07.02.2002
The real wreckers
For an SA party to stop Blair
Labour used its Cardiff conference to throw down the gauntlet to the working class. Blair intends to force through privatisation plans despite opposition from union leaders as well as public service workers. And those who try to stop him are nothing but "wreckers". Of course Downing Street subsequently claimed that this description did not refer to the union tops, but Blair's speech had made reference to an "unholy alliance" of those opposing the 'sensible' middle course: "We have always had attacks to the right of us and attacks to the far left of us". Apparently he was referring to trade union leaders who want to hold back 'progress' in the shape of public-private partnerships: they were the "small 'c' conservatives" - just like those who wanted to keep clause four or opposed the witch hunt of the Militant Tendency in the 1980s. Predictably this upset one union apparatchik, who retorted: "The unions were fighting Militant when Tony Blair was still polishing his CND badge." Transport secretary Stephen Byers was clearly including the trade unions in the "vested interests" he lambasted for their opposition to government proposals - this was perhaps the most transparently hypocritical remark at Cardiff, post-Enron, though there were plenty of other contenders. And Byers' aides bluntly admitted that union leaders were certainly numbered amongst the "wreckers". For many people the decaying rail network that he presides over is a living monument to the failure of privatisation. Those who want to extend it, not those who want to curtail it, are the real wreckers. This failure was further highlighted two days after Byers' speech with the decision to abandon the automatic train protection (ATP) scheme in favour of an inferior system. And problems are not just confined to the overground network. Tensions spilled over from the Cardiff conference hall to the staid Westminster committee rooms. Though Byers seems determined to press ahead with the PPP scheme for London Underground, it has met with far from universal approval. Gwyneth Dunwoody, chair of the Labour-dominated transport select committee, rubbished it, admitting: "It was difficult for us to find anything particularly good in this particular deal" (Financial Times February 6). Meanwhile, railworkers have upped the ante in their struggle against the effects of privatisation - an excellent example of workers defending their "vested interests". The RMT has extended its action against South West Trains and is threatening to call ballots across the network where there is a substantial pay gap between its members and drivers. The next 24-hour strike, from noon on Monday February 14, will be followed by another two days later, meaning that the action will effectively disrupt SWT services for four days. An excellent response to the anti-union agenda of SWT and its rightwing owner, Brian Souter. It is vital that this militant mood is given political leadership. Unfortunately, however, there has been a tendency for our comrades in the Socialist Alliance simply to tail spontaneity and act as mere cheerleaders. Thus, scouring the likes of Socialist Worker for any hint of leadership or mention of the political demands necessary to take the struggle forward is a rather thankless task. Socialists must prove themselves in practice time and time again - not only by acting as the most determined partisans of our class, but by becoming its most farsighted leaders. The dispute needs to be taken beyond the narrow confines of a defensive struggle over pay and conditions. Railworkers and passengers need to be united. Broader issues - for example, around safety, like the introduction of ATPs - would rally public support behind their banner, undercutting at a stroke the efforts of the red-baiting press, employers and government to divide the 'provider' from the 'consumer' - overwhelmingly both are working class. Deepening divisions over privatisation need to be exploited through the raising of our own independent voice: we demand nationalisation of the railways under the democratic control of those who know the network best - railworkers and users. Blair's speech introduced the novel concepts of 'bad privatisation' (Tories) and 'good privatisation' (Labour). The dogma of 'reform and investment' was the constant theme. Moving beyond the flim-flam, the government's intentions are clear. 'Reform' is, of course crypto-Blairite speak for an extension of PFI in the NHS and the imposition of PPP on London tube. Despite the odd right-wing eccentric mouthing off, it is increasingly clear that under these circumstances the main opposition to the government will come from the organised working class. After all, one of the main aims of privatisation - Tory or Labour style - is to weaken the trade unions and, in tandem with the anti-union laws, prevent workers such as those on the railways fighting back effectively. The current action shows that the strategy will not necessarily succeed. Several flashpoints at Cardiff testified to the depth of working class anger on this issue - protests at the back of the hall as Blair spoke, jeers for Charles Clarke when he mentioned public-private partnerships. And at a packed fringe meeting the historically anti-left GMB leader, John Edmonds, was cheered to the rafters for warning Blair on privatisation: "This policy is less popular than Mrs Thatcher's poll tax." Even Mr ultra-moderate himself, John Monks, castigated Blair for delivering a "bizarre" and "juvenile" speech. We can observe how 'moderates' like Edmonds and Unison's Dave Prentis have been pushed into opposition by rank-and-file disquiet and a keen sense of their own self-preservation. However, Prentis exposed the true nature of this opposition: opposing PFI on the grounds that it is not 'best value'. While both Edmonds and Prentis talk a good fight, the practical measures they propose are limited. True, Edmonds is fighting a relatively imaginative propaganda war with Labour on the ads pages of newspapers. Hence the full-page ad in The Guardian which shows a nurse holding a baby with a caption posing the question "Is she one of the wreckers, Tony?" But he still does nothing to mobilise his own rank and file. But what else would you expect? It will inevitably fall to socialists and communists to provide winning leadership. In particular the Socialist Alliance must step into the breach. Our task is to challenge the hegemony of the trade union right by