22.05.2014
Miners: Crisis of leadership
A reprint from the Leninist, forerunner of the WW, on the crucial need for politics
The miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85 sharpened and accelerated the crisis of the Communist Party of Great Britain - at that time still the largest and overwhelmingly the most influential of the organisations standing to the left of Labour and claiming some form of historical continuity with 1917. In the same issue of the monthly The Leninist that carried the front page call to arms below (June 9 1984), we reported that the meeting of the party’s executive committee of May 12-13 had revealed a “crisis of leadership”.
The party’s industrial organiser, the hapless Pete Carter, had told the assembled opportunists that “any projection of the strike as a political strike aimed at bringing down the government will be of no help to the miners - quite the reverse”. Instead, it had to wrap itself in red, white and blue and call for “the defence of miners’ jobs and the coal industry as a valuable national asset”.
The determined militancy and political sweep of the miners’ epic battle was soon to deliver a bluntly negative verdict on the efficacy of timidly reformist analyses like Carter’s. The course of the strike was also to expose the pretentions of the majority of the revolutionary groups and sects that stood outside the party, claiming to have programmes that offered in practice a real alternative to those of the various strands of ‘official communism’.
The small group of mostly young communists who produced The Leninist decided to go ‘back to basics’ via a critical engagement with the work of the CPGB during the 1926 General Strike. With some important caveats, we were to find this a very fruitful approach - one which broke us out of our isolation to a certain extent and made our publication a relatively influential and widely read one amongst some of the very best militants.
However, let us not be too mean-spirited about the members of the CPGB EC at that May 1984 gathering. Miserable, mendacious and treacherous opportunists (and useless to the working class) though they were, they were ruthless factional manoeuverers. The same meeting that had the stomach to sit through Carter’s Eurocommunist bleating decided that The Leninist was beyond the pale and decided to ban it from party outlets, and prohibit party members from selling or contributing to it. This, we wrote, was a “great compliment” - in the faction-ridden CPGB of the day, we produced the “only journal that seriously opposes [the leadership] ideologically and politically” and was consequently the only one to receive such treatment.
Strike back with the miners
What section of the working class has not suffered under the Tories? Not only has the lid been put on wages, but speed-ups have been imposed and rights curtailed. What is more, millions have found themselves thrown out of work and indeed millions of youth, especially black youth, have never had any steady employment.
There has been resistance, in a few cases moderately successful, but often our trade union organisations have proved ineffective against a determined capitalist class.1 Even when the union leaders have not taken on the role of trouble-shooters, and intermediaries bargaining away our jobs, our rights and our conditions, long-drawn-out strike after long-drawn-out strike2 has apparently seen no substantial tangible gain for the workers at the end of the day. What is so for employed workers is a thousand times truer for the unemployed; two People’s March For Jobs and a damp squib of a Jobs Express have not only seen unemployment continue its upward spiral, but no permanent unemployed workers’ movement is in sight.3
Now 1984 is witnessing a decisive confrontation between the fully prepared and equipped forces of the state and the miners, the most militant and important section of the working class. Thatcher is banking on the work she has done since her first term - in defeating one section of the workers after another, in introducing draconian anti-trade union laws, in weakening bargaining power and morale by creating a massive pool of unemployment - seeing the miners defeated. At first it seemed that the last Labour government’s introduction of productivity schemes, which set one pit and one area against another, would do the trick by itself.4
But, as the strike gained momentum, this hope has faded in the face of bitter determination by the majority of NUM members to win unity in their own ranks, and see the strike to victory. There is still a long way to go; the miners know this, they also know that it is only by winning genuine solidarity from other unions and by rallying the mass of workers to their cause that victory can be gained over MacGregor’s5 National Coal Board and the state forces that stand behind him.
Standing by the miners
Standing by the miners is not only a question of basic working class morality: it is also a matter of very immediate interest. For, if we let the miners go down to defeat, the capitalist class will follow it up by a sustained assault on all our wages and conditions - have no doubt about this.
It is because of this that all militants and all class-conscious workers should be arguing not just the case for a solidarity levy for the miners, but should be winning sections now prepared for a struggle with their own employers to coordinate their fight with the miners, to fight for a united workers’ front on pay and jobs, and against all anti-trade union laws across a whole series of industries, from the healthworkers to the teachers, from the carworkers to the gasworkers, from the printworkers to the waterworkers. We must link our struggles, coordinate our claims, develop a movement that will not only see every pit on strike, but also a whole range of industries - car plants, docks, railways, power stations and steelworks. Such a strike wave would unquestionably bring the now arrogant Iron Lady to her knees and have her begging for mercy.
