26.06.2014

The question of Polish coal

Mark Fischer introduces another 'The Leninist' reprint from the time of the Miner's great strike

In the last instalment of reprints covering the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85 we flagged up a political health warning.¹ Back then, The Leninist - the forerunner of today’s Weekly Worker - adhered to the fairly conventional world view of most of the revolutionary left. Simply put, this was that the USSR and the states of eastern Europe in its orbit were - to greater or lesser extents - conquests for the working class that had to be defended by the workers’ movement. The origins of our trend within ‘official communism’ meant that we used a particular lexicon when articulating this position, but, in truth, our basic template belonged to the Trotskyist tradition - despite our dismissive references in the article below.

Of course, our ‘Trotskyism’ aside, the mere fact that we had the temerity to criticise the leadership of any ‘socialist country’ at all put us at odds with the majority trends on the left of the ‘official’ CPGB. However, as this William Hughes article illustrates, even the partial theoretical insights we had won at that early stage of our development meant that we were already butting heads with the notion of the USSR and states such as Poland as ‘socialist’ and with the idea of ‘proletarian internationalism’ as the art either of diplomatic silences or orchestrated stormy ovations.

Internationalism for us then - as now - meant that “the actions of the leaders” of the workers’ movement and what we then dubbed the “socialist countries” in any part of the world “must … be assessed for the degree to which they hinder or advance the struggle for world socialism”.

The leaders of the ‘official communism’ of yesteryear failed that test miserably - most dramatically in strategically important battles such as that of the miners. Is today’s left - so much of which has fallen into national ‘socialist’ projects of varying degrees of absurdity - any better?

Mark Fischer

Proletarian internationalism is not an abstract formula. It is an objective law given birth to by the development of international capitalism itself. It is a law which recognises that the struggles of the working class, in whatever country they take place, are ultimately indivisible. As we have argued, the ‘touchstone’ of internationalism for Marxists in the capitalist world is their attitude to the socialist countries and above all the Soviet Union. But proletarian internationalism - precisely because it is not an abstract concept and it has this material basis - is not a ‘one-way’ phenomenon. The actions of the leaders of the socialist countries must also be assessed for the degree to which they hinder or advance the struggle for world socialism.

With this in mind, all communists should be deeply disturbed by the role that our Polish comrades are currently playing in the miners’ strike in continuing to allow and even increase exports of coal to this country. Various Trotskyite publications have seized gleefully on the Polish authorities’ actions in order to spice up their anti-communist wailings and their continued support for the bosses’ trade union, Solidarność. We have even had Dennis Skinner MP, a member of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition, writing to the Polish ambassador to register his disgust at “the constant announcements regarding the imports of Polish coal into this country whilst the British miners are on strike. This can only be a policy of strike-breaking and I would like to know how you can claim to be socialists by undertaking this course of action.”²

We would be the last to deny Mr Skinner his ‘harder than thou’ posturing, but we would certainly recommend that, if he wants to cross swords with some really accomplished ‘strike-breakers’, he might start in the ranks of his own party.

Having said that, however, we must clearly state that we condemn the actions of our Polish comrades in allowing coal to be still exported to Britain (4.8 % of total coal imports into Britain come from Poland), while the miners are facing the Tory onslaught. This Polish coal has been used to actively undermine the struggle of the miners: “Attempts by the National Union of Mineworkers to stop production at the British Steel Corporation’s Scunthorpe, Humberside, plant suffered a further setback yesterday when 6,000 tonnes of Polish coal arrived at the works ...”³

This has not been an isolated incident, as some of our party ‘hardliners’ have claimed. Nor is it due to the fact that Polish coal has in fact been circulating on the world market for a number of months before it even reaches Britain. In point of fact, the Financial Times of May 17 reported that imports of Polish coal have been ‘‘running at almost double their usual rate since the beginning of the year.” Inmid-May it was reported that representatives of the Polish coal industry had arrived in Britain to negotiate a long-term increase in this unfortunate trade. Indeed, May Day this year was shamefully ‘celebrated’ by the arrival of a heavy consignment of coal from Poland at Teignmouth docks in south-west England - a cargo which was apparently unloaded by non-union labour.

Poland’s social and economic problems, despite the respite of martial law, remain immense. The dislocation in production caused by Solidarność’s counterrevolutionary bid for state power, along with the acute political and social problems that accompanied it, have apparently produced a desire for economic consolidation and social peace almost at any price.

Yet socialism in Poland will not be saved by injections of hard currency obtained through strike-breaking coal exports to Britain. The long-term interests of Poland and of all socialist countries, by definition, lie in breaking the imperialist domination of the world and in the advance towards world socialism. This truth was well understood by the Soviet workers during the 1926 General Strike in Britain. During those critical days for British workers, the Soviet government did not use the disruption to negotiate scab trading deals; instead Soviet workers in their millions donated a percentage of their incomes to their class sisters and brothers in struggle nearly half a world away in Britain. Ernie Trory, in his excellent pamphlet, Soviet trade unions and the General Strike,gives us some idea of the scale of the solidarity organised by the Soviet working people:

“When news was received by wire that ... the general council of the Trades Union Congress had declared a general strike in support of the miners, the workers of the Soviet Union reacted spontaneously. Without waiting for a lead, meetings were called all over its vast territories. In Kharkov, at the end of the day, columns of workers poured out of factories and offices with flags flying and bands playing and made their way to the great square in the centre of the city ... It was estimated that more than 100,000 people participated.”⁴

An appeal for a quarter of a day’s pay from all Soviet workers to help their British comrades was issued. Many workers, however, considered this too little and Trory gives examples of the many thousands who levied themselves half or a full day’s pay.⁵

