LONDON-Britain is in the midst of its biggest wage upsurge since 1974. What is at stake, however, is not the success of this or that wage dispute, but whose answer to the overall crisis is going to be accepted.
Nor is it the bosses' inability to afford this or that wage claim, even in the present range of 15% to 20%, that is at issue (although rises of much more than 10% in the public sector would cause serious economic difficulties). Rather, it is the manifest failure of the Labour government so far to resolve the crisis in the interests of the bosses, without at the same time sufficiently demoralizing the working class to make the Tory confrontationist alternative really viable.
In this situation a general election cannot long be delayed. It is this intertwining of the mass struggle with the moves to a general election that gives Labour's winter crisis such an acute aspect.
When Callaghan postponed the general election in October of last year he took a calculated risk. He assumed that the tradeunion leaders would once again force his wage-cutting policies down workers'
throats. He had done this for three rounds, even though the last round had not been endorsed by the Trades Union Congress (TUC).
He had gauged well the mettle of the TUC leaders. When the first serious challenge to Phase 3 of the incomes policy was mounted by the Fire Brigades Union early last year, the TUC leadership coldbloodedly scabbed on it. This time around, despite paper resolutions, he thought they would be able to do as much again. What he never imagined was a rank-and-file revolt.
Why should he have? Events seemed to be moving his way. The results of his austerity policies had reassured the International Monetary Fund and this, together with the benefits to the balance of pay. ments of North Sea oil, had given the pound a certain amount of stabilityparticularly in relation to the dollar.
With a decline in inflation and a small upturn in the economy, he thought that the revival in his popularity would continue. One more wage round would do the trick.
His confidence was high, having already defused a major crisis in Scotland. Labour's turn for devolved government (limited autonomy] for Scotland and Wales had transformed the situation. Whereas the bourgeois Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) had begun to threaten Labour's heartland and to command a third of the popular vote (equal to the vote for Labour or for the Tories), now Labour had come back up to 50% of the vote. All recent byelections indicated that Labour was beginning to roll back the SNP threat.
To be sure, the social crisis continues to deepen. Labour's right-wing policies continue to create the basis for the growth of racist sentiments on which the fascists breed. But the initiative of the revolutionaries-particularly the formation of the Anti-Nazi League-have marginalized the National Front, the largest fascist organization. It no longer poses an electoral threat to some Labour seats.
True, such action has boosted the influence of revolutionaries, who had focused the radicalization of tens of thousands of young people. But these would be a threat only for the future. So too with the radicalization of women, who are still prepared to mobilize in massive numbers against any threat to existing abortion rights, and most recently in their fight to reclaim the night."* But such developments, while very important, have not yet resulted in a coherent opposition right down the line.
Three months after postponing the general election Callaghan is, if anything, facing a bigger wage offensive than that which led to the fall of Edward Heath's Tory government in 1974.
A political crisis, with overtones of hysteria, has developed. In the first place, this has been in response to the lorry drivers strike, in particular to their successful early picketing, which threatened to close down large sections of industry and stop the export of goods.
The situation took on added drama because it immediately followed the breaking of the 5% wage-increase limit by a series of powerful groups. Most notable were the Ford workers, who won a 17% raise after a nine-week strike. Callaghan's 5% policy was in tatters and his claim to be able to use the trade-union leaders to control the rank and file seriously undermined.
What will finally determine this is the outcome of the claim of the low-paid public-sector manual workers. Breaches in the private sector can be blamed on weak.
*On the evening of January 20, "2,000 women marched through London's Soho, centre of porn shops and strip shows, to demand an end to rape and violence; for a woman's right to be out on the streets at night without escort; to Reclaim the Night for women." (Socialist Challenge, January 25.)-IP/1
kneed employers or even the Tories, since they had opposed his 5% policy (albeit from the right) and had been instrumental in defeating the proposal to bring sanctions against private firms that breached the pay guidelines.
But the government is the employer of the 1.5 million public-sector manual workers, who cover everything from school-dinner ladies to hospital, sewage, and garbage workers. If the line is not held here, then in will come the miners and the power workers with massive claims to make up for loss of earnings over the past years of austerity. Then everyone else.
A Political Crisis
This revolt seriously challenges Callaghan's overall strategy-a strategy that has hitherto received the blessing of the most influential bourgeois sectors. But it would be a profound error to see in this period a rerun of 1970-74, when an elemental wage upsurge grew in breadth and depth and finally brought down the hated Tory government.
