30.04.1998

Learn the lessons of Magnet defeat

Another lengthy dispute involving workers sacked after going on strike has ended in defeat. Workers at the Magnet factory in Darlington voted, by 47 to 34, to accept a pay-off. It was hardly surprising that, after such a determined, courageous and bitter struggle, there were angry scenes on the picket line when the close result was announced.

Only those workers who had not obtained other work during the 20-month dispute were permitted, by the five unions involved, to participate in the ballot on the £850,000 lump sum offer from the company. Nevertheless, the workers will distribute the money between all 320 who went on strike in August 1996, according to how long they participated in the dispute.

The Magnet workers had been sacked after commencing official strike action following a ballot conducted in compliance with the anti-union laws. They have consistently demanded nothing short of reinstatement, and the strike committee had called for rejection of the pay-off.

The loss-making Magnet Kitchens was bought for a snip in 1993 by Beresfords. The new owner immediately demanded that the workers accept a £35-a-week pay cut. The workers defeated this move. But they accepted a pay freeze until the company went back into profit. In 1996 an annual profit from the Darlington plant of £10 million was declared. The unions then submitted a three percent pay claim. Management responded by offering the rise claimed to 60% of the workforce and nothing to the other 40%. When the strike ballot result was announced, Magnet’s bosses rushed to settle a similar claim from workers at its Keighley factory, in order to isolate the Darlington workers.

The dispute displayed features that are familiar in contemporary working class struggles in Britain. Strong rank and file control of the strike was established through a strike committee led by the shop stewards. A highly active women’s support group was formed. The factory was picketed solidly around the clock, against a heavy police presence. The official union machines concentrated on contributing to the strike fund, printing publicity leaflets, and making speeches at rallies. But they did nothing to secure the respect of all trade unionists for the picket lines. Nor to call for solidarity action in defiance of the anti-union laws.

The strikers’ local Labour MPs, Alan Milburn and Prime Minister Blair, declined to offer any support and refused to visit the picket lines. Magnet workers at Keighley and other sites could not be won to come out in defence of their Darlington colleagues. Management was able, however slowly, to build up a scab workforce. There were several instances of thugs attacking the pickets, including an attempted firebombing of their caravan, and a charge from hooded assailants wielding iron bars. The scabs, however, did not thrive. The Liverpool dockers’ paper (Dockers Charter April 1997) reported that management were already seeking to buy out the scabs’ contracts and offer new ones on reduced wages.

One of the forms of solidarity sought by the strikers was help in promoting a consumer boycott at Magnet’s 200 outlets. Trades councils, in particular, were asked to assist. Although the strikers report that 167 outlets were leafleted during 1997, the nature of the business means that these are ‘moving targets’. At the best of times such boycotts rely on the actions of individual consumers. They are unlikely to be effective at a time when there is no movement that could deliver such solidarity as a class.

This is the inescapable lesson of the defeat of yet another working class struggle. The balance of class forces in Britain is overwhelmingly in favour of the capitalist class at this time. The craven and treacherous nature of the British trade union bureaucracy is undoubtedly a factor. While the Weekly Worker (April 23 1998)can report that the president and secretary of the Australian Council of Trades Unions - under pressure from a mass movement - were amongst 5,000 pickets responding to a state supreme court injunction against the picketing of the Webb dock in Victoria, our own TUC leadership is preparing for ignoble surrender to Blair and the Confederation of British Industry over trade union recognition legislation.

But it is far more than this. The working class in Britain has seen a prolonged assault on its rights and living standards over the last 20 years, and a painful strategic defeat in the miners’ strike of 1984-85. This was fundamentally the ending of the post-war social democratic settlement between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The sorry state of the trade union movement reflects the resultant crisis of Labourism. A fundamental political break of the working class with the dead weight of failed Labourism is necessary before the balance of class forces can be decisively turned around.

The working class must become a political class. The conscious intervention of communists, along with the reforging of the Communist Party of Great Britain, is the key to this.

Derek Hunter