30.10.1997

Morris in docker ballot fiasco

An attempt by Transport and General Workers Union general secretary Bill Morris to deliver a coup de grace to the sacked Liverpool dockers has failed miserably. In a postal ballot imposed by Morris 70% rejected the “final offer” from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company.

The ballot papers had landed on the dockers’ doormats, without their prior knowledge, and at the addresses held by the MDHC. TGWU national docks group officials knew nothing of Morris’s actions and the union’s North-West regional committee has passed a resolution condemning him and calling for a special national executive committee meeting.

First rejected by the dockers in December 1996, the package would have given those dockers formerly employed by the MDHC and its subsidiary, Coastal Container Line, a choice of competing for 40 dock jobs or accepting pay-offs of up to £28,000. The dockers had refused to sanction any vote which excluded the 80 workers formerly employed by Torside - it was their sacking and picket which sparked the dispute.

In a sulky reaction to the ballot result, the MDHC announced that the monetary offer would remain open for a further four days. The dockers say just 40 of the 329 sacked workers who were balloted have now taken the money - a figure that correlates with the number who played no active part in the dispute. The result is testimony to the dockers’ courage, resolve and solidity, despite Morris’s efforts to defeat them.

The clumsiness of the TGWU bureaucracy had previously been demonstrated at the union’s biennial delegate conference in July. Nine motions seeking to step up backing for the dockers had been removed from the agenda and replaced by a statement from the national executive committee confirming its ‘arms length’ approach. As dockers and their families watched from the public gallery, the bureaucrats’ statement was attacked by a string of speakers.

Despite the clear majority against, the chair declared the statement carried. This provoked uproar and the platform only regained order by conceding a card vote. The result was a 283 to 182 defeat for the EC. The conference went on to pass the one remaining motion:

“This conference calls upon the government to intervene in the long-running Liverpool docks dispute in order to return the sacked dockworkers to their rightful place of work in the port of Liverpool. Conference further goes on to commend the sacked Liverpool dockworkers for their heroic and inspirational struggle against an unscrupulous employer.”

Trade minister Ian McCartney claimed to have received no notification of this resolution last weekend. However, he stated: “There is no question of the government intervening in this or any other industrial dispute, which are for employers and trade unions to resolve.”

Why does the dispute present such difficulties for Morris and the TGWU? They claim that their hands are tied because of the anti-union laws. This excuse was rebuffed by Jim Donovan, federal president of the Maritime Union of Australia, who said:

“You’ve got to ask why a powerful union like the TGWU is not challenging anything. They should be saying, ‘We’ve had enough of this. We’re standing up to bad laws. Come and sequester our funds.’ They’ve had plenty of time to get them away. We face the same attacks on jobs, and our funds are no longer in Australia. If you wait for Blair to be elected, you’ll find nothing will change ... Only the will is needed” (The Guardian November 23 1996).

But is Donovan right that the problem is only the lack of will - the overflexibility of the backbones of British union bureaucrats? Or is the reason to be found in the crisis of Labourism? Surely a successful struggle requires not just clever union manoeuvring, not just cross-union solidarity, but the elevation of the dispute onto a higher, political, plane - against the state and its Labour government, not humbly asking it to “intervene”.

Since the dockers were sacked, they have been dissatisfied with the role played by union officials. “The question has to be asked why the Liverpool dockers dispute has never been covered in the TGWU Record over the last 18 months ... This must be the first illegal/unofficial strike in which the employer regularly praises the union,” Jimmy Davies, the shop stewards’ secretary, told the rally in Liverpool on September 27.

From the outset the Liverpool dockers put in place rank and file organisation to run the dispute and secure national and international support. Their newspaper, Dockers Charter, has carried headlines such as, “Worldwide dock strike” and “Long live workers’ internationalism”. They have forged links and organised impressive mobilisations. They have appealed to the British working class for “a mobilisation against any government which continues these policies [privatisation, casualisation, anti-trade union laws]”, and suggested that “Our powerful circles - our trade unions - should be used for our advance to socialism” (Dockers Charter September 1997).

Nothing could demonstrate the dockers’ politicisation more clearly. However naively expressed, their statements are looking to find answers through working class organisation. What has not yet found expression, however, is the need for that organisation to be a Communist Party.

Nevertheless, the contrast with the approach of Bill Morris and the rest of the trade union bureaucracy - left and right - could not be more marked. They listened in awed silence as Tony Blair told the 1996 Labour Party conference: “No more bosses versus workers, We are on the same side, the same team.” And he told the 1997 TUC congress: “We will not go back to the days of industrial warfare, strikes without ballots, mass and flying pickets, secondary action and all the rest of it.”

Yet the unions have continued to hand over £8 million a year of their members’ subscriptions to Blair’s party, which maintains the most restrictive trade union legislation in the western world. Through TUC general secretary John Monks, they have elaborated the philosophy of ‘new unionism’, where unions become “part of the solution for companies coping with change and competitive pressures”.

The Liverpool dockers’ struggle strives to engage with an internationalised, conscious working class, fighting for its interests, which coincide with the prospects for historical progress for the whole of humanity. On the other hand the frightened labour bureaucracy has given up any idea of being able, independently, to make gains - even through traditional union action. It clings, ever more despairingly and today unambiguously, to its role of tying the working class to its respective national capitalist class. It promotes the interests of the bourgeoisie - interests directly opposed not only to the union membership, but to humanity itself.

This dispute exposes the craven servility of the TGWU and the role of union bureaucracies in workers’ struggles. Revolutionaries must do all we can to influence developments within the TGWU and all other unions in order to win solidarity. But crucially we must encourage and guide the struggle for working class political organisation.

Derek Hunter