For then there was an obvious political alternative of a Labour government, which allowed essentially sectoral struggles to find a general political focus. Not so today. True, the 5% policy is in tatters. But what lies behind it-the alliance with the tradeunion leaders-is far from dead.
At present there is little doubt that the initiative has passed out of the hands of the government and the trade-union leaders and into the hands of the rank-and-file leadership-essentially at the level of the shop stewards. But this may not last long.
For the stewards, while many of them are aware of the political problems, pose no clear alternative answer to them that would allow for a political generalization of what still remain sectoral disputes. Even if these confrontations are aimed at smashing the 5%, they are posed in "special case" terms. In fact, these struggles are operating with the assumption that the limited economic upturn of the past year can allow sectoral gains. The challenge they are making to the government does not yet constitute a political break with the argument that got the masses to accept the "social contract" in the first place.
For most of the working class the political arguments of the government and the bureaucracy in 1975 (when the austerity program was first imposed) had been an answer to the problems posed by the world recession. They accepted the government's case for austerity as a short-term necessity to allow for the reexpansion of capitalism, which they were assured would lead to a return to full employment, a rising standard of living, and expanded social services. The priority was the "fight against inflation."
With the recent apparent strengthening of the British economy-an improved balance of payments situation, an apparently healthy decline of inflation to single digits, and a limited consumer-led upturnworkers are assuming that the period of belt-tightening is at an end. This explains the way in which the various claims are being justified-Ford on the basis of its massive profits, for example, and the public sector on the basis of the "going rate."
The future, however, is far from one of an expanding capitalism, as will become very quickly apparent. So unless a socialist alternative emerges, the situation is open for Callaghan to regain the initiative and relaunch the offensive. This, if linked with some minor concessions and demagogie attacks on the bosses over prices, could undermine the offensive of the workers.
In the last analysis, in the present political context a serious threat to call an election, let alone the actual calling of one, would be enough to seriously undermine this offensive. In any event it is the generation of this atmosphere by both the Labour government and the Tories that facilitates the placing of political obstacles in front of the struggle.
A New Social Contract?
The collapse of the 5% policy has seriously dented the credibility of Callaghan's strategy among the bourgeoisie. This has given Thatcher, the leader of the Tories, her opening. The Tories have used
The Tories want the courts to hog-tie strikers ...
every action to dramatize the situation, in order to pose the central political questions around which they could win an election— essentially the theme of "Who rules: Parliament or the unions?'
The phenomenal early success of the lorry drivers (especially through the use of flying pickets) and the solidity of the action of the public-sector workers manifested in their one-day national strike January 22 has led to the problem of essential supplies and services being raised.
In the first weeks of the lorry strike, in many cities the actual decision about what moved and who got permission to deliver goods was completely in the hands of the pickets. To take just one example of many, in Hull, on the Yorkshire coast, the lorry drivers got the agreement of the dockers to black all movement of goods into the port. They then stationed flying pickets on all the roads leading into the city. This effectively cut the city off, except for those goods the lorry drivers themselves deemed essential. To take another example, from the public sector, hospital ancillary workers are refusing to serve private patients.
Talk of the existence of "two powers," of "anarchy," of "blood and violence" began to abound in Parliament and in the media. A massive campaign was launched for the adoption of emergency powers and the sending in of troops through the calling of a "state of emergeney."
But the central object of the agitation was the question of picketing. A new word has come into British politics to describe the phenomena of what they called "secondary picketing." What Callaghan had promised the bourgeoisie was control of the power of the unions-that is, control of rank-and-file action-by "moderate" leaders. If, as seems to be the case, Callaghan can no longer deliver the goods, then another answer has to be found.
Essentially what the Tories are demanding is the use of the courts to hog-tie the rank and file, which the bureaucracy is having ever more difficulties in keeping down. The proposals are to make wage contracts enforceable by law, to open up the unions to claims for damages resulting from "blacking" action (thereby forcing the union bureaucracy to expel militants from the factories and the unions on pain of union funds being requisitioned), and to step up police and court action against pickets.
In a nutshell they are proposing the introduction into Britain of a version of the notorious U.S. Taft-Hartley act, from which the term "secondary picketing" is taken.
While these demands, especially around picketing, are getting some backing from the bourgeoisie, Thatcher's confrontationist orientation is not seen as being entirely appropriate in the present relationship of forces. The Thatcher team's attractiveness to the bourgeoisie is not aided by their need to make a lot of noise, even if without much content, to mobilize their pettybourgeois base in face of an imminent general election.
