06.11.2014
Organise the militant minority
The attacks on the miners were aimed at breaking organised labour in general; but union bureaucrats failed to rise to the challenge of building mass solidarity. Jack Conrad argued for a rank-and-file movement in this Leninist reprint
Six months or so into the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85, it was pretty clear that we were going to lose the war - unless, that is, the militant minority of the movement could launch a bold initiative to circumvent the passive union leaders and their flatulent rhetoric of “total support” for the National Union of Mineworkers. That minority had the potential to galvanise and activate the wider layers who had thus far passively supported the struggle, but were wary of taking more aggressive action.
At the time, it was a commonplace to hear the strike designated a ‘strategic’ one, a ‘fight for all workers’ - this came from the best militants in the class, as well as in the form of rhetorical flourishes. It came from NUM president Arthur Scargill himself, who told a rally in Nottingham: “Stop merely saying you support us. Come out and join us. We are facing a fundamental challenge to the whole working class, not merely miners. We are facing the organised might of the state machine.”
The inescapable logic of this, of course, urgently demanded a united workers’ offensive and this reflected itself in the increasingly insistent calls of The Leninist - the forerunner of the Weekly Worker - for a general strike, “with or without the TUC”.
The question posed by this article, from The Leninist of October 1984, was this: assuming the TUC refused to call a general strike, what workers’ movement body had the authority to do so? Crucially, who would have the courage to insist that the working class needed to go on a war footing against the UK ruling class itself?
Mark Fischer
Hit back with the miners
Will those who overwhelmingly voted to give “total support” for the miners at the TUC turn their militant rhetoric into militant action? If they don’t what should we do? These questions are on the lips of all striking miners and, for that matter, all class-conscious workers.
Of course, it’s not a matter of passively sitting back and waiting for Ron Todd, Jimmy Knapp and Rodney Bickerstaffe1 to deliver the goods, let alone David Basnett and certainly not the likes of Bill Sirs or Eric Hammond.2 For all these trade union leaders, left and right, seem to simply want the miners’ strike finished and show absolutely no determination to see it to resounding victory. Because of this they must be forced to carry out the spirit of the resolution passed on the miners - the fact that it is ‘voluntary’ necessitates organised militant pressure to ensure that they do and militant action independent of the leadership if they don’t. After all, what the TUC passed doesn’t go beyond the most basic principles of trade unionism and here lies the rub; for, even if we force its implementation, it does not go far enough if the miners are to see total victory.
For the miners have ranged against them not only the National Coal Board, but the state itself. A state which has not hesitated to unleash steel-helmeted, baton-swinging riot police, as well as the sophisticated mind-twisting media, and the scab-loving law courts which are now being urged to impose life sentences on militant miners. Except for the dockers3, the miners have had to fight alone in a battle that the Tories in particular and the ruling class in general see as of major strategic importance.
What all this means is that the miners’ strike is far more than a run-of-the-mill trade dispute, which requires traditional trade union solidarity to see it to victory. Because of this what is required to win is more than the traditional solidarity that the TUC resolution offers. What is needed is nothing less than the mobilisation of the power of the workers as a class against the power of the state; that is, a strike wave of general strike proportions.
There are many honest militants who, while seeing the need for such action, reckon it cannot be delivered. First, they say today only a minority of workers would support one, and second the TUC under present circumstances is hardly likely to call one. Both these points are true, but should we allow them to stop us giving full support to the miners? We say no!
After specially commissioning a Mori opinion poll, The Sunday Times revealed that 75% of all trade unionists were not prepared to take industrial action in support of the miners. While this piece of information was designed to dampen down support for the miners at the TUC, what is revealed for those who are not trapped into thinking in purely arithmetical terms is that there is a mighty, nay irresistible, mass of workers who are prepared to strike back with the miners. This 25% - that’s around two and a half million workers - are the militant minority; they are the opinion makers, the thinkers, the shop stewards, the leaders. Organised, they can carry with them the less advanced majority and deliver a blow with or without the TUC of such force that not only will the miners sweep to victory, but Thatcher will be brought down and the rotten system that she represents will be shaken to its foundations.
The conditions are ripe for organising the militant minority. Millions of workers have suffered under the boot of the Tory government; they yearn for revenge. A glimpse of their potential power can be gained from the magnificent fighting spirit displayed by the miners.
So what is needed is a powerful enough call to bring together the militant minority. We have argued that the NUM itself has the prestige, the organisation, to do this. A call from the NUM to establish a National Miners Support Movement would act like a magnet to all militants. Such a body would have every possibility of quickly evolving into a permanent organisation, which would immeasurably strengthen the power of the working class against the bosses and their state.
Unfortunately, while being ideally placed to rally the militant minority, the NUM leadership in the shape of Arthur Scargill, Peter Heathfield and Mick McGahey has shown itself to still be imbued with loyalty to the official structure. As a result it was all too willing to enter into behind-closed-doors deals with Lionel Murray4 rather than appeal over the heads of the trade union bureaucracy directly to the rank and file at the TUC. What this shows is that, in the words of Jim Larkin, we must “never trust leaders”, that we must only support them in as much as they fight for the interests of the working class as a whole.
So, despite the respect Arthur Scargill has from militants, despite the fact that he appears so outstanding when compared with the gutless fat cats who pass for workers’ leaders, his self-confessed commitment to reformism, as enshrined in the Plan for coal, his Labourism (albeit with a syndicalistic flavour), demands that militants organise independently of the leadership even in the NUM.
This has already happened in areas where the leadership itself has scabbed and in the split area of Notts. Now it needs to happen nationally. This was the case in the 1920s, when a militant minority organised in the Miners Federation of Great Britain (the forerunner of the NUM), even though its leader, AJ Cook, like Arthur Scargill, was put into leadership on a militant wave, also championed leftwing causes and was regarded by the bourgeoisie as the devil incarnate.
Now is the time to build rank-and-file organisations in all industries, establish the links, hit back with the miners.
Jack Conrad
Notes
1. Ron Todd (1927-2005), Jimmy Knapp (1940-2001) and Rodney Bickerstaffe (born 1945) were the respective leaders of the major contemporary unions, the Transport and General Workers Union, the National Union of Railwaymen and National Union of Public Employees.
2. Bill Sirs (born 1920) was the general secretary of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation who earned widespread contempt in the workers’ movement for his role in the strike. Despite the fact that miners had delivered solidarity to the steelworkers during the latter’s 13-week strike in 1980, Sirs would not reciprocate. There was to be no solidarity with the miners from the official structures of the ISTC. In contrast, there was clearly a different mood amongst the rank and file. While their leadership scabbed, steelworkers In Llanwern, south Wales were collecting £2,000 a week for the miners.
Eric Hammond (1929-2009) was general secretary of theElectrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union. He succeeded the notorious Frank Chapple in 1982 and - at the 1984 TUC conference - clashed with Scargill when he dubbed the miners “lions led by donkeys” and refused any solidarity action with the strike.
3. There were two dockers’ strikes in 1984 - important opportunities to build a momentum for a general strike that tragically came to nothing.
4. Lionel (‘Len’) Murray (1922-2004) was briefly a member of the CPGB before becoming general secretary of the TUC in 1973.