LONDON, August 31 - Just two months after the Tory victory in the Malvinas War, the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is threatened with a one-day general strike on September 22 in solidarity with the health workers' pay campaign. This shows the limits of the "Falkland factor" in British politics — the attempt by the Tories to consolidate support through whipping up chauvinist hysteria during Thatcher's aggression against Argentina. It also gives a clue to the underlying relationship of forces between the workers and the Tory government.
The health workers have been involved in a four-month battle for a 12 percent increase in basic pay. The government has offered 7.5 percent for nurses - with less for other grades. The derisive character of the offer was indicated by its 2-to-1 rejection by the Royal College of Nurses in a ballot. The RCN considers itself a professional body, is not associated with the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and has a "no-strike" constitution.
The plight of the health workers has struck a responsive chord in the labor movement. A series of "days of action" have mobilized workers well beyond the health service. In an unprecedented development in recent times, industrial workers from nearly all sectors have followed the lead of the miners in striking on these days. Yet under the terms of the recently enacted Tory antiunion laws, such solidarity strikes are illegal.
Courts called in
This challenge to the Tories came to a head in early August during a "week of action" by the health service unions. The breadth of support was greater than ever — and so the bosses moved.
The printers' unions threatened to close down the national press for a day as their contribution to the week of action. In response, the press barons went to the courts to seek protection from the Tory antiunion laws.
In face of this challenge by the bosses, rightwing leaders of the health workers unions called on the printers" unions to desist. But the electricians alone refused to comply. Their power is such that their action closed down Fleet Street. Sean Geraghty, the rank-and-file leader of the electricians was, as a result, arraigned in court.
The national leader of the electricians union, Frank Chapple, disowned Geraghty. Other leading bureaucrats took their distance. But the reaction of the rank and file was immediate and widespread. It became obvious that if Geraghty was imprisoned, the government would be faced with a generalized strike movement.
Ironically, these events occurred precisely on the 10th anniversary of the famous freeing of the "Pentonville 5" in 1972. The struggle for the release of the five dockers imprisoned as a result of antiunion laws passed by the Tories was a key incident in the mass movement that eventually brought down the previous Tory administration, led by Edward Heath.
Confronted with such rank-and-file action once again, the Tories and courts backed off. Geraghty was fined a mere £350 (1 British pound = US$1.71) - although he and his union local had been liable under the terms of the laws for £2.5 million (losses claimed as a result of the strike action).
But Tory caution on this issue has not led to any softening in their resistance to the health workers' demands. So September 22 has been set as the next day of action by the health union's subcommittee of the TUC. One-hour stoppages on that day have also been recommended to the rest of the trade-union movement.
This, of course, is a sop to the rising militancy and anger among the ranks at the slow progress in winning the dispute. But pressure is mounting on the TUC to turn this into a oneday general strike. They are fully aware that many groups of workers will be taking such action in any event. A conference of shop stewards from all major industries in Scotland has been called for September 11 to prepare such a one-day strike in Scotland.
Bureaucrats give Thatcher a hand
Willingness to fight in solidarity with the health workers is not an isolated case. Without the help of the TUC tops, Thatcher's government would have been sent into a spin long ago. In the present wage round, it has only been through the active sabotage and betrayal of the union leaderships that Thatcher has been able to force her unofficial pay limit down workers' throats. The most recent victims have been the rail workers.
The main issue in the rail industry is the determined management effort to increase the intensity of work by the introduction of socalled flexible rostering. This proposal allows the railway management to vary the length of the working day to fit in with train schedules. This obviously plays havoc with rail workers" social lives; it involves substantial losses in the wage packet; and it signals the end of the eighthour day — a right won in 1919.
The leader of the largest rail union, the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), which organizes all the grades except the bulk of drivers, undemocratically accepted this new scheme - provoking bitter resistance from its own ranks, who refused to implement the deal locally. However, the drivers' union refused to accept the deal and successfully fought off one management attempt to impose the new rosters unilaterally, through a series of three-day strikes earlier this year. This provoked unprecedented solidarity from the ranks of the NUR, which had not taken national strike action since 1955.
A second management attempt to impose the flexible rosters early in the summer provoked an all-out strike by the drivers. Despite unprecedented press hysteria, the strike was solid. After two weeks, the TUC leadership stepped in and forced the drivers to accept management terms on pain of exclusion from the TUC, and therefore the threat of active scabbing from other trade unions. The train drivers were forced to go back. But they remained unbowed
One significance of the extent of solidarity action with the health workers is the limited impact that it shows such a betrayal — as with the others — has had on the combativity and confidence of the movement as a whole.
Witch-hunt in Labour Party
Nonetheless, the sustained undermining of the momentum of the resistance to Tory attack has given the right-wing Labour bureaucracy a breathing space. And, in an outrageous inversion, it has attempted to put the responsibility for its failures on the backs of the left wing. Accordingly, in an attempt to cover their own role, they have opened a witch-hunt inside the Labour Party aimed at decapitating the newly emerging rank-and-file leadership and at preparing the ground to reverse the democratic gains made inside the Labour Party in the last three years.
