09.04.1998

Lessons of history

Following the successful Reclaim Our Rights conference Derek Hunter re-examines an invaluable chapter in working class struggle

The post-World War I economic boom soon turned to slump. Unemployment increased rapidly - from 250,000 in autumn 1920 to 2 million by June 1921. Trade union membership plummeted and the ruling class launched an offensive on wages and conditions in the name of national recovery. On March 31 1921 the miners were locked out when they refused to accept swingeing pay cuts and an end to national bargaining. They appealed for solidarity strike action to their associates in the Triple Alliance - the railway and transport unions. Lloyd George’s government prepared for a showdown by invoking the Emergency Powers Act, which had been enacted in autumn 1920 after it had been forced to drop its plan for war against Soviet Russia by the threat of a general strike.

Troops were dispatched to the coal fields. The leaders of the railway and transport unions crumbled. On Black Friday, April 15 1921, JH Thomas, leader of the National Union of Railwaymen, announced that there would be no triple alliance strike. The miners were left to fight alone, but surrendered after 11 weeks. With the miners down, one section after another followed. By the end of 1921 6 million workers had suffered pay cuts, averaging 6 shillings a week.

J Klugmann - the ‘official communist’ historian - suggests, “It was the right wing domination of the trade union leadership that ... led to so disastrous a retreat before the employers’ offensive. The reformist policy within the trade unions was class conciliation, arbitration, acceptance of the state as a neutral body above classes that could play an ‘impartial’ role in arbitration, avoidance of conflict, retreat before attack, rejection of class solidarity within nations and on an international scale”, (J Klugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain Vol 1, London 1969, p108).

Klugmann goes on to suggest that such a policy was reflected, on a world scale, in the leadership of the Amsterdam based International Federation of Trade Unions. Responding to this situation the Communist International initiated the establishment, in 1920, of the Provisional International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions, with the aim of building an alternative, revolutionary international union centre, and of winning the trade union movement from reformist class collaboration.

A number of prominent British trade unionists, including AA Purcell, and Robert Williams of the Transport Workers Federation, associated themselves with the project. In January 1921 the PICTIU published a ‘Manifesto to the Organised Workers of Britain’, which called on British trade unions to withdraw from the Amsterdam International, to support PICTIU, and to elect delegates to a world congress of trade unions. The congress took place in June-July 1921 and resolved to establish the Red International of Labour Unions. In January 1921, the Communist Party of Great Britain initiated the setting up of a British Bureau of the PICTIU. Following the world congress, this became the British Bureau of the RILU, with Tom Mann as chairman and Nat Watkins as secretary. Harry Pollitt later took over as secretary.

Klugmann argues that, in its early days, the British Bureau’s work was primarily of a propagandist nature, “concerned with winning trade unionists away from reformism and reformist leadership and towards an understanding of revolutionary principles ... From the outset, however, it made clear that it did not stand for the splitting of the trade unions, however reactionary the leadership might be, but for a fight against reformism and class conciliation inside the official trade union movement”, (ibid p110).

He goes on to say that this approach was changed, under the guidance of Pollitt, such that the Bureau became less concerned with general propaganda, “which was the job of the Communist Party”, and began to fight for a militant line of struggle within the British trade unions, to fight to stop the retreat, for effective action on issues of wages, hours, and factory conditions, to campaign for trade union amalgamation, for solidarity between unions and to explain the general aim of industrial unions.

As the official trade union leadership went from retreat to retreat, the Bureau began to emerge as a rallying ground for militant resistance to the capitalist offensive. It held many meetings in the industrial centres and took over the newspaper of the Glasgow Shop Stewards’ movement, The Worker.

In June 1922, the National Administrative Council of the Shop Stewards movement decided to merge the organisation with the British Bureau of RILU. Towards the end of 1922, the Bureau initiated the development of a number of rank and file organisations, in the mining, engineering and shipbuilding unions, which were called Minority Movements.

