Trade Unions and the Next Slump. Are We Backwoodsmen?

Mr. Will Lawther, President of the National Union of Mineworkers and Chairman of the T.U.C., in a speech at Durham on January 22nd. made some statements about the increased production campaign that deserve careful examination. He urged his audience of miners to recognise that “production was as much a trade union responsibility as the fixing of wage rates, and those rates would have to hinge upon production.” “Those who argued that a trade union should have nothing whatever to do with production, were backwoodsmen with minds of the bow-and-arrow era.” (Manchester Guardian, 24 /1 /19.)

According to the report in Reynolds News (23/1/49) he also indicated what is his reason for taking this view. He said: “Does any delegate here believe that we can under a nationalised industry run for the benefit of the nation, ignore the factors of production?”

In taking this line Mr. Lawther is challenging the position taken up by the S.P.G.B. He is by no means the first trade union official to do so. Mr. J. R. Clynes did, exactly the same 30 years ago. Along with other Labour leaders he was, at that time, supporting the Government’s increased production campaign. He disageed with criticisms made by the S.P.G.B. and declared :

“If ever there was a risk of overproduction, causing unemployment, there is none now. For at least a dozen years there must be conditions of shortage, which, with the best energy and effort, cannot be removed. We are in arrears. We need have no fear of the supply exceeding the demand.” (Reynolds Newspaper, 30/11/1919.)

Within eighteen mouths of Clynes’ prophecy there were over 2,000,000 unemployed. Mr. Lawther has, perhaps, not forgotten this but he thinks that things are different now. “Let us cease to talk about what took place a generation ago. Those days are dead and gone.” (Reynolds News, 23/1/1949.)

But are they gone? And if so, why? Mr. Lawther’s first answer would be that referred to in the passage from his speech quoted earlier, that under nationalisation industry is “run for the benefit of the nation.” Let us suppose for the moment that this is true. It lands Mr. Lawther straight into a difficulty. Not more than 20 per cent. of industry is nationalised, so that about four-fifths of the workers are employed by private capitalists. So it would seem that while the workers in nationalised industries ought, according to Mr. Lawther, to work harder the other workers have no reason to do so. It also means that in the opinion of Mr. Lawther, Clynes and the other Labour leaders were wrong to advocate increased production in 1919.

But, of course, the assumption about nationalised industry is not true. In all industries production is carried on to meet the demands of the market. All industries are concerned with selling goods at a profit; the only important difference being that in private industry the capitalist receives his profits direct while in nationalised industries he receives his interest on State bonds through the government. (In the mining industry this is at present about £15 millions a year.)

In his own industry, as Mr. Lawther well knows, if British mines cannot produce coal in competition with Polish and other mines some unproductive mines will be closed down. The Polish miners, too, are being urged by their Communist government to increase production and the time will arrive when world coal production will exceed market demand and all’ the miners will feel the effects, whether nationalised or not.

The British railways are nationalised. Has it escaped Mr. Lawther’s notice that because they are now running at a loss thousands of women are being dismissed? “The dismissals,” says the Sunday Express (23/1/49) “are part of the drastic economy measures planned following the heavy loss in the first year of nationalisation.”

And has Mr. Lawther not noticed other signs of the times? The Daily Herald (24/1/49) reported that Russia is invading the cycle market. At the Brussels Cycle Show Russian machines are on display at what the Herald calls “highly competitive” prices. The Financial Times (22/1/49) reports that the cotton industry is worried about the revival of Japanese competition and Sir Raymond Streat, Chairman of the British Cotton Board, is in U.S.A. to discuss with American manufacturers what can be done about, it. The Manchester Guardian tells us (25/1/49) that “employers and trade union leaders are to talk to Mr. Harold Wilson next week about the danger of German competition with the British engineering and shipbuilding industries.” Referring to this and to the cotton developments, the Guardian says: “These are early moves in a struggle that is bound, within the next year or so, to become one of the most bitter issues of industrial and foreign policy.”

Oil is another industry in which supply is overtaking demand ; and the Times (24/1/49) tells us that world production of wheat and. other grains is rising: “Last year’s cereal shortage has been largely overcome and during the next five years surpluses may well be in sight.” This does not mean that too much will he produced for the needs of the world’s population, but that supplies may be more than the market will take. Indeed the Director-General of the United Nations’ Food, and Agricultural Organisation has just said that “more than half the world’s population will go to bed hungry tonight.” (News Chronicle, 28/1/49.) If the hungry ones have not money to buy food they do not exist in the eyes of the capitalists who are seeking to sell their foodstuff profitably.

The facts of the capitalist world give us our answer to Mr. Lawther. He says we are in the “bow and arrow era.” Very well, we have shot our arrow in the air and we know that it will land on its target. The next move is with Mr. Lawther. He can choose his own time but he should not delay it too long or he will find that events have overtaken him as they did Mr. Clynes 30 years ago.