18.04.1996

Principles of our work in the SMTUC

The Fourth International Supporters Caucus is a sympathising section of the international Trotskyist movement, Usec. It includes Pat and Caroline Sikorski, Brian Heron and Roland Wood, who have made their name as the ‘doorkeepers’ of the Socialist Labour Party. Fisc originated in the tendency dubbed the ‘Fix its’ in Socialist Outlook (International Socialist Group), excerpts from whose document we reproduce below

... As the options for the progress of British capitalist society have folded up, so have the perspectives of the social democratic bureaucracy, who, almost by definition, can see no further than the horizons established for them by the capitalist system. (It is not an accident that ‘Clintonisation’ is the agenda of the LP. The Democrats are the most successful capitalist reforming party in the world.) The labour bureaucracy has therefore had a consistent policy in the last seven years essentially to adapt to the reorganisation/disorganisation drive of the capitalist class. They think that the workers’ movement has a stake in a ‘successful’ British capitalism. They sincerely believe that the workers’ movement can only advance with the advance of capitalism; it cannot survive without its success - measured in terms of profitability and competitiveness. They have delivered up the unions to the capitalists.

There is a significant minority in the working class who have fought this idea all the way. Our policy has been to try to show how that minority can win the leadership of the working class as a whole. Unfortunately, we are a very tiny voice which can easily be ignored, even among the minority of those who want to fight. Because we think our policies and our methods (which stem from an international and historically based revolutionary programme and analysis) show the best way how the fighting minority can win the leadership of the working class as a whole to their side, we seek unity with leaders of that minority who are prepared to fight. We do this not for cynical or manipulative reasons but, first, because all those who want to fight need to be united to be effective and, secondly, such unity is a better condition for working out those policies which take the class struggle minority into the leadership of the working class as a whole.

We are not talking alliances with ‘trade union lefts’ ... The labour movement is more polarised today - between the employed and unemployed; white collar and manual; skilled and unskilled; men and women; white and black; inner-city and owner-occupier; organised and unorganised; the overwhelming majority of the trade union tops and their militants; and, most importantly from a political point of view, class struggle-oriented and tory (with a small ‘t’). It is still the case that key groups of organised workers can potentially reunite the whole workers’ movement (the miners, the oilworkers in Scotland). That is why they are such targets. However the polarisation in the labour movement we have described is more bitter than at any time since the 1880s (and the hegemony of the skilled unions) - with the result that those leaders who support class struggle today bear more resemblance to Hardie, Pankhurst, Tillett and Mann than Purcell and Hicks.

It is a matter of historical fact that such leaders wound up in the forming process of the early British CP. But our point is not to draw out this particular parallel. Our point is that the revolutionary policy of the united front with Scargill and Benn is not a policy of the Anglo-Russian TU Committee type, but of a qualitatively different character. These are leaders of the class struggle in a period of defeat. Their record proves their class struggle credentials. The object of our unity with these leaders is not to ‘expose’ them, remove them, destroy their credibility among those that they lead. Our policy of unity with them is to defend them against the right wing (and the infantile ultra-left); to extend their, and our, influence over wider groups, to unify the effective power of the class struggle forces, which centrally includes those leaders, to extend ours and their power and influence over the whole of the working class.

This is the revolutionary policy in the trade unions in 1993. It is of course under attack from the right wing. It is also under attack from the left. Sometimes the left critics dress themselves up as master tacticians of the British class struggle, who know better than Scargill when to call a ballot of the NUM. They elevate this ‘tactical dispute’ (to give it a polite name) into a major issue of principle and want to draw lines in blood accordingly. Others (no doubt sincerely) believe that we are ‘kowtowing’ to Scargill (and Benn) when we define them as ‘class struggle’ leaders - or give the term no particular significance for our policy. What the term means is that we are on the same side on the decisive issue of the day. Some left critics believe that if only Scargill or Benn would stand aside and our followers could hear our undistorted message we could leave Benn and Scargill rapidly behind. But we cannot leave them rapidly behind. When we do speak to Benn and Scargill’s base (and we are speaking to the most left wing workers in the country) what do we find? We find that Benn and Scargill are, if anything, to the left of their own base.

That should not surprise us. Our tradition has never defined the bureaucracy simply by its material position (like the SWP). Most of the workers who do form Scargill and Benn’s base are subject to immense material pressures which can disrupt their political orientation (which material pressures Benn and Scargill can escape from, to a degree). Our difference with Benn and Scargill is that our programme renders consistent their class struggle stance; consistent in relation to the need to overthrow the current majority leadership of the working class, consistent in relation to all of the struggles of all of the oppressed throughout the world. But we must remember our ABC. The workers’ movement does not need our programme in order to fight. While that remains the case, and in the period we are in, our alliance with these leaders is the revolutionary’s most precious asset in the trade unions at this point.