During the early months of 1924, the rank and file Minority Movement organisations put down roots in transport, building and vehicle building. As a result at the 6th congress of the CPGB, in May 1924, the following resolution was passed, “The Communist Party welcomes these Minority Movements as the sign of the awakening of the workers. The CP will throw itself wholeheartedly into the struggle of the Minority Movements and will do all in its power to assist them in their struggles. The Communist Party, however, declares unhesitatingly to all the workers that the various Minority Movements cannot realise their full power so long as they remain sectional, separate and limited in their scope and character. The many streams of the rising forces of the workers must be gathered together in one powerful mass movement”.

A need for a national coordinating centre that would have a deeper base in the mass movement than the British Bureau of RILU was recognised and, on August 23-24 1924 the conference which founded the National Minority Movement was held. It was attended by 270 delegates, from organisations representing 200,000 workers.

The following aims and objects were adopted:

To organise the working masses of Great Britain for the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the workers from their oppressors and exploiters, and the establishment of the socialist commonwealth.
To carry on a wide agitation and propaganda for the principles of revolutionary class struggle, and to work within the existing organisations of the workers for the purpose of fighting for the adoption of the programme of the National Minority Movement, and against the present tendency towards a false social peace and class collaboration and the delusion of a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism.
To unite the workers in their everyday struggles against capitalism and to at all times advance the watchword of the united front of the workers against the exploiters.
To maintain the closest relations with the RILU and to work for the unity of the international trade union movement.

The conference also adopted a manifesto addressed to the TUC which proposed the following demands -

Wages. An increase of £1 per week, and a minimum wage of £4 per week.

Hours. A 44 hour working week, and abolition of overtime.

Nationalisation. Nationalisation of mines, minerals, banks, land and railways without compensation, and with workers’ control.

Housing. Carrying out of an adequate housing scheme and the requisitioning of all empty houses, large and small, and the rationing of available rooms for the workers until the new houses are built.

Unemployment. The application of the demands of the six point charter, as agreed upon by the general council of the TUC and the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee movement.

Foreign policy.

The repudiation of the Dawes report.
Ratification of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty.
The establishment of closer relations with all workers in the colonies and dependencies.

Organisational.

Formation of workshop committees, the members of which are to be guaranteed from victimisation.
The reorganisation of the trades councils.
Affiliation of the Unemployed Workers Committee movement and the trades councils to the Trades Union Congress, and representatives on the general council.
Creation of a general council with full powers to direct the activities of the unions, and under obligation to the Trades Union Congress to use that power.
The unification of the international trade union movement, and the bringing of the world’s workers under a single fighting leadership.

An executive committee, based upon representatives from the different sections of the Minority Movement was elected, and this in turn appointed Tom Mann as president, and Harry Pollitt as general secretary. Within two months, it had organised district conferences in Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, and other industrial centres. New sections taking in distributive workers, dockers, seamen and railway workers were formed. On October 10 1924 the NMM organised a rally in Trafalgar Square, attended by 10,000, around its demands on wages and the 44 hour week, and for rejection of the Dawes plan for German war reparations.

Ramsay MacDonald’s minority Labour government fell in October 1924. During the subsequent election campaign, the Foreign Office published the infamous forgery, the ‘Zinoviev letter’, in which the president of the Comintern was said to have explained the crucial importance of MacDonald’s ratification of the British-Russian trade treaties in the preparation of communist revolution in Britain. Although Labour’s vote once again increased, the Liberal vote collapsed in a middle class rush to the Tories, who secured an overwhelming majority. At its next meeting, the executive committee of the NMM adjudged the time right to publish a pamphlet, entitled What the Minority Movement stands for.

In the foreword a warning was given of a forthcoming capitalist offensive on wages, working hours and living conditions. This offensive had been immeasurably assisted by the election of the Conservative government, which had signified “the consolidation of all the reactionary forces in the country”. Turning to the international situation, it stated that “the imperialist policy of British capitalism is being pursued more relentlessly than ever” and explained that the danger of new wars was growing. Workers struggling to free themselves from British rule in the colonies were being brutally suppressed. Germany had been virtually colonised by the Dawes plan, as a result of which the German workers were suffering low wages, long hours, high prices and increasing unemployment, although there was “fierce resistance from many sections of the German working class”. At the same time, a new attack on Soviet Russia was being prepared.