This has given the cue to the Liberals, but most especially to ex-Tory leader Heath, to begin campaigning for a "government of national unity." While such an eventuality is ruled out before an election, it might become a real possibility in the likely outcome of a hung Parliament after the elections. It is also in such a context that the current cautious demands for a six-months' wage freeze might become a real possibility.
The offensive against picketing and for "law and order" by the Tories and the bosses organization, the Confederation of British Industries (CBI), has put Callaghan under tremendous pressure. For him the calling of a "state of emergency"
would be a mammoth political defeat. It would be to admit the total failure of his strategy and call up memories of the fam ous "three-day week"-the last gasp of the previous Tory administration under Edward Heath. It was Labour's opposition to this that had given them so much credibility in that period. In fact Callaghan's only hope is to recement his alliance with the trade-union leaders, even at the expense of giving certain limited concessions to the rank and file.
The offering of such concessions has for the first time brought Callaghan into conflict with the bourgeoisie. His package delivered to the House of Commons January 18 is just a first step, but even this brought bleatings from the CBI. It was not the breaking of his own 5% ceiling through his measly offer of a £3.50 rise to the low paid that provoked this response. Rather. it was his stated intention to strengthen the Prices Commission and particularly his proposal to remove the clause that restricts action against price rises by firms whose profits will be affected.
Of course, these measures are mere demagogy. But the CBI correctly thinks that this will encourage rank-and-file demands to dip into profits and not wages or social services as a solution to the crisis. This is what they see as dangerous.
Simultaneously, Callaghan is not above utilizing the Tory campaign for his own ends in order to politically undermine rank-and-file action and also to try to put some backbone into the trade-union leaders. Callaghan has already forced the TUC and particularly Moss Evans, the leader of the two-million-strong Transport and General Workers Union (T&GWU), which organizes the lorry drivers, to draw up a "code of conduct" for picketing. In fact it was "left" leader Kitson who was given the job of policing this new code. The struggle was therefore unnecessarily drawn out and the 20%-plus settlement fell just short of the workers' full claim.
At the same time, in a futile effort to break the strike, Callaghan called on backward sections of the class to deliberately cross picket lines and gave encouragement to the wives of some drivers to demonstrate against it.
The train drivers leaders are similarly buckling under. For a number of weeks now train drivers have been taking two days of strike action a week. They chose Tuesdays and Thursdays so as to cause maximum disruption with the least loss of wages. This action, combined with the lorry drivers' strike and the public-sector dispute, is what has given such an appear. ance of gigantic disruption over the past weeks. Rail union leaders have now called it off in favour of nebulous agreements to negotiate through an "independent tribunal."
Undoubtedly, the current negotiations to put together a new "social contract" are aimed at undermining the publie sector manual workers' fight against low pay. There can be no question as to the militancy and determination of the rank and file. The magnificent day of action on January 22 saw more than 1.5 million workers on strike. A demonstration of 80,000 workers on the same day ended in a mass meeting the rank and file took over with the resounding message "All Out."
Rank-and-file walkouts have already occurred in some localities, preempting the bureaucracy's attempts to control the strike through "selective action." The aim of the bureaucrats is simply to create pressure to win the government to their own pet schemes, which are a far cry from the demands of the full claim for £60 and a thirty-five-hour week.
The bureaucrats propose a way ahead not on the basis of struggle but through a public enquiry to investigate "comparability" with workers in the private sector. For this they are prepared to go along with the increases being spread out over two or three years and even to give up the strike weapon in some sectors, like the hospitals.
The militants will fight very strongly against such a sellout, of course. They are putting massive pressure on the bureaucracy for action. When openings are given to them through the "selective actions" proposed by the bureaucrats, a massive response is forthcoming that goes beyond the intentions of the top officials. So even this limited action is having an immediate impact.
Refuse is beginning to pile up, hospitals are being disrupted, schools are being closed, and water is not being purified in many areas. All-out action would very quickly bring the government to its knees. But the bureaucracy is holding out against this. Each of the public-sector unions is "doing its own thing."
Clearly what militants should fight for is the formation of a public-sector union alliance both at the top and through the formation of joint shop steward and strike committees comprising delegates from all groups of workers on strike. Union officials and union resources should be put at the disposal of such joint rank-and-file delegate committees.
The potential influence of the militants can be gauged from the fact that such a strike committee has already been set up in the London region of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE), the biggest union involved. The low-pay action committees now being formed around the country, which involve militant activists, must be dedicated to generalizing this. It would, of course, be silly for these activist committees to counterpose themselves as the rank-and-file leadership.
