06.03.1997

More tube misery in the pipeline

Whatever the result of the general election, tube workers and passengers can expect only more misery.

Each new election bid by the Tories seems to be more desperate. The announcement that, if elected, they would push their privatisation chariot onward to London’s underground can hardly inspire much confidence.

London’s tubes are obviously decaying daily, making travel a nightmare and increasingly a dangerous one. But, as previous privatisations come to fruition, it has become obvious that they benefit only one section of the population - the managers - who can reap the benefits of slashing working conditions and hiking the cost of services - 2,300 jobs have been slashed in the last week on the privatised railways.

This is of course the real agenda of privatisation. It has nothing to do with improving services through competition, but creating more profit on the backs of the workers.

This was obvious during the signalworkers’ dispute in 1994. This had to be made into a general struggle against the effects of privatisation on all workers. Unfortunately, despite the Socialist Workers Party’s vamping of this isolated struggle as the beginning of the upturn, other workers in the industry, let alone outside, did not rally and new contracts were imposed.

For all the Tories’ attempts to put clear blue water between them and the Labour Party, again the difference in their policies is only one of phraseology. The Tories will privatise, while of course retaining any necessary subsidies, and Labour will intro­duce private investment into the underground. Spot the difference.

Again the Socialist Labour Party is in a good position to raise the fight of underground work­ers into a general political strug­gle which can go beyond the meagre negotiated deals of trade union bureaucrats. In July of last year we saw joint strike action by RMT and Aslef drivers on Lon­don underground over the reduc­tion in the working week. Despite 50% of the RMT executive being in the SLP, including leading members Bob Crow and Pat Sikorski, little was done in the SLP to champion this struggle. It seems that Crow and Sikorski completely separated their trade union and political work and, though undoubtedly being among the best class fighters on the executive, ended up simply as negotiators along with the rest of the union bureaucracy.

Of course union leaders cannot fight alone - they need the sup­port of their members. But clearly revolutionaries must use every opportunity to fuse the general political struggle with all battles of the class. But quite the opposite. Bob Crow told us last year that this “is not a political dispute”, despite the fact that the government had already made it so (Weekly Worker July 25 1996).

Hopefully this attitude will not reign this time and the SLP can use the general election campaign to start organising underground workers for a fight against privatisation attacks, promised by both Labour and Tory.

Linda Addison