30.05.2001
Anti-left witch-hunt
Prelude to Blair?s second term
The continuing strikes by London tubeworkers, along with action by workers employed by South West Trains (SWT), has provoked an escalating campaign to break them by the capital?s daily paper, the Evening Standard.
Last week the Standard fired off a double salvo: first a two-page spread headed ?The strike deal the left busted? - this was just prior to a scheduled walkout of guards on SWT?s services. The other piece was entitled: ?Day in the life of Greg Tucker?. In the eyes of some of its readers this red-baiting article will no doubt have had the unintended effect of massively raising comrade Tucker?s standing. He was described supporting striking lecturers and postal workers, and - horror of horrors - standing on an election platform which includes ?providing more council housing and stopping school closures? (May 24). Excellent publicity for the Socialist Alliance.
The proposed strike on SWT was eventually called off. Despite this the Standard insisted on throwing as much mud as possible. For example, it printed unsubstantiated allegations from SWT?s managing director Andrew Haines, about ?the levels of intimidation used to ensure that the strike was held? (ibid). Not surprisingly no examples were given. Whispers about friendship networks on the Rail, Maritime and Transport union executive were also included.
This approach has been par for the course. Leftwing union officials have been branded as ?the men who ruin your journey?, as the headline on May 16 put it. A prime target has been Bob Crow, deputy general secretary of the RMT, up until recently a national executive member of Arthur Scargill?s Socialist Labour Party. Comrade Crow has publicly stated his backing for Louise Christian, Socialist Alliance general election candidate for Hornsey and Wood Green, but refuses to be drawn on his position vis-?-vis the SLP, stating only (rather cryptically) that he is ?still involved?.
If, as expected, the SA polls a significantly higher number of votes than the SLP at the coming general election, the credibility of Scargill?s claim that it is ?the only alternative on June 7? - as the masthead of Socialist News, the SLP bimonthly, pompously declares - will be seen for what it is (May-June). It is a shame that comrade Crow has not yet seen fit to call openly for the SLP to engage more positively with the developing left unity that the alliance represents. Thus perhaps saving it from acting for what remains of its organisational life as a Stalinite wrecking operation inhabiting the outer fringes of working class politics.
The dispute on the underground began in response to the Labour government?s determination to push ahead with its public-private partnership scheme. Both the RMT and Aslef balloted for action - formally in defence of safety and job security, but implicitly against PPP. The result was an overwhelming nine to one in favour from the RMT and three to one from Aslef. A good illustration of why ?intimidation? is entirely unnecessary.
It is worth noting that the Standard has been extremely critical of PPP, condemning John Prescott as one of ?two disastrous forces left over from the Dark Ages? (editorial, May 3). However, showing its left Tory agenda, it claims that Bob Crow is the other ?disastrous force?. Another editorial stated: ?There will have to be a ?no strike? deal for workers in vital services such as the tube? (May 5).
The Standard salivates at the prospect of Bob Kiley, Livingstone?s transport tsar, living up to his reputation for union-bashing. ?Sooner or later,? says the Standard, ?the RMT will have to be challenged by rail and tube managements, even at the price of a damaging strike? (editorial, May 16).
A main plank of the strategy pursued by the Standard has been to attempt to divide the passengers, largely comprising workers on their way to and from their jobs, from the tubeworkers. The ?misery? caused by one-day strikes has mysteriously drowned the everyday misery caused by the decaying state of the underground.
David Aaronovitch was called upon to make a supposed defence of passengers. His hack denunciation of the ?sociopathic lack of concern? which ?drives RMT tubeworkers to strike during the school examinations period? was reminiscent of the drivel that came from would-be union-bashers in the 1970s.
Once a leading Eurocommunist member of the CPGB, Aaronovitch is better placed than most bourgeois commentators when it comes to writing about the left. He knows where to look, heading straight for the Weekly Worker?s website for his information about comrade Crow, the SLP, Harpal Brar, the Stalin Society, Patrick Sikorski and the Fourth International Supporters Caucus, etc. He does get one thing wrong though, claiming that Mick Rix, Aslef general secretary is ?still in the SLP?, when he has actually mended his fences with Labour.
There is nothing more revolting than a paid turncoat cynically attacking working class struggle and pretending to believe that all strikes are unnecessary, not to say evil: ?How would they like it if they went into their local supermarket and no-one would sell them food, or into the pub and they were refused drinks??
Aaronovitch blames the recent rash of widcat actions on ?the lowest unemployment figures since 1975?. He writes of the one-day strike by members of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education: ?? if, as lecturers claimed this week, they are getting paid less than classroom teachers, why don?t they just apply for teaching jobs? God alone knows there are vacancies and the college authorities would soon get the message.?
This worship of both the individual and the labour market is the logical outcome of what was Eurocommunism - originating in the technocratism of Stalinism, it was always contemptuous of the working class and genuine Marxist theory and debate.
What the Standard, along with the Labour government, fears is that the campaign against privatisation on the underground might serve as a starting point for a nationwide fightback against the Labour government?s second-term plan to generalise PPP throughout the public sector.
While the stoppages on the tube may be an irritant, what really scares the representatives of capital is a reactivated working class. Once re-elected, possibly even with an increased majority, Blair will claim a ?democratic mandate? to carry out his PPP programme, putting his government on a collision course with a big chunk of the working class and their trade unions.
Obviously here the Socialist Alliance can play a pivotal role. We should argue for public services to be truly under the control of the public, not some bunch of Whitehall bureaucrats, as the alternative to both the monolithic nationalised industries of old and the ravages of privatisation.
We also need to organise the rank and file in the unions against the planned assault by Labour and arm it with a programmatic alternative - as a first step that means a Socialist Alliance fraction in the rail industry.
Darrell Goodliffe