17.01.2002

No witch hunt on the rails!

As strike action and industrial unrest continues on the railways, attacks on leading Socialist Alliance and other union militants are being stepped up. Vernon Hince, acting general secretary of the Rail Maritime Transport union - in tune with the hysterical noises emanating from the bosses' media - dubbed the strikes as "spiralling out of control". What he perhaps means is spiralling out of his control. Hince bemoans the present fragmented nature of the transport system - a "recipe for industrial strife" - and calls for an immediate return to national pay bargaining. Hince is pretty typical of the calibre of leadership we presently have in our movement. Step forward the TUC. Embarrassingly, a bundle of secret documents were leaked to The Guardian (January 11). Penned by the TUC's media officer, Mike Power (an ex-member of the 'official' Communist Party of Great Britain), these documents detail plans to beat Bob Crow's bid for the union leadership and bolster the 'moderate' RMT candidate (ie, Labour Party placeman), Phil Bialyk. Power warns darkly of a "leftwing fundamentalist" takeover. Crow is described as a "fanatic", an "extremist" who is "unreconstructed", "strike-happy" and who "has never shown any inclination to associate positively with the Labour government". A man, in short, who "would spell trouble for the government". Brother Bialyk, on the other hand, is a "pragmatic" official who supports "profitable companies and wants to "understand the business of the firm". He is "a longstanding member from the modernising left" who "fears that the RMT could become a narrow and internalised ultra-left group that ignores the needs of passengers and the national interests". Unlike Crow, the TUC's man "seeks active engagement with [the Labour government] to advance a radical agenda". Power and the bureaucracy conclude that if Bob Crow is elected RMT general secretary, "such an outcome could result in the biggest changes within the union for a generation and be long-lasting and deep". Poor old John Monks, the TUC general secretary, was deeply embarrassed by 'Powergate'. TUC protocol - or official fiction - stipulates that the TUC strictly avoids interference in the internal affairs of member unions. So great was the faux pas that Monks felt compelled to write to Vernon Hince with an immediate apology. In its take on the matter the Evening Standard quotes an unnamed union official who grumbles: "Under normal circumstances, Bialyk would be considered a leftwinger, but in RMT terms [he] is to the right." The story was part of an issue featuring a front page picture of Bob Crow underneath the headline, 'This man aims to strike his way back to nationalised railways'. In its rail dispute double-page spread, Crow is described as being "supported by the Socialist Alliance" and "is way to the left of the Labour Party". All the more worrying as Crow is "arguably the most strike-conscious official in the 60,000 member union as leader of the RMT, largest of the rail unions and one of the few remaining with access to any real industrial muscle" (January 10). The same Evening Standard article targets ex-SLP vice-president Pat Sikorski, or "the general", stating that he "has been heavily involved with strikes on London underground. His appearance at the RMT top table would cause genuine fear among senior managers at LU, who know full well they too would then be heading for yet more industrial unrest." Other weapons are being used against rail militants. Comrade Crow has had a 'panic button' installed in his home by the police following a vicious assault on his doorstep on new year's day - which just so happened to be the very day on which election papers were sent to 60,000 RMT members. Commenting on the incident, a police spokesman said: "It is obviously not just random." Comrade Crow was more explicit, pointing the finger at "certain employers". He argued: "We have over 3,000 different companies working on the railways and there are some very strange characters among them. They are worried that they could lose money on the stock exchange. I think it was someone giving me a hiding on the day that the ballot papers went out." Alongside Crow, comrade Tucker - the SA general election candidate for Streatham - has been a constant victim of redbaiting. A train driver, the comrade was demoted to a ticket inspector for a trivial violation of safety rules, when he broke a 90mph speed limit by 6mph (for a few minutes) on the day he returned to work. With monstrous hypocrisy, the SWT bosses piously maintain they could not endanger the safety of the public by employing comrade Tucker in his capacity as driver. (Systematically starving the rail network of adequate funding is a different matter, of course). The comrade's pay fell dramatically from £30,000 to £15,000 (thus neatly illustrating the pay gulf between drivers and other rail staff). In the opinion of The Times, both Crow and Tucker "have engineered this strike perfectly to raise their profile and put them in place to secure election to the top jobs in the RMT elections next month", which could "mark the raising of the hard left's flag over a major British institution" (January 15). The tone of attacks on leading militants like Crow and Tucker illustrates a certain unease amongst the rail bosses and the media. Certainly, Blair's government are cautious, under intense pressure, but indecisive on the question. The threat is palpable. RMT and other rail unions remain undefeated, with real industrial clout and are militantly led. More than that, they potentially have huge reservoirs of support, given the public exasperation with the ruinous state of Britain's rail network and the abject failure of privatisation - the holy grail of Tory and Labour alike - to turn it around. Even research findings sponsored by the government itself offer little solace, with the Commission for Intergrated Transport's findings making grim reading: "Typically we have among the lowest levels of investment in transport systems and yet we have the highest public transport fares. We also have limited travel choices, with overseas cities having more rail-based options for suburban and city centre journeys." Dire, and everyone knows it, in other words. Of course, all unions remain shackled by the anti-trade union laws. But unrest on the railways does have the potential to ignite broader struggles across industry and beyond. Presently, the RMT is embroiled in disputes with South West Trains, Connex South Eastern and Arriva Northern, but there are also distinct signs of unrest on the London commuter networks run by Silverlink and C2C, not to mention Connex South East. The discontent is fundamentally around the same issue that has so incensed RMT members - ie, the increasing pay gap between drivers and non-drivers. So far, there have been two 48-hour strikes on SWT lines, and RMT plans another two-day walkout on January 24 and 25. Arriva Northern is also to be hit by stoppages on these dates, as well as on February 5 and 6. London Underground drivers are up in arms too, with Aslef leaders accusing the LU management of "reneging" on a pay deal that narrowly averted strikes last autumn. The action needs to broaden. Public fury at the state of the railways can be mobilised alongside the demands of workers in the industry through an imaginative and outgoing campaign. Whoever formally owns the railways, at the core of the coming fight must be the demand to take effective control out of the hands of those who have so disastrously failed - the privatised industries and the government. Real control must pass to those who work on the network and those who rely on it day to day. Eddie Ford