17.06.1999

What kind of unity?

Reclaim Our Rights

The second annual general meeting of Reclaim Our Rights - the united campaign to repeal the anti-trade union laws - was held on Saturday June 12. About 50 delegates attended. As chair Bob Crow emphasised, the campaign is “in no way an alternative to the TUC”. It was simply about “picking up the vacuum to fight for the repeal of the anti-trade union laws” and would cease to exist once that aim was achieved.

ROR secretary John Hendy gave the national activities report. He announced that 11 national unions had affiliated: Bakers Union, CWU, Natfhe, Aslef, NUJ, NUM, RMT, Ucatt, Scottish Prison Officers Association, FBU and the Professional Footballers Association - it is hoped that MSF will follow suit in the near future. Eighty local trade union councils have also affiliated. Hendy spoke about the parliamentary bill which he and Tony Benn are drawing up to repeal the anti-trade union laws. Benn is to take it to the trade union group of MPs to lobby for support, having already gained the backing of the Campaign Group. The bill will be publicly launched at a rally/conference.

Speakers from the floor included several SLP members, although John Hendy was keen to have it known that the campaign is “not an SLP front”. Ann Brooks, London SLPer and NUT member, spoke of the problems in getting her union to affiliate, the conference motion having been ruled out of order.  Paul Hampton, also of the NUT, said that the leadership had decided that the campaign is “outside the aims of the TUC”. It was therefore agreed that John Hendy would produce material showing that the campaign is within the aims of the TUC.

Then there was a question from the floor as to whether a strike committee could affiliate. Bob Crow replied that it would have to be decided whether it was a “bone fide dispute, including whether it has the backing of the national union”. He was adamant that “we are not having political parties or broad lefts affiliating”. Does this mean that Crow is against unofficial strike committees affiliating? It seems a little bizarre to insist that only those disputes that stay within anti-trade union laws can join an anti-trade union law campaign.

Lee Rock, PCSU Employment Services London, rose to disagree with Crow and argued that the United Campaign needs to be a broader one, including rank and file bodies and political parties. He argued that it was ridiculous that the SWP, with such a large number of trade union activists, should be excluded and that “it is a mistake to just go down the road of the official trade union movement”. Unofficial bodies need to be involved. He proposed that the draft constitution be amended to delete the restriction to “bone fide trade union organisations” alone joining.

Mark Sandell of the Free Trade Unions Campaign strongly opposed Lee Rock’s amendment. Blocking the open affiliation of political parties and rank and file movements is perhaps a little surprising for a leading member of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (although he omitted to mention his political affiliation). Yet comrade Sandell insisted that the campaign should only allow representation from official trade union bodies and backed Crow’s line that this had to be the criterion of deciding what was “bone fide”. From the significant number of AWL members present it is clear that they consider it right that their own organisation participates under the FTUC umbrella, while the right of others to affiliate is blocked.

Comrades Hendy and Crow want to keep firm control of the campaign while marginalising large sections of the left. The AWL must surely recognise this. Why then does it support them? Those with experience of the SLP can attest to the fact that conniving at the exclusion of others is no guarantee that Scargill and his allies will not eventually mete out the same treatment to you. Opposition to comrade Rock’s proposal also came from comrade Brooks and fellow SLP member Alec McFadden; Crow was clearly reluctant to allow voting on the amendment, but he need not have worried, as it was soundly defeated with only five voting for - which included to their credit Socialist Outlook members.

The constitution was thereby voted through unamended and the officers voted in unopposed. Vic Turner is therefore honorary president, with Tony Benn and Shirley Winter from Magnet strikers sharing the post of honorary vice-president.

Bob Crow then addressed the meeting on the complete inadequacy of the so-called trade union ‘rights’ granted by Blair. He also spoke about the May Day demonstration and referred several times to “misreporting in certain papers” that the ROR campaign had tried to hijack the demo. He went on to express his anger that the May Day committee had refused to allow Scargill speaking rights at the rally on the basis that he is a leader of a political party. This is of course the same sort of rotten criterion that comrades Crow and Hendy apply to others. But when it comes to the SLP it is a different story.

So annoyed are the leadership of the ‘united’ campaign at the allegations of hijacking and the denial of speaking rights to Scargill that they have taken the decision “to keep away from such close involvement in the May Day demo next year and instead build our own march in September”. Crow went as far as to say that “next time we should organise our own thing and have complete control of it”. Hendy agreed with him that the reason things went wrong on the day was “because we were not in charge”. With two fingers up to the CPB spoilers on the May Day committee they have decided to ply their own course. Delegates backed this proposal. Instead of fighting to build a mass, inclusive demo on international workers day they have opted for an ‘Arthur day’ in September.

With just over an hour left for debate on the strategy document and the way forward it was unfortunate, though perhaps predictable, that John Foster, general secretary of the NUJ, was allowed to drone on for 20 minutes. However, there was still time for Shirley Winter of Magnet strikers to make a short, but uplifting and defiant, speech aimed at the openly anti-working class attitude of New Labour. The strategy paper presented by John Hendy was approved and the meeting ended.

Outside in the corridor the left produced its papers and became the left again. Unfortunately the division between being a trade unionist and a politician remains as much an article of faith for the Trotskyist left as it was for the old CPGB. It is only when you get outside a trade union meeting that they tell you what party they are a member of.

The Reclaim Our Rights campaign has the potential to form an important area of struggle against the anti-trade union laws. However, it can only lead an effective fightback if it builds an alternative within the workers’ movement to the rotten misleadership of the Blairite TUC. It appears however that, in line with Scargill’s general approach, comrades Hendy and Crow would rather win general secretaries than the rank and file.

Anne Murphy