Explaining that the working class can only defeat the capitalists when they can fight as a class, and not as a number of subdivided craft and sectional unions, the pamphlet called for redoubled efforts to forge national and international trade union unity. The manifesto adopted by the inaugural conference of the NMM was then reproduced as the ‘Workers’ Charter’, with an appeal that all workers urge their organisations to demand that the joint council of the Labour Party and the TUC call a special congress to discuss the charter.

The next section of the pamphlet, headed ‘What is the minority movement?’, explained that “it is a movement of active workers in the working class movement, anxious that the interests of the workers as a class shall come before all other interests, either individual or sectional. The purpose of the Minority Movement is to gather these active workers together, to organise them, so that they can decide upon common programmes and policies, and to actively agitate and pursue (these) in their respective organisations”.

It was stressed that the NMM was not a separatist movement, but that, on the contrary, it actively opposed any attempts to split the trade unions, or to establish an alternative TUC - Arthur Scargill take note. It continued, “In all the great trade unions there has developed a central bureaucracy which frequently acts as a barrier to swift and conscious action on the part of the workers. This bureaucracy is often under capitalist influence... The very fact that the trade union leaders and officials ... have refused to lead and have consistently opposed efforts towards amalgamation compels the active workers to band together and to take the initiative in formulating programmes and policies. Hence the formation of the Minority Movement”.

A brief summary was given of the work being done by the miners’, the transport workers’ and the metal workers’ Minority Movements in pursuing the objective of ‘industrial unionism’, ie, the formation of one union per industry. The importance of factory committees as a unifying force and as the basic unit of industrial unions was stressed. The need for a parallel, geographical organisation of the working class was asserted in describing the movement’s policy on reorganisation of trades councils.

Not only should trades councils secure the affiliation of trade union branches, but their constitutions should be altered to permit the affiliation of all bona fide working class organisations - industrial, political, cooperative and social. The workplace committees should also affiliate to the trades councils, and trades councils should work to encourage the formation of workplace committees in all the industrial undertakings in their constituencies, with the aim that these committees would ultimately become the basic organisational units of the trades councils.

Workingmen’s clubs should come under the trades councils’ jurisdiction and workers’ representatives on the municipal bodies should be subject to trades councils’ discipline. “In every way - in every phase of working class life - the trades councils should be the true, local guardians of all working class interests, pressing forward industrially, politically and cooperatively to the conquest of all local power”.

This was effectively a plan for the construction of soviets. Whether the NMM was also attempting to prescribe the construction of a ‘central executive committee of the soviets’ is a question that might be asked, in studying the next section of the pamphlet, entitled ‘Central power in the general council’. This proposed “the concentration of working class power in the general council of the TUC, so that for common programmes and on all matters of vital importance to the workers such as questions of war or peace, the whole of the forces of our movement can be immediately mobilised”. The general council would have the power to call a general strike and to take such other action as is necessary. It should also have the authority to discipline the trade union movement.

After giving examples of the activities of the Minority Movement, including agitation for the economic demands of workers, contesting all trade union office elections with NMM supporters, solidarity action - both on the national and international levels, and propaganda work through literature and meetings, the pamphlet ends with a ringing proclamation of the revolutionary causes, “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves. Join with us in our struggle to overthrow capitalism and to conquer all power for the working class”.

This, the programme of the Minority Movement, is surely a wonderful challenge to those left groups today who insist that any mass movement can only be built by confining itself within the existing consciousness of the working class.

The solid growth of the NMM was evidenced by the attendance at its unity conference, on January 25 1925, of 630 representatives from bodies with a membership totalling 600,000 workers. A fraternal message from AJ Cook, the leftwing general secretary of the Miners’ Federation, who was not a Communist Party member, stated his pride at being “a disciple of Karl Marx and a humble follower of Lenin”, and ended with the warning, “We are in danger. A united enemy is knocking at the gate ... My slogan is be prepared”.

Cook was right and, as so often in the history of the class struggle in Britain, the miners - who were then one sixth of the male workforce, and nearly one fifth of all trade unionists - were first in the capitalists’ firing line. On June 30 1925, the mineowners issued a demand for an increase in the seven hour day to eight hours, for wage cuts, and for abolition of the minimum wage. The miners immediately appealed to the TUC for support in defending their hard won gains. The same day, the TUC general council responded by calling an embargo on the movement of all coal. The following day, Red Friday, Baldwin’s government made a humiliating climbdown. It announced the establishment of a royal commission of inquiry into the coal industry and granted subsidies to the coal owners for a period of nine months.

