22.02.1996

Timex strike remembered

Three years on

Three years ago this month the strike at Dundee’s Timex factory was in full swing. To celebrate this magnificent struggle the Dundee branch of the CPGB held a meeting under the title, ‘Timex strike: the lessons for today’. The aim of the meeting was to ensure that the working class movement does not forget the heroic determination of workers when forced to take on the bosses, but it is also crucial that we constantly learn and relearn the lessons, both positive and negative, of such disputes.

Bernadette Malone, a leading member of the strike committee, spoke of the tactics taking on a multinational company like Timex. The strikers had to develop an international network, particularly among the rank and file, to provide solidarity and to prevent workers in other countries being used to undermine the strike.

Decision making was done at a local level, with the workers themselves deciding how to fight. The strike committee was not just run by the shop stewards, but involved ‘ordinary’ workers as well.

It was essential they accepted support from any quarter, including from the CPGB, the SWP, SML and the SNP. A major criticism levelled at the strike committee and the strikers by the official trade union and labour movement was that they were prepared to accept this help. However the strikers recognised its importance and have no regrets on that score.

Lots of strikers, because of their involvement in the dispute, will never work again. The trade union movement must make it a priority to fight against any such victimisation.

Wendy Cobb, a striker, identified the slogan, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’, as the essence of their fight, and described the active and prominent role of the women in this dispute.

Solidarity organisations were set up in every major industrial city in Britain, and Anne Murphy, a leading member of the London Timex Support Group, described how it was established to organise practical support across union and party lines:

“The support groups were used as a way of getting round the anti-trade union laws which prevented the strikers picketing out other factories or organising a boycott campaign. In London we were able to mobilise shopworkers at Harrods to demonstrate outside the shop in support of the Timex boycott campaign, and the support group organised a picket of the Timex factory at Feltham, which led to it being closed for a day.”

The discussion that followed involved strikers, individual supporters and members of various political organisations. It was emphasised that we need a party to take such struggles forward. The movement around the SSA and the SLP could play an important role in the fight for such a party.

Nick Clarke