The central committee of the Water Transport Workers Union, in contrast to the present attitude of our Polish comrades, made clear its view of scab trade while British workers were in struggle:

“Stop work on all steamers sailing for England, whatever freight they may carry. Vessels on their way to England, having received information by wireless of the partial strike of seamen …, must, on arrival at the nearest British port, make common cause with the British strikers and must not allow their vessels to be unloaded.”⁶

Despite Scargill’s limitations, he is outstanding in comparison to other trade union leaders. For example, he refused to be cowed by the bourgeois and Trotskyite hysteria over his correct branding of Solidarność as an “anti-socialist” organisation. Scargill showed this level of almost gut-reaction class solidarity with socialism in Poland despite the fact that he is not, contrary to The Sun’srabid editorials, a “communist”.

How much more should we expect of our Polish comrades, whose official ideology is ‘Marxism-Leninism’? The miners’ struggle is not simply just another industrial dispute. It is one of strategic importance for the whole working class and we have a right to expect and a duty to demand international class solidarity, especially from those countries where our class has actually achieved state power.

We remind those comrades, especially Straight Left,⁷who would probably denounce our fraternal criticism of the Polish party, that Lenin was unequivocal in defining the tasks of proletarian internationalism as firstly fighting for socialist revolution in one’s own country and, secondly, to support this revolutionary line and only this line in every other country without exception. Straight Left, in their ironically aptly named section on ‘Anti-internationalism’ in their ‘Woods’ pamphlet, grotesquely redefine proletarian internationalism as in “principle” meaning “deferring to a country’s own Communist Party on questions mainly affecting it”.⁸ Thus presumably ‘internationalism’ for Straight Left means “deferring” to the French party when it expresses its support for an “independent” French nuclear deterrent or to ‘comrade’ Pol Pot when he bans books and smiling in Cambodia.

Yet, even with their hopelessly incorrect definition of proletarian internationalism, we ask Straight Left: Is this question of Polish coal exports one “mainly affecting” the Polish state? Surely it has far wider implications for the international class struggle? Does Polish coal not ‘affect’ British miners? And isn’t it interesting that the Soviet seamen’s union has, it says, “since the very first days ofthe strike”, taken steps “to prevent coal and later oil deliveries”to Britain?

So what is Straight Left’sposition? Will it in parallel with the principled proletarian internationalism of The Leninist sharply criticise our Polish comrades and call for them to follow the lead of the Soviet seamen? We challenge Straight Left to answer this question - your silence, comrades, will be a signal of your sell-out of the British and international working class (including those you seek to defend). Your silence will speak volumes ...

We have argued that the solution to Poland’s seemingly intractable internal problems is for the healthy elements in the party to turn from the political defensive to the offensive; to rally the historically socialistic Polish working class to the banner of the party in defence of socialism, both against Solidarność’s black counterrevolution and against the bureaucratic distortions of the past. Imagine the impact of socialist Poland announcing its intention of not “honouring existing contractual obligations and international laws”, which are being used by the bosses to sabotage the miners’ struggle; declaring their unequivocal support for the strike; introducing a ban on coal exports to Britain, while the miners are fighting it out; offering free holidays to miners’ children to ease a little the severe pressures that these families must be facing; and campaigning amongst Polish workers for a levy to help the crucial struggle of their British class brothers and sisters. If the Polish party took the lead in fighting for and organising these and other actions of real solidarity, it could have two effects.

First - the prestige and standing of living socialism would increase immeasurably in the eyes of workers in Britain and all over the world.
Second - amongst Polish workers themselves, who seem to have sullenly accepted the fact of the crushing of Solidarność, the party could not be seen as a grey, repressive bureaucracy, but a living, dynamic organisation which uses its presence in Polish society to fight for workers’ interests both at home and abroad.

No doubt some comrades would argue that Poland, beset as it is by chronic economic problems, cannot ‘afford’ such gestures. But then, could the Soviet Union in 1926, bled white by civil war, struggling to overcome its legacy of extreme economic backwardness and the effects of imperialist encirclement ‘afford’ solidarity with the British miners? Let us put it another way - as a socialist country, can Poland ultimately ‘afford’ to do otherwise?

Poland’s problems can certainly never be solved by economic sops to the Polish workers, especially if they are won at the expense of scabbing on workers’ struggles in other countries. The sooner our Polish comrades realise this, the better for the defence and advancement of socialism in Poland and internationally.

We call on comrades in the Party and the Young Communist League (and we challenge Straight Left if they have any pretensions to be revolutionaries)to exercise one aspect of proletarian internationalism that has fallen into disuse - the right to fraternal criticism. In the spirit of the world movement to which we belong, we ask comrades to send calls for the ending of this trade to the Polish United Workers’ Party - as individual communists or as Party or League branches and organisations.

Notes

1. ‘Countering illusions’ Weekly Worker June 5.

2. Quoted in Militant May 25 1984.

3. Financial Times May 29 1984.

4. E Trory Soviet trade unions and the General Strike Los Angeles 1975, pp4-5.

5. Ibid pp7-8.

6. Ibid p9.

7. The paper Straight Left was the public face of a left Stalinist trend within the Communist Party of Great Britain. In a wing of the party not renowned for its effervescent theoretical and organisational fizz, SL stood out for its pro-Soviet dull-headedness, combined with its stolid subservience to Labourism - one of its abiding ‘principles’ was that the CPGB should never stand candidates against Labour.

8. The crisis in our Communist Party - cause, effect and cure p7.