Although some have sought to explain the TUC’s determination to stand firm against the government, on this occasion, by referring to the changed composition of the general council - Thomas and other rightwingers had been replaced by left reformists such as Swales, Hicks and Purcell, the true reason is to be found in the organisational strength which the Minority Movement had built. Under the NMM’s leadership, the working class had decided, enough was enough on wage cuts and was ready for a united fight. Without the TUC’s action, Ernest Bevin feared “unofficial fighting in all parts of the country” and “anarchy” (A Hutt The post-war history of the British working class London 1937, p134). Ramsay MacDonald, too, thought that, “Had no general strike been declared industry would have been almost as much paralysed by unauthorised strikes”, (J Klugmann ‘Marxism, reformism and the general strike’ in J Skelley (ed) The general strike: 1926 London 1976, p99).

The ruling class had decided to buy time, and the government set about its preparations for the deferred attack. Along with detailed contingency plans for deployment of police, army, navy, and civil service, the government gave behind the scenes backing to the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, which had been set up by a group of retired army and navy officers with the intention of forming an army of strikebreakers.

The second annual conference of the National Minority Movement took place on August 29-30 1925. In his presidential address, Tom Mann called for the preparation of councils of action for the coming battle, stressing the role trades councils could play in this respect. He also stressed the important role of the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee movement in preventing strikebreaking, and warned of the need to be ready to respond to the potential danger of the growing fascist organisations.

The annual TUC congress met at Scarborough just over a week later. The agenda items reflected the influence of the Minority Movement. A resolution moved by Harry Pollitt stating, “This Congress declares that the trade union movement must organise to prepare the trade unions, in conjunction with the Party of the workers, to struggle for the overthrow of capitalism,” was carried by a majority of more than two to one (J Klugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Vol 2, London 1969, p49). The same resolution pledged the TUC’s support for the building of workshop committees. Resolutions reflecting NMM positions on the Dawes plan, on international trade union unity, and on the right of self-determination for the colonies were all carried.

But, on those concrete questions pertaining to preparation for the impending battle, the bureaucrats operated true to form. The bureaucracy clearly had no intention of matching the preparatory work being done by the ruling class. A motion proposing reaffiliation of trades councils to the TUC was ruled out of order. The issue of the powers of the general council was referred to the general council itself. The newly elected general council showed a turn to the right.

Harry Pollitt noted, “the reluctance of the leftwing of the general council to come out openly and fight the rightwing on every possible occasion, for there could be no doubt that the rightwing leaders, as represented by Messrs Thomas, Clynes and Cramp, had very effectively marshalled their forces and were organised to take up the battle whenever an opportunity presented itself” (Harry Pollitt‘The Scarborough Conference’ Labour Monthly October 1925). Clynes had stated the position of the bureaucracy perfectly when, during the debate on the powers of the general council, he had stated, “I am not in fear of the capitalist class. The only class I fear is our own”, (JKlugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain Vol 2, London 1969, p49).

The ‘lefts’ were again conspicuous by their silence at the Labour Party conference two weeks later, when an executive committee recommendation that communists be barred from individual membership of the Labour Party, and that unions be urged to refrain from electing communists as their delegates to Labour Party bodies, was carried. The bourgeois press, led by The Times, had campaigned vigorously for such a decision, and the bourgeoisie no doubt perceived the result as a green light. Just two weeks later, police raided the offices of the Communist Party, the Young Communist League and the National Minority Movement. Twelve leading communists, including NMM secretary Harry Pollitt, were arrested on charges of seditious libel and incitement of the armed forces to mutiny. The defendants were convicted and sentenced to between six and 12 months imprisonment.