But to wait for the trade union leaders to do this would be to wait till judgement day; the vast majority of them have no stomach for such a class-struggle perspective; they aim for class peace, not class war; their politics, lifestyle and outlook is that of the negotiator and the compromiser, not the single-minded proletarian fighter our class needs today. Because of this we must start to organise independently of them; in this the miners themselves have already given a clear lead. In Lancashire, and above all in Nottinghamshire, militant minorities have organised themselves for the strike. The effect has been dramatic: rightwing leaders such as Sid Vincent and Ray Chadburn have begun to talk of the need for an all-out strike and to demand that their non-striking members “get off their knees and act like bloody men”.
Of course we all know that this is just talk; at the first opportunity they will run for negotiations and surrender;6 that is why the militant rank and file must keep and build their own structures. In the same way workers in other unions must organise independently of the leaders if we are to go for a concerted, organised offensive against the bosses and their government, if leadership talk of solidarity with the miners is to lead to meaningful actions of solidarity.
Militants must link up at all levels. They can begin this by building miners’ support committees in all the towns and cities; these bodies should draw in all working class organisations and be based on elected, recallable delegates from trade union branches, shop stewards’ committees, unemployed groups, miners’ wives and working class political organisations. They should organise speaking tours for miners, publish local bulletins, collect money and get the Co-op to provide large amounts of free food and supplies for the miners. On the basis of close coordination with the miners, the miners’ support committees should take the lead in forming workers’ defence corps,7 consisting above all of unemployed workers and strikers.
These workers’ defence corps are with every day becoming more and more needed: just look at the picket lines, where massed but untrained, undrilled and unequipped miners have had to face disciplined squads of police, recently including mounted police to charge unprotected pickets. Workers’ defence squads would ensure that picketing could be peacefully conducted, that picket lines are respected and that police interference is rebuffed.
Miners’ support committees must also be built across sectional and trade union divisions in workplaces, in factories, in offices and in mills. They can be used to collect money and initiate solidarity actions for the miners. Miners’ support committees should also be formed by workers in the media - papers, TV and radio - and in this way the foul propaganda which is pouring forth against the miners can be blocked. They should take a lead from the Daily Express printers, who demanded a right of reply for the National Union of Mineworkers. But we should go one step further and demand that no propaganda against the miners shall be written, printed or broadcast by trade union members.
For a general strike
For a rolling strike wave to be really effective, if it is not simply to exhaust itself, it must be combined with the fight for a general strike. There can be no doubt that at present the only body that can call such a strike is the general council of the Trade Union Congress. Now all class-conscious workers know the role it played in conniving with the last Labour government to drive down real wages through the social contract, the disgraceful sell-out it perpetrated over the steelworkers, the train drivers and most recently the printworkers, but to think we can ignore the TUC would be a fatal mistake. We must force the TUC to call a general strike and then fight to run the strike ourselves, fighting all TUC moves towards betrayal.
Arthur Scargill has so far been right to avoid TUC ‘aid’. He no doubt reckons that Len Murray,8 despite (or maybe because of) his announced early retirement, might well be determined on an act of ‘solidarity’ with the miners like 1926, when his predecessors perpetrated the sell-out of sell-outs. But it was not only the Len Murrays, David Basnetts, and Alistair Grahams of 1926 - J H Thomas, JR Clynes and Walter Citrine - who sold the General Strike down the river; leading left reformists like AA Purcell, John Bromley and George Hicks refused to prepare, stood passive during the strike and then did absolutely nothing to stop the betrayal.9 Are today’s left reformists like Ray Buckton, Ron Todd and Jimmy Knapp any different? Unfortunately, we sincerely fear not. What about Arthur Scargill himself? He is undoubtedly outstanding compared with other trade union leaders, including the leftwing ones. He refused to bow to anti-Soviet hysteria over Solidarity where others, including Communist Party members, collapsed.10 What is more, he has visibly itched to lead a militant struggle and confront the Tories.
