25.09.1997

‘Fight to transform TUC’

Prominent members of the Socialist Labour Party give their reactions to Arthur Scargill’s ‘alternative trade union centre’

Jimmy Nolan (leading Liverpool docker)

There is some justification for what Arthur was saying. The TUC is now seen as an institution of the establishment, not for the advancement of the working class. They say we must help reduce costs and that there are good and bad employers. Many union officials are not even elected and the TUC is not playing its proper role.

Take our own case: we were dismissed two years ago because we refused to cross a picket line. But our general secretary says he can’t do anything because of the Tory anti-union laws.

What is trade unionism? The working class has got to ask itself the most important questions. There’s got to be a reorganisation of working class thought. Socialism is the only way forward - that’s why I joined the SLP.

Workers joined the trade unions and the Labour Party to establish our own socialist ideology. But today the TUC is not what it should be.

Ken Capstick (former vice-chair of Yorkshire NUM)

I’m not so sure that would be the right direction to go. The last thing working people need is a divided trade union movement. There would be open hostility between the two centres. If we had a breakaway it would create a lot of animosity and divisions you wouldn’t heal for many years. We need a united movement, but I’m not too sure that forming another TUC would be the best way to get it. Rather we should try to take the movement towards a new socialist party.

I know the TUC is full of imperfections, but you can’t change people’s affiliations overnight: you’ve got to look where people are at. I’d have thought it would be better to change the TUC.

One of the problems of the unions is their affiliation to the Labour Party, with all the pressure on it to ‘behave’. The TUC needs to be free of this particular Labour government. We need to get the affiliates to come to us in the SLP. But for that you’ve got to have a lot of patience.

So I would say at this stage a breakaway is not right. But just because it’s not right now, it does not mean that will always be the case. Arthur sometimes says things that take your breath away, but then you find out tomorrow he was right.

Bobby Law (RMT executive member)

It cannot be done at the moment, but I would agree that over a period of time our long-term aim should be for a new TUC - like the SLP is an alternative party to New Labour.

Is there any point in staying in an organisation where you’re not going to win anything? How do you change an organisation the size of the TUC, especially with the rules they’ve got?

Joe Marino (general secretary of the Bakers Union)

The TUC is not delivering anything. Unless the trade union movement is prepared to do something for the working class, there will be a natural progression to a separate body, like there is in the Labour Party. It all depends on how the TUC develops in the near future.

But we don’t want a group of us to get together and say, ‘Let’s form a TUC’. The important thing is that it is done in a structured, not a bureaucratic way. It can’t be imposed from the top down: it must come from a movement by the members.

But the time is not right now. I don’t see the possibility of our union voting to break with the TUC at our next conference in June. Such a motion probably wouldn’t even get on the agenda.

Alan Pottage (former RMT executive member)

It’s not as simple as that.

Yes, the TUC is a bag of shit. Nobody active thinks the TUC has done anything. The dockers didn’t even get in as visitors, never mind a stall, yet the CBI was invited to address congress.

But there is no way we’d get a motion to leave the TUC passed at an RMT conference. Shouldn’t we fight to transform it?