The success or failure of this strike will be greatly influenced by who wins the political argument. The longer it lasts solely on the basis of sectoral militancy, the more the government will be able politically to undermine it.
Already a softening up process is underway. Denis Healy, the chancellor of the exchequer, has echoed the call of the governor of the Bank of England, who wants any rises beyond the government's limit to be taken back in higher taxes and
All-out action would bring the government to its knees...
massive cuts in public expenditure, leading to a big increase in unemployment.
Cabinet minister William Rodgers has entered the fray with a call for a total wage freeze for six months "to give workers time to reflect," if the union leaders are not able to control the situation and cut down the size of the claims. This follows on Callaghan's successful use of the threat of a "state of emergency" to get the bureaucracy to control the rank-andfile picketing initiatives. All these approaches rely on politically confusing the rank and file in order to strengthen the bureaucracy's hold.
Recall the TUC!
Quite simply then, support for the present wage offensive implies the simultaneous projection of a socialist alternative to Callaghan. This is the exact opposite of the current proposal for the TUC to renegotiate a new "social contract" with Callaghan.
The alternative is very simple. The TUC should immediately be recalled-in the first place to develop maximum solidarity with the present wage offensive. Powerful sections like the miners and power workers who have claims pending should be encouraged to bring forward their claims alongside those at present in struggle, particularly the public-sector manual workers.
At such a congress a plan would have to be drawn up to prepare the fight against the threatened assault on the right to picket. But most important of all, the TUC could begin to outline a global action program that would, quite simply, turn on their head the formulas that have guided the Labour government's austerity program.
The aim of Labour's austerity has been to pump resources from the working class into profits through wage restraint, cuts in the social services, and the creation of massive unemployment. A policy in the interests of workers would have to nationalize the decisive capitalist sectors under workers control and project a workers plan for the economy.
which such a program
Elements on could be elaborated already exist. The fight for a thirty-five-hour week to begin to tackle unemployment is already a component of most major wage claims. The obvious corollary of this is work-sharing with no loss of pay.
Similarly, most claims argue the case for a wage increase in terms of the need to make up for losses during the period of the social contract. Why not translate this into a demand that wages should rise simultaneously with a rise in the cost of living as calculated through trade-union committees?
Added to this should be all the experience gained in the present wage round, in which strike committees have begun to impose certain elements of workers control in arrogating decisions about "essential supplies" to themselves.
The fight for a recalled TUC must be posed as an outcome of the present strug gles. A fight for local cross-sectoral committees involving all those prepared to struggle, perhaps as subcommittees of Trades Councils, would be vital steps. These could then be linked into the convening of regional TUC conferences. Such an approach would make it very difficult for the government and the bureaucrats to use a recalled TUC as a way of legitimizing a new "social contract" dreamed up behind the backs of the workers in struggle.
Recall the Labour Party Conference!
The adoption of a global socialist alternative becomes more acute as we move to a general election. What mandate does Callaghan have for his current policies? The last Labour Party Conference rejected them by a 2-to-1 majority and called for an active campaign against the 5% ceiling on wage increases. What mandate does he or the TUC leaders have for promulgating a new "social contract"?
Both the Labour Party and the TUC are committed to "free collective bargaining." To be sure, a fight is going on in the Labour Party National Executive Committee over a new Labour Party manifesto. But this is being fought behind the scenes. A recalled Labour Party Conference would bring this fight out into the open and be subject to elaboration by those forces actu ally involved in the struggle against Callaghan.
We should not underestimate the problems already posed for the government by the simple rejection of its 5% policy by the last Labour Party Conference. The convening of a conference now would put big obstacles in front of the present bureaucratic attempts to cobble together some new social contract. With the elaboration and adoption of a new manifesto committed to socialist policies, a basis would be laid for the removal of Callaghan and all those, both inside and outside the cabinet, who support austerity from their leading roles in the labour movement.
Those left MPs who have declared their support for the present wages offensive have a special responsibility in this fight, which must be started now. They could do worse than begin with a declaration of intent to vote against the upcoming budget, whose major elements have been revealed in the recent white paper on estimates. This budget clearly follows in the steps of all the other right-wing budgets of the Callaghan government. All the present chattering about an alternative manifesto could be counterposed to this budget and offered as a framework within which the present wages fight could be developed.