The royal commission report, released on March 6 1926, unsurprisingly supported the coal owners case that - to restore the profitability of the industry - heavy wage cuts and an end to national agreements would be required. The NMM called a special conference on March 21 1926. It was attended by 883 delegates, from 547 organisations, representing around 957,000 workers, almost a fifth of the number affiliated to the TUC. The conference issued a call to all trades councils “to constitute council(s) of action by mobilising all the forces of the working class in its locality (the trade union branches, the organised unemployed, the cooperative guilds, and the workers’ political organisations)”. It also urged the general council of the TUC to convene a national congress of action.

The general council’s initial reaction to the royal commission report was, however, to urge the miners to use it as a basis for negotiation. After the miners rejected the report unequivocally, the general council eventually called a meeting of union executives on April 29. Still its efforts were concentrated on seeking to secure a negotiated settlement with the government. When it became clear that Baldwin was not playing this game, but required unconditional surrender, and that the mine owners had already started locking miners out, the TUC general council found itself the reluctant general staff of a general strike.

On May 2, the eve of the strike, the headquarters of the NMM sent out instructions to all its sections on the creation and operation of councils of action. The councils should ensure that all places of work were continuously picketed, reporting failures and gaps to the appropriate union. They should help to carry out all the decisions for the struggle of the general council and the union executives, but should not, in any circumstances, take over the work of the unions themselves. They should elect press and propaganda bodies to counteract the lies of the capitalist press. They should also set up workers’ defence squads to protect union offices, printing presses, mass meetings, pickets and trade union officials holding important positions, and to maintain peace and order, preventing the efforts of government and employers’ agents provocateurs. The commanders of the defence squads should be trade union officials.

Four hundred or so councils of action were formed. The level of organisation varied. Klugmann describes the work of the council at Methil, in the Fife coalfield, one of the Communist Party’s strongest areas, “Everything was stopped - even the railway lines were picketed. The council had a courier service second to none in Britain, with three motor cars, ... 100 motor cycles, and as many push bikes as were necessary. They covered the whole of Fife, taking out information and bringing in reports, sending out speakers everywhere, as far north as Perth ... After police charges on mass pickets, the Defence Corps, which 150 workers had joined at the outset, was reorganised. Its numbers rose to 700, of whom 400, commanded by workers who had been NCOs during the war, marched in military formation through the town to protect the picket. The police did not interfere again ... A daily bulletin was issued by the council of action, which took over the cooperative hall as its headquarters”, (Ibid p155).

In Glasgow, contrarily, the official central strike committee was inactive, and to compensate for this, CPGB and Minority Movement members set up 15 local councils. Following the rather lamentable failure of the CPGB nationally to make contingency arrangements for publication of a Workers Daily throughout the strike, publicity in Glasgow was handled by a joint committee ofthe Party and the Minority Movement. During the first week, 18,000 copies of an emergency edition of Workers Weekly was printed. After the police picked up the night shift team, 6,000 copies of a paper entitled Workers Press was produced in the second week.

In Sheffield, the trades council was reluctant to constitute a council of action, instead forming its existing industrial section into a central dispute committee. It refused an offer of cooperation from the Communist Party. CPGB members holding union positions nevertheless fully cooperated with the official committee, whilst a parallel unofficial strike committee was organised by the CPGB and the Minority Movement. This produced a daily bulletin of around 10,000 copies, until the duplicator was seized by police after five days. A sixth edition nevertheless appeared, printed at different premises, until these too were raided by police the following day.

On the first day of the strike, the London Trades Council called a meeting of union district committees and set up a formal central strike committee. Here too, CPGB and Minority Movement members also worked to set up local councils of action. Fifteen such councils existed by May 8, and 70 by the end of the strike.

Rudiments of dual power began to develop in some areas, especially in the matter of movements of transport. Klugmann reports on officially recognised permit systems operating in Edinburgh, Ashton-under-Lyne, and, most notably, throughout the Northumberland and Durham region, (ibid pp159-162).

The general strike was remarkably solid. When the TUC general council called it off, on the ninth day, it was not through any fear of failure, but rather because of their fear of success. They abhorred the working class self activity they had seen. The ‘lefts’ on the TUC general council played a craven role. All of them voted to call off the strike unconditionally. The Minority Movement had failed to clearly explain to the working class that the right and left bureaucracy were merely two sides of the same coin. The slogan of ‘All power to the general council of the TUC’ had been exposed as a serious and culpable mistake.

