WeeklyWorker

31.03.2022

Piracy on the high seas

There is a danger of the P&O dispute being railroaded along nationalistic lines. James Harvey looks at the sacking of 800 workers and the government’s response

When transport secretary Grant Shapps describes the boss of P&O, Peter Hebblethwaite, as “a pirate of the high seas”, and Boris Johnson calls for his resignation and the government threatens to intervene to halt the sacking of 800 seafarers, you know that we are not dealing with just another industrial dispute or a fight to save jobs.

What we have here is a clash that starkly reveals many of the features and contradictions of the present capitalist economy and the forms of politics that it throws up. Whilst the P&O management’s strategy and the 800 redundancies are a response to the current situation in which ferry and haulage companies find themselves, the underlying dynamics shaping this industry go back much further and extend far beyond the immediate issues of pay and conditions of employment on board ferries operating from UK ports.

The Tory rhetoric and threats of action in this case point to some significant features about the current political moment that serious socialists and militant trade unionists need to consider. Moreover, the dispute represents an important test for one of the most militant and better organised sections of the working class - the workers of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, who have a record of defending wages and conditions. The union remains something of a thorn in the side of the transport bosses, and so, for both employers and capitalist politicians, it is an obstacle that will have to be removed sooner or later. Seen in this light, Hebblethwaite’s ‘piratical’ approach might be deemed drastic and unlawful, but, if successful, it could prove to be the prelude to a wider attack on workers’ rights and conditions in other areas of the transport industry and far beyond.

Although the announcement of 800 redundancies on March 17 came as a shock to the workers concerned, the rationale subsequently given by Hebblethwaite was rooted in the long-established patterns of cut-throat competition amongst ferry operators in UK waters. Hebblethwaite argues that the sackings and the hiring of staff on lower wages and worse - supposedly ‘more flexible’ - conditions of service is essential if P&O is to survive. Furthermore, speaking to MPs, he brazenly admitted that the company’s actions were unlawful, but that this was a risk commercially worth paying.1

It is possible to set P&O’s actions in the long history of struggle between employers and seafarers over rights and conditions of employment, which were often more precarious at sea and threatened, in comparison with other groups of workers.2 Whilst this is an important backdrop to the current struggle, the redundancies have a more immediate cause in the intensification of competition on these ferry routes, and the wider impact of Brexit on British and Irish trading and transport patterns.3 One of P&O’s key competitors on the cross-Channel routes, Irish Ferries, has been successful in undercutting its rivals by reducing seafarers’ wages and conditions through a strategy similar to that now being attempted by Hebblethwaite.

When you add into the mix the pressures on the P&O management from its parent company, DP World (ultimately owned by the Dubai royal family), we have a classic example of how capitalism’s imperative for profitability, and the world market’s drive to the bottom impacts on the lives and conditions of the working class.4

Response

The response of the RMT has followed a familiar pattern for trade union struggles. The initial reaction of the seafarers threatened with redundancy was to occupy their ferries, but a carefully planned, military-style operation by security guards quickly wrested control back from the workers and enabled the company to bring aboard workers employed under the new conditions.

However, none of the ferries have been able to put to sea and for the moment there seems to be something of a stand-off. In part this is due to the need to train the new crews and in part through the action of the authorities in preventing sailings because of fears about the implementation of maritime safety regulations by P&O. In the meantime the RMT has mounted a protest campaign at the ports, calling for “decisive and serious action by the government”, the reinstatement of the crews and public control of the ferries.5 There have also been attempts to build solidarity action internationally amongst other seafarers and dock workers to block P&O vessels from docking, should sailings resume. The demand for the nationalisation of the ferry companies and other transport services is correct, as are the calls to build a solidarity campaign in Britain and the rest of Europe.

The actions of P&O management in this case show just how important it is for workers to organise and fight back on an international basis. This is all the more important, given the dangers that the dispute can be framed in chauvinist language as an attack on British seafarers by a foreign-owned company besmirching the good name of an iconic British firm.6 Likewise, the comments by RMT leader Mick Lynch that “British ships and British ratings will cease to exist” and that foreign agency workers being used by employers to undercut the terms and conditions of British workers could cause us to direct our fire at the wrong target.7 Workers cannot afford such divisions, which play into the hands of the employers. In this dispute organising agency workers and uniting them with the workers P&O has made redundant is a key issue if the dispute is to be won.