In the aftermath of the defeat of the last Labour government in the 1979 elections — a defeat that was partly the result of the developing strike movement against the Labour government's attacks on the working class — a movement arose that became focused on reforming the Labour Party so that the leadership would be more accountable to the rank and file. For the first time since the 1920s, rankand-file leaders in the factories began using their trade-union links with the Labour Party to support the left-wing activists. The right wing proved incapable of stemming this development head-on. The witch-hunt is their way of beginning a counterattack.
The focus is an attack on supporters of the Militant newspaper - sponsored by an ex- Trotskyist grouping led by Ted Grant. The aim, through the compilation of a restrictive "register" of permitted Labour Party groupings, is to outlaw Militant supporters. This despite the fact that Grant made common cause with the right wing of the Labour Party in opposing any action against Thatcher's Malvinas War. Quite clearly, however, the attack on the Militant group is a maneuver aimed at hitting the rank-and-file leadership as a whole.
The "register" will come up for vote at the upcoming Labour Party conference. It will only be ratified after a bitter fight. A defense conference sponsored by the Militant group to be held just prior to the Labour Party conference has gained wide support — including miners' leaders, train drivers, shop stewards" committees, and a number of left Labour Party members of Parliament, including Tony Benn.
Clearly, the present witch-hunt will not solve any of the bureaucracy's problems. The real obstacle for them is the same as Thatcher's: the underlying strength of the trade unions — especially the shop steward organizations in industry. To be sure, the workers have suffered deep shocks. But despite the setbacks, the betrayals and witch-hunts have to some degree also begun to clarify for the new rank-and-file leaders the need to extend their fight for accountability into the unions themselves.
This rank-and-file leadership is in a process of renewal. The older militants, who were educated in the period of capitalist boom, are being replaced by new leaders who understand the need to extend their concerns beyond the factories, toward a government that can defend their interests. So, aside from intervening in the Labour Party, these new leaders are more sensitive to national and international political issues, as well as to the problems of the oppressed.
More unemployment ahead
The Tories' failure so far to break the back of the working class resistance, despite the enormous unemployment, is undermining Thatcher's strategy.
In August, unemployment reached the largest total ever at 3.3 million, according to official figures (which underestimate the true figure by about 1 million). This is 350,000 higher than a year ago. Although as many strike days (nearly 4 million) have already been lost in the first six months of this year as in all of 1981, the level is still way below that before the Tories took office in 1979.
The dilemma facing the Tories, however, is that while this level of unemployment has deterred many individual factory and plant struggles — and has been a big burden even when a whole industrial branch is involved — it has not done the full job. The willingness to struggle and confidence in victory among the workers is still there. The train drivers' strike, which prompted class-wide solidarity, and now the health workers' dispute confirm this.
Accordingly, Thatcher is afraid to reflate the economy in the present situation because of the fear that the working class will be put in a better position to fight back. So unemployment is likely to get worse as the economy takes another dip.
Given this situation, the bosses are proving very resistant to investing in British industry. Gigantic sums are being sent abroad.
The latest economic forecast by the Confederation of British Industry (the main employers" association) shows that the economy will barely grow next year, as the hoped-for investment boom all but evaporates. Industrial production is back to the levels of the 1975 slump. And for the first time in history, Britain last month had a deficit in manufacturing trade. Manufacturing production is 11 percent below the 1975 slump levels.
To be sure, big increases in productivity have been registered. Last year, these averaged 9 percent, higher than in Japan. In some sectors like British steel, productivity gains of 30 percent or more have been registered. But rates of profit remain low, Net return on capital rose this year to 3.75 percent, compared with the 2.25 percent last year. Yet this is a far cry from the 10 percent of the boom years.
The problem is that the previous size of the gap between Britain and its major competitors means that these gains for the bosses only scratch the surface. They need further, and much bigger, wage cuts and more massive speedups.
Support for Labour grows
This situation is therefore rapidly dissipating the "Falkland factor." The latest Marplan opinion poll, which at the time of Thatcher's victory registered a 20-point lead for the Tories over Labour, shows this to have narrowed to a mere 4 percent. The Tories now have 41 percent support and the Labour Party, 37 percent.
It is unlikely that right-wing Labour leaders will take advantage of this situation, more concerned as they are with pursuing the civil war against the left in the Labour Party. Accordingly, individual membership of the Labour Party continues to decline. Last year individual membership (as opposed to membership through affiliation of the unions) appears to have declined by 20 percent - it is difficult to give an accurate figure because of changes in the way membership is counted.
Membership from the trade unions, however, is only marginally down, at 6,273,292 — a drop of just over 133,000 despite the loss of half a million in overall trade-union membership due to unemployment.
Such a development is of no help to the right wing, since the decline in constituency membership is more than matched by the increased involvement of the trade-union activists in Labour Party affairs — through the myriad of links that exist between the unions and the Labour Party. More ominous for the right wing in this regard is the fact that most of the union conferences held over the early summer have shown further shifts to the left. This has been led by the miners' union and their militant new leader, Arthur Scargill — a keen supporter of Tony Benn. If this trade-union base can be mobilized, then the right wing will have no chance of reversing the left advances.
This is the potential that is opened by September 22, and after that by the threatened action of the miners against proposed pit closures and for a massive wage increase.