14.05.1998

Rix win boosts Scargill

Simon Harvey of the SLP

The election of Dave Rix as general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, has underlined the potential for Socialist Labour to widen its support and influence in the trade union bureaucracy despite its anti-democratic regime and lack of grass roots activists. The unexpected ousting of incumbent Labour left Lew Adams should prompt all honest trends in the workers’ movement to reassess their dismissal of Scargill’s party.  

Comrade Rix is a former member of the SLP NEC who resigned after attending only seven executive meetings. Nevertheless because he is a ‘Scargillite’ the bourgeois press got into a panic about the whole affair. It has been quite some time since so much attention was devoted to what are normally routine union elections. Victory for “Scargill’s man”, screamed the front page of The Daily Telegraph (May 7). The Financial Times headline of the same day read: “Hard left ousts rail union chief” and claimed that the “Aslef ballot could herald fresh industrial conflict”. The Guardian went straight to the point: “Scargill party takes rail union leader’s scalp.”

While comrade Rix’s election is a shot in the arm for Scargill’s project, it also points to a space which could widen as the trade union bureaucracy is further compromised by Blair’s ‘third way’ social consensus with big business. You do not have to do much in terms of workers’ rights and pay to stand well to the left of the existing leaderships. While Scargill and his allies will be able to capitalise on Rix’s triumph, it seems that the outcome owed more to an anti-Adams vote than a positive endorsement of the SLP. Comrade Rix defeated Adams in a 55%-turnout, second-round election by 4,558 votes to 3,357. Significantly, Adams received 45.1% in the first round compared to Rix’s 23.9%.

While the bourgeois press has been unusual in its candour in recognising the importance of the poll, the pro-Labour left is at sixes and sevens. Predictably, the Morning Star - supposedly favouring openness after its recent factional war - led the story as “Rix rejects merger claims: Leeds official beats Adams in Aslef poll”. Comrade Rix’s political affiliations are mentioned only in passing. In Tribune (May 8), John Blevin claimed that the vote would whet the appetite of those wanting to break the sacred union link, with the definite implication that this was not a good thing. He echoed Adams’ lament that he was particularly disappointed that he had lost the election to an SLP member because “as a consequence our union will not now have the same relationship with the Labour government”. Adams, regarded as a Labour left, is a friend of deputy Prime Minister Prescott and thus, in good old Labourite fashion, ‘has the ear’ of government.

Other elements of the pro-Labour left look sillier, especially those who recently resigned from the SLP because it was supposedly irrelevant. Martin Wicks and Lee Rock of Socialist Perspectives, more economistic and union-oriented than most, must feel particularly foolish. Then there is Workers Power who on past form would, if they had any relevance in Aslef, have campaigned for Adams against Rix, perversely in the name of being with the majority.

SLP democrats, revolutionaries and all partisans of the working class should welcome comrade Rix’s success. Within the SLP itself it was a morale-booster, as our modest local election results were coming in. Comrade Bob Crow, assistant general secretary of the RMT, will no doubt be greatly heartened, as he eyes the top spot in his own union’s forthcoming election this autumn. Clearly Reclaim Our Rights will gain greater authority, despite Rix’s relative isolation on Aslef’s executive.

The Aslef result in itself will not automatically produce SLP membership growth, but it does point to a thin layer of left union bureaucrats articulating their membership’s discontent through the SLP’s ofiicial language of state socialism. Nevertheless a major strike led by an SLPer could yet bring us a wave of recruits.

The bourgeois press has invented a Crow-Rix-Scargill axis. Yet despite Scargill’s well known support for industrial unionism, it is significant that comrade Rix did not stand on a programme which included organising unions along industrial lines. Comrade Rix has been making all the ‘proper’ noises an incoming general secretary should to reassure conservative members and warn off other union leaders.  He said: “I don’t intend to be the last Aslef general secretary. Aslef will continue into the next millennium as a strong and independent union.” Merger rumours have been rife, ranging from a Scargillite triple alliance of the NUM, RMT and Oilc to a TGWU takeover of both the RMT and Aslef.

All this underlines the fragile nature of the SLP as the party of left trade union leaders that Arthur envisages. Now rid of the ‘nuisance’ of many SLP revolutionaries (as a result either of the McCarthyite witch hunt or of moralistic walkouts), Scargill must get down to the ‘serious business’ of keeping the peace between fractious, naturally sectional and, in practice, reformist trade union tops.