Well, his predecessor in 1926, A J Cook, was also outstanding compared with the trade union leaders of his time. Although he was a founder member of the CPGB, he soon dropped out and, despite claiming that he had “no major differences” with the party, he was in truth far more of a syndicalist than a communist. Despite his often tireless fight on behalf of the miners and his championing of leftwing causes, when the General Strike was betrayed he could not break from the TUC general council and therefore engaged in secret negotiations for a return to work behind the backs and against the wishes of the miners. He also refused to countenance CPGB-initiated demands for an enquiry into the TUC sell-out, and at the close of 1926 he struck an agreement with Walter Citrine against the supporters of the CPGB and the National Minority Movement.11
Like Cook, Arthur Scargill has clear syndicalistic tendencies; brilliant, exciting and dynamic when compared with the grey, gutless reformism of most trade union leaders, but nonetheless flawed. Scargill is prepared to turn to the militant rank and file for votes for flying pickets, but is he prepared to mobilise the rank and file against the right wing in his own union, let alone in others? Is he prepared to see the NUM transformed from its present rather rambling, Gothic, federalistic structure into a class-fighting, industrial union, controlled by the rank and file? Is he prepared to see his and all other full-time positions in the NUM subject to recall, put up for regular election, with officials’ pay equalling that of the average faceworker? Above all, is he prepared to see control of today’s strike exercised by the militant rank and file? Only to the extent he does should militants give him support, all the while remembering the motto coined by James Larkin, that great leader of the militant Irish working class, to ‘never trust leaders’.
The miners’ strike is undoubtedly political as well as economic, and as such it concerns the working class as a whole. We must have no truck with the rotten theory and practice of dividing working class struggles into watertight economic and political compartments. It is the role of a Communist Party to mobilise the greatest possible concentration of forces to strike with the miners, to deepen and extend the struggle to show with every turn of events that it is political, that total victory can only be won if this is recognised, and that the struggle is given a consciously anti-capitalist direction l
Notes
2. For example, the steel strike of 1980. Despite the treachery of the union leadership, the rank and file’s determination assured that the strike was bitter and protracted. It lasted 13 long weeks, but, despite the mass picketing, solidarity strikes from private-sector steelworkers and widespread sympathy from the working class, the strike collapsed and the steelworkers’ ranks were decimated - between 1979 and 1982 the workforce was cut by 52%.
3. The Peoples March for Jobs stunts (1981 and 83) were launched by the leadership of the CPGB and supported by the TUC and Labour Party. The craven and class-collaborationist ethos informing the initiative was eloquently captured by the Eurocommunist industrial organiser of the time, Pete Carter, when he defined the target audience as ranging from “bishops to brickies, from non-Thatcherite Tories to revolutionary socialists” (Morning Star March 25 1983).
4. The 1977 ‘area incentive scheme’ ended the unifying principle of the national day wage for miners and - as Dave Douglass wrote in a recent review for the Weekly Worker - it broke the “paper-thin unity of the national union” (‘Militants and scabs’, April 10).
5. The bitter defeat of the steelworkers’ strike was something of a dress rehearsal for what was to follow and - appropriately enough - was presided over by the same man. As the jobs massacre really gathered pace, British Steel Corporation chairman Sir Charles Villiers was replaced by the American, Ian MacGregor, later to become head of the NCB.
6. For Ray Chadburn’s rather more honourable record in the subsequent strike as it unfolded, see Harry Paterson’s letter (Weekly Worker March 20).
7. The ‘ultra-left’ CPGB and the Communist Platform it supports has become something of a “bugbear” for some comrades in Left Unity. For these trends, our collective insanity took most colourful form in our motion on a workers’ militia, submitted to the March 29 LU policy conference. Here is a Notts miner - part of the 100-strong workers’ defence unit that was to be organised by rank-and-file miners as the strike wore on - explaining its political rationality and practicality: “[We] deployed tactics including sabotage, terrorising of individual strike-breakers and the destruction of NCB and personal property … It were war. Plain and simple … They smashed up our cars and told lies about us in court. Our families were intimidated, harassed and beaten up. The coppers, scabs, media, government and the Coal Board thought it was OK to steal our funds; stop benefits to starve us back to work. So why shouldn’t we fight fire with fire?” (quoted by Harry Paterson in Look back in anger: the miners’ strike in Nottinghamshire 30 years on Nottingham 2014).
8. Lionel Murray - later Baron Murray of Epping Forest OBE (August 2 1922-May 20 2004) - became general secretary of the TUC in 1973.
9. We are working to put this series on the miners’ Great Strike online, where more comprehensive notes - including potted biographies of political and trade union figures - will be featured.
10. Scargill had denounced Solidarność as “anti-socialist” - a correct characterisation that had brought a whirlwind of denunciation down on his head.
11. The National Minority Movement was set up by the Communist Party in 1924 to organise militant rank-and-file trade unionists.