Our aim is not to become the appendage of the bureaucracy (any section of it) or adopt the role of ‘advisers’; nor is it to subordinate our tasks of building a revolutionary organisation to our alliances in the trade union movement (or for that matter the labour movement as a whole). This is the road of Socialist Action and leads to a dead end which is both opportunist and sectarian. One easy way to avoid opportunist errors in the short term is of course to descend into rank and filism and propagandist abstentionism, which will also end up at another dead end. On the contrary, we must build our organisation through winning the confidence of the most advanced, militant workers by demonstrating that our organisation not only has the correct programme and politics, but also that our group is some use in the real world. In the labour movement we face twin dangers of ultra-leftism and sectarianism (which has actually prevented the construction of united front formations in the class struggle). On the other hand opportunist pressures exist, partly as a result of dealing with ultra-leftism. In this period we must always be clear on the basis of our unity with the Benn-Scargill leadership and our orientation to their base of working class militants.

Our work in the SMTUC is based on these points of analysis and political characterisation. We do not see the SMTUC as the carrier of the revolutionary programme - but a concrete agreement between the Marxists and key class struggle leaders in the unions to promote resistance to the anti-union laws and solidarity with those fighting back - using class struggle means. Full stop. If and when that activity is successful, it will take the alliance we have formed nearer to winning the leadership of the working class movement as a whole. The programmatic disagreements we have with Benn and Scargill will normally surface on international questions, in relation to the role of the labour bureaucracy as a whole (we are for its total destruction); in relation to the revolutionary seizure of state power, etc. Such disagreements are unlikely to manifest themselves, in the first instance, on tactical questions of the struggle. Indeed, on such questions, we are more likely to find ourselves with them, who have their roots in the living mass movement, than with their left critics, whose ‘roots’ are in an abstract programme. A material question is involved here.

We do not see this fighting alliance as some sort of revolutionary/parliamentary umbrella where the ‘left’ (whoever they are) can debate out its sensitivities. This completely false idea is a product of propagandist politics. The alliance we have built in the SMTUC is useful in a practical way to the workers’ movement, albeit on the margins, or it is dead.

While we retain the characterisation and analysis we have previously had of Benn and Scargill and their base in the unions, our tactics and organisation in the SMTUC are subordinate to maintaining the political alliance we have built. (If we change our analysis then our whole approach in the unions must be reassessed.) It follows that we are not interested in setting up some cumbersome structure, a vast new rack of elected posts, AGMs or resolution-debating, policy-making bodies. Our alliance is not an alternative labour movement. We seek support, but not as a membership body, with a programme.

For example, when our organisation ‘chose’ to fight for the January 9 Miners’ Solidarity Conference to be centred around a strong NUM statement, this was not an ‘either/or’ type choice. We did not think, ‘We want an NUM statement, but, oh well, if we do not get it we can always fall back on resolutions.’ Because of the very nature of the defeats of the working class in the last period we know that such a conference would vastly over-represent the left groups and under-represent the Scargill-Benn base in the unions. (In fact it was about half and half, which is pretty good going under the conditions in which the conference was called.) Our aim was to create the largest possible springboard to (a) boost solidarity with the miners and (b) centralise all other struggles available to the SMTUC accordingly. Neither our organisation nor independent militants in the unions had any possible interest in debating the views of The Leninist et al.

Of course an NUM statement, even the fact that one appeared, was always likely to be the result of a struggle inside the NUM leadership. It would be necessary for the class struggle alliance, represented at the conference, to throw its weight behind the most radical, practical interpretation of such a statement. Our organisation was prepared to lead such a fight in the workshops. (Without an NUM statement, the alliance that our organisation was trying to build would not have happened at Sheffield. It would have been a question of damage limitation and a careful study of the prospects of the class struggle wing of the NUM executive.)

What actually happened at Sheffield is now well known. A part of our leadership panicked and then collapsed under ultra-left pressure. Then they led the assault on the main alliance that our organisation has so painfully built up in the unions over the last three years. The ‘follow-up’ conference in Manchester did not mobilise the alliance that the SMTUC represents at its most favourable and generous, what left activists can mobilise, on the miners’ question, outside of the alliance with Benn and Scargill.

Naturally, the SWP or Militant can mobilise thousands, in and around their own base, for big events. Some of our leadership are mesmerised by this show as well. In fact such figures are less important for the recomposition of the trade unions and the challenge for their leadership in the next period, than the few hundred at Sheffield on January 9 and in Conway Hall the previous July. The trouble is, without any prior discussion in our organisation, a section of our leadership no longer shares this understanding. It is wrecking our trade union work as it lurches around for a new orientation.

It is not surprising that the trade union question has erupted at the centre of our organisation’s debate at this time. The trade unions are at the sharp edge of the failure of the traditional organisations of the British labour movement over the past 10 years. It is there that the most conscious militants are posing all the major issues of party and union organisation. The only forces to emerge with any credit in the British labour movement in the last decade are Benn and Scargill and those they lead. And it is those leaders and their allies who are seen by all sectors as the best hope for the future. Our alliance with Benn and Scargill is not just based on the pressure that we bring to bear on them (If it was a question of pressure then they would be virtual prisoners of Militant and the SWP). Our alliance with them is based on the fact that they see us, specifically the SMTUC, as a class struggle ally that has broken out of the far left ghetto and potentially appeals to very wide forces. Through that alliance we can speak with the most class conscious militants in the organised British workers’ movement. Without that alliance we can speak to Socialist Organiser and The Leninist (if they will listen).

Jamieson, Smith, DeJesus, Pablo, March 1993