Basic solidarity and demands for organisation of this kind have been a significant principled position for Marxists since the formation of the First International in 1864 and its campaigns against employers using strike-breakers recruited in other countries.8 In the years before 1914 the spread of the capitalist world market brought these and related issues of migration and free movement of labour to the fore, making the development of an international organisation and political consciousness of the working class an important issue for the Marxists in the Second International.9 This rich tradition and countless later examples from workers’ struggles should be our guide in responding to the attacks by employers like P&O and DP World.

Tory hypocrisy

This principled approach is all the more important, given the hypocritical and self-serving intervention of Tory ministers in the dispute. The faux outrage of Johnson and Shapps will certainly not fool members of the RMT, as they showed by the hostile reception given to Tory MP Natalie Elphicke, when she turned up at a protest in Dover over P&O’s action.10 Similarly, government criticism of the company’s blatant lawbreaking or its strategy of fire and rehire will be treated with the disdain it deserves.

Given previous Tory attacks on workers’ rights and their especial hatred of the RMT because of its defence of jobs and wages, no trade unionist will fall for Johnson’s attacks on Hebblethwaite or expect very much will come from Shapps’ promises of legislation to compel P&O to reinstate the dismissed workers.11 Moreover, his proposed enforcement of the national minimum wage for seafarers operating from British ports means a wage cut, not an advance on the existing conditions the RMT are trying to defend.12

The Johnson government’s approach is a purely opportunistic attempt to gain political credit for defending British workers against an unscrupulous, foreign-owned company. Their promises of legislation and legal action similarly reek of the PR stunt and the politics of the sound bite. Drawing on chauvinist language, it is very much in tune with nationalist-populist themes of Johnson’s politics and is all the more reason why the working class movement should repudiate any attempts by Tories and others to divert the dispute along nationalist lines.

Given these pressures, it is important at this early stage of the campaign to protect jobs and conditions to draw up a realistic assessment of the balance of forces. Although RMT is one of the best organised sections of the trade union movement and there is clearly considerable public support for its campaign, it is also necessary to recognise that the power of the organised working class has been weakened over the last 30 years and that building effective solidarity action is now much more difficult. Legal restrictions on effective trade union action and the declining self-confidence that many workers have in their own power to win during a struggle have all taken their toll.

However, given the perspectives for capitalism and its need to attack workers’ living standards and working conditions, far from struggles like this one being an example of returning to the ‘bad old days’, it is more a case of ‘back to the future’ for P&O seafarers. By drawing on the best traditions of the labour movement, and organising and building wider solidarity, workers can win defensive struggles like this one over terms and conditions.

Communists will be the strongest and most militant fighters in these battles, but we will also point out that inevitably capitalism will eat into any gains the working class might make. Consequently, these struggles need to go much further than mere defence and move onto the higher plane of the political offensive through building a conscious, internationalist Communist Party, committed to the self-emancipation of the working class.

Immediate trade union struggles are part of that fight. But it is the struggle for the socialist transformation of society that is the real task of the future.

  1. www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/24/po-ferries-boss-says-800-staff-were-sacked-because-no-union-would-accepts-its-plans.↩︎

  2. For a history of attempts to organise seafarers and the historic 1966 strike, see: issuu.com/rmtunion/docs/1966turningthetidelowres. See also T Hadaway Seafarers (North Tyneside 1996), which deals with these struggles in dramatic form.↩︎

  3. www.ft.com/content/16a90e9a-1c2c-4c2a-a4fd-d6d2ad6f7ce7.↩︎

  4. www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/18/dp-world-p-and-o-ownership-dubai.↩︎

  5. www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-calls-for-decisive-and-serious-government-action30322.↩︎

  6. For a comment on how this dispute might be portrayed, see: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/25/p-and-o-british-sea-shipping-seafarers.↩︎

  7. www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/p-and-o-sackings-absolutely-outrageous-union-boss-tells-mps-41482469.html.↩︎

  8. See: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1866/minutes.htm.↩︎

  9. See M Taber (ed) Under the socialist banner: resolutions of the Second International 1889-1912 Chicago 2021.↩︎

  10. www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/dover-government-p-o-ferries-kent-rmt-b989127.html.↩︎

  11. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/sacked-pando-workers-to-continue–fight-as-transport-secretary-vows–to-protect-them.↩︎

  12. See: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10668555/amp/Grant-Shapps-vows-new-law-BAN-P-O-Ferries-British-ports.html.↩︎