But the prospect of such an undertaking has paralyzed the Labour Left and the NEC. They have been unable to offer any alternative whatsoever except to demand that the government give some concessions to the TUC to allow them to keep control of their base. What they choose to ignore is that Callaghan is quite prepared to make such limited concessions-but with the aim of recouping the ground and relaunching the offensive.
Return a Labour Government!
Despite the bankruptcy of the Labour Left and the viciousness of the Labour government, all socialists must still campaign for the return of a Labour government. No encouragement can be given to demand for a withdrawal by trade unionists from the (financial) political levy to demand for a withdrawal by trade unionists from the (financial) political levy to the Labour Party. Either of these developments could only reinforce the grip of the right wing on the Labour movement. We lose everything by handing over to the Tories the task of defeating the right-wing leaders of Labour at the polls.
In reality, the developments of the last few months have indicated that events are moving in exactly the opposite direction. Despite the surface appearance of a downturn up to the beginning of 1977, the fact of a Labour administration can, if handled correctly, only reinforce the building of a socialist alternative.
The old Leninist adage that "we support Labour like the rope supports a hanging man" is now coming into its own. For the broad vanguard inside the working class is now hing forced to anaction the nolitiesl now being forced to question the political perspective of their leaders in government and in the TUC as they have experienced the variants of right-wing policy that was supposed "in the long run" to have brought them prosperity.
Class-struggle policies are still far from being supported by a majority inside the working class. But the leaders of the present strikes at the stewards level have been forced to weigh the political problems posed. Two fundamental lessons vital to the construction of a class-struggle left wing are now being assimilated by the broad vanguard.
In the first place, the folly of relying on the top union officials is now being under. stood by the vanguard. This vanguard is vulnerable to the maneuvers of the bureaucracy so long as it lacks a global political alternative. Nonetheless many more militants are now prepared to support the building of class-struggle groupings in the union, because of the growing skepticism in the "broad Left" formations, sponsored by the Communist Party, which are tied to the maneuvers of the left trade-union leaders.
An important grouping of militants crys. talized around the Ford's Workers Group during the course of the strike. It continues to organize militants on the shop floor oriented toward recomposing the shop stewards leadership on a class-struggle basis.
Similarly, inside the National Union of Public Employees, the Campaign for Action in NUPE (CAN) is beginning to organize in the same way and has a potential of really rooting itself in the present strikes.
So, too, in British Leyland, despite the defeat of the recent wage struggle, a simaround ilar grouping has been formed "Stewards for the Annual Review," which is presently to be put on a more long-term footing. Similar groupings already exist in some of the white-collar unions, like teachers, local government, and the major civil-service unions.
These class-struggle formations are based on another lesson of the last years. That is the futility of attempting to "go around" the official and semi-official structures. Such an orientation was animated by the Socialist Workers Party and embodied in their Rank and File formations and the Right to Work Campaign. These outfits have seen a decline and crisis over the past period. The theorizing on which much of this was based in the recent period-the supposed "bureaucratization" of the senior stewards and convenors-is now seen, even by themselves, as so much poppycock in the face of the present stewards-led offensive.
As the SWP too are now beginning to understand, the stewards movement had been politically, not socially, incorporated into the bureaucracy's classcollaborationist project. As they are equally beginning to understand, the key to fighting this is the projection of a "socialist alternative."
"Socialist Unity' One of the best ways of projecting this is the standing of revolutionary left candidates in the elections. There is no contradiction between this and the call for the return of a Labour government. Indeed, in this situation it is a dereliction of revolutionary duty not to seek each and every means to project such a socialist alternative and give it equal emphasis to that of calling for a Labour government. Otherwise it might be mistakenly assumed that this call is equivalent to endorsing Callaghan's right-wing policies.
Of course, given the context in which the coming election is going to be fought, an intervention into the electoral arena must be linked up at every level with the classstruggle fights that are under way not only on the wage front but also in the fight against racism and fascist violence, in the fight for women's rights and women's liberation, in the fight for the withdrawal of troops from Ireland, and in solidarity with the struggles in Iran and South Africa.
It is quite false therefore to counterpose standing candidates against Labour to activism. But activism around single issues is in itself inadequate. The crying need is for the projection of a global alternative to Callaghan, and this demands the projection of an overall action program.
This is why Socialist Unity-a classstruggle electoral alliance-will be standing a number of candidates in the elections in carefully chosen constituencies. There is general agreement on the revolutionary left with the action program. To refuse common action in the elections when such agreement exists can in this situation aid no one but Callaghan.