Jack Conrad rightly notes that “The TUC did and does represent collective sectionalism. Unless it is led by communists there is not the remotest chance of it representing the interests of the working class as a whole”. Furthermore the comrade argues that the Party’s slogans were woefully centrist. “The ‘All power’ slogan, not only smacked of an artificial transplantation of the Russian slogan, ‘All power to the soviets’, but totally misunderstood the real content of Bolshevism … There was also a distinct whiff of conservatism in the Party’s call for a Labour government ... The Communist Party should have reformulated the slogan it employed in the early 1920s, ‘All power to the workers’…. The general strike was the moment to concretise it with the call for a constituent assembly and linking that transitional demand to the perspective of a workers’ government based on the new mass organisations of the workers, ie ‘All power to the councils of action’ to bring it about” (J Conrad‘Essays on the general strike’ part IV Weekly Worker May 2 1996).

The third annual conference of the Movement was held at the end of August 1926, attended by 802 delegates from bodies representing 956,000 workers. The conference approved an ‘open letter’ to delegates to the forthcoming TUC congress, appealing for them to “insist on the miners’ fight being discussed ... Send out a call to the workers of Britain and the world for an embargo on coal, and a levy on wages. Stand by the miners”, (J Klugmann, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain Vol 2,p251). However, the efforts of the NMM influenced TUC delegates were to no avail at a congress during which miners’ leader AJ Cook himself spoke against debating the general council’s action of calling off the general strike.

The miners were forced back to work defeated, after six months of brave struggle. Shortly afterwards, in January 1927, the government enacted the Trades Disputes and Trade Union Act, which made all sympathetic strikes, mass picketing and “intimidation” illegal. There had been a significant shift in the balance of class forces. The implications of this defeat for the whole working class were to be profound. The forces of class collaboration in the trade unions were given a great boost. They soon opened up a new drive to witch hunt communists.

The TUC congress in September 1926 had already resolved, by a large majority, that affiliation of trades councils to the Minority Movement was “not consistent with the policy of the congress and the general council”. In February 1927, the executive committee of the General and Municipal Workers Union decided that no member of the Communist Party or the Minority Movement could hold any union position, and branches were prohibited from sending delegates to Minority Movement conferences.

In December 1927, the general secretary of the TUC, Walter Citrine, launched an attack on the Minority Movement in the pages of the magazine, Labour. His series of articles was later reproduced in a pamphlet entitled Democracy or disruption. Citrine argued that the future line of development of the trade union movement should be “in the direction of making workers’ organisations an integral part of the economic machinery of society”. To allow the trade unions to be used as instruments of social upheaval would be “fatal to our hopes of ordered progress”. From its inception, he said, the aim of the Minority Movement had been “to set the rank and file of the working class movement in bitter opposition to its elected and responsible representatives”. Citrine’s signal was soon acknowledged. During 1928, bans on communists holding union office, and on branches associating with the Minority Movement, were adopted by a large number of union executives. The outlawing of the Minority Movement was confirmed at the TUC congress in September 1928.

That the movement was considerably resilient to these attacks, was evidenced by the attendance of delegates from 287 union branches and 19 trades councils at its annual conference in August 1928, hardly less than the previous year. One year later however, the number of branches and trades councils attending the NMM conference was less than half of that in 1928.

By then, the Comintern had made an opportunist turn, categorising reformist working class organisations as ‘social fascist’ - that admirably served the internal purposes of JV Stalin who had just launched his socially counterrevolutionary ‘second revolution’, ie the first five year plan. Deep splits opened up amongst Party members active in the NMM. The 1929 conference adopted a radical change of approach. It was no longer deemed desirable to recruit unorganised workers into existing unions and the principle of “independent leadership” was to be applied, whereby strikes were to be led by committees of action uniting organised and unorganised workers.

The NMM did not survive this disorientation and was wound up as a national organisation soon afterwards. During its short existence however, it had been a highly successful and dynamic revolutionary rank and file movement, which had laid the basis for the self organisation of the working class during the general strike. Important lessons, which are relevant to the contemporary tasks of communists, can be learned by studying the experience of the Minority Movement, and the successes and errors of its Communist Party leadership.