 81st Trade Union Congress which opened at Bridlington on September 6th this year, continued the tirade. Sir William Lawther, this year’s Congress president, opened by accusing Communists of sabotaging the war effort and engineering recent unofficial strikes. On the second day Mr. Deakin claimed that the object of the Communists was to create chaos and confusion with a view to a coup d’etat. The attack was continued by Mr. Vincent Tewson, General Secretary of the T.U.C., and others. Even the Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee, when he visited the Congress on the third day, had to have a poke.
Some of the charges levelled at the Communists are probably correct, though many of them are undoubted exaggerated. We are making no defence of either side. We see the Trade Unions being used as a battlefield in a struggle between the Labour Party and the Communist Party, and this can only work to the detriment of the Trade Union movement and the working class as a whole.
The speeches by the Labour and Trade Union chiefs at both the T. & G.W.U. Conference and at the T.U.C. show clearly that their main purpose is to convince the membership of the unions of the necessity of ensuring the return of a Labour Government at the next election and of the need to help the Government steer British Capitalism through its present crisis. Fear that the Communists may do something to prevent this is the cause of the perturbation. Added to this, of course, is the fact that the present T.U. leaders, having climbed into their jobs, some of them decidedly lucrative, by means often similar to those they now accuse the Communists of employing, are anxious to kick away the rungs of the ladder so that no rival shall climb to challenge them.
The resolution passed by the T. & G.W.U. Conference. preventing Communists from holding office in the Union, is an example of what we can expect to see develop in other unions. Support for that resolution was called for in the name of democracy, but its application will deny the membership the right to nominate and vote for whom they please when they next elect their officers. That is not democracy. Trade unions are organisations of workers which aim to improve and maintain wages and working conditions of their members. Within such organisations are men of varying shades of political opinion and members of all political parties, and of none. Their attitude to the problems that they discuss in the Trade Union branches and conferences will reflect their political ideas. When they elect an officer, it is because they think he or she is the best candidate for the job, and they have often little or no consideration for the candidate’s political attachments. Now they are to be denied this free expression of their wishes. All nominations for even the most humble of jobs will be vetted, and only selected candidates will be allowed to go to poll. And the vetted ones will not all be members of the Communist Party. The opening paragraph of this article was a paraphrase of the first sentences of Karl Marx’s and Frederick Engels’ “Communist Manifesto.” We give the next sentence just as they wrote it:
“Where is the party in opposition that has not been described as communistic by its opponents in power? Were the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?”
Just so! Any opposition to the policy of the clique that is in power will be branded as communistic and the exponents will be dealt with accordingly. That is made obvious by the frequent use at the T.U.C. of the phrase, “Communists and fellow travellers.” That “fellow travellers” can include anybody, and it will.
Thus, it is hoped, the unions wifi be purged of officials who may influence the members against the tie- up between the policies of the Labour Party and the Unions. The Trade Union chiefs declare that these “disciplinary” measures are the will of the membership, but the speeches, cheers and boos at the T.U.C. do not necessarily reflect the membership’s sympathies. Even the decision at the T. & G.W.U. conference cannot be claimed to be representative. The agenda for the conference usually contains hundreds of resolutions and amendments, and no branch of the union could possibly consider them all and mandate a delegate. Even were it possible to decide on the resolutions, the election of delegates to the conference is on a trade group basis and not from the branches. The trade group, as such, gives the delegates no definite instructions, so they go to the conference unmandated and make decisions off their own bats, which, according to Mr. Deakin, are inviolate.
Incidentally, “The Record,” official organ of the T. & G.W.U., tells us that the conference also carried a resolution to the effect that,
“. . . while recognising the economic difficulties confronting the nation, expresses concern at the absence of tax reliefs in the budget, and the increased cost of living, and re-affirming a conviction that nothing short of a policy of increasing the purchasing power of money and an increase in the real value of wages will meet the needs of the people . . . .”
Modest as this resolution is, we hope Mr. Deakin and Co. will regard it as inviolate.
The Labour Party originated from the need to make the voice of the Trade Unions heard in Parliament. From that beginning it has grown and evolved to a fully fledged party of capitalist reform. It has outgrown its parent and now dominates the working-class scene. The unions which gave it birth are now made subservient to it. Whatever pro-capitalist policy the Labour Party may adopt, the Trade Unions must be brought to heel. The Labour Party attempts to operate a system of society that cannot be operated in the interests of the working class and it comes into conflict with the workers. Trade Union leaders, in an endeavour to save the Labour Government embarrassment and to justify its anti-working class actions, must oppose the wishes of their members. They try to suppress strikes, calling them unofficial and the work of Communist disrupters. Such strikes hamper the smooth running of Capitalism, and the Labour Government wants it to have a smooth passage. To keep Capitalism going the Government wants more production at lower costs. This cuts right across working-class interests and gives rise to industrial unrest. The Trade Union chiefs, handcuffed to the Labour Party, and some of them with their eyes on £5,000 a year jobs, have got to try to subdue this unrest. With cries of “the Nation’s need before sectional interests” they plunge in to do battle with their opponents and critics within the Union’s ranks. Any man or group of men who are likely to become a rallying centre for the workers in their struggle to resist the pressure on their wages and working conditions, will be branded “Communist ” and thrust out.
The Conferences and Congress are taken up with this battle between political elements, and the outstanding factors in a worker’s life, his wages and his hours of work, get scant consideration. Listen to Mr. Deakin at Scarborough: —
“We cannot promote extravagant wage claims —or even modest ones in some of the higher paid industries. I doubt if we can get any increases at all this time, and it is not leadership to suggest that we can.”
“You can’t get a forty-hour week now. It is a luxury it would be madness to ask for.” (“The Record,” August, 1949.)
The T.U.C., like the T. & G.W.U. conference, had little time for such trivialities as wages and hours of work. The more important job of lambasting the Communists took precedence over everything else.
Unless the workers start kicking soon they will find that they have been nicely clipped in the wing and their talons have been cut so that they are helpless to resist all that is coming to them during the next few years. When we say “start kicking” we do not mean “start kicking the present leaders out and putting Communists in their places.” That will not alter the situation except that the position of the two parties will be reversed. The Communists will be just as determined to cling to the jobs and to suppress opposition as are the Labour leaders. No, we mean start getting down to the job of running their own affairs instead of leaving them to the Lawthers and Deakins, start regaining control of their own unions, start realising that they have a class interest that is opposed to the interests of their employers, whether that employer be an individual, a company or a state.
The strength of the working class is in its numbers. Its weakness is in its lack of understanding of its class interests. Remove the weakness and the workers are all-conquering—they can remodel society as they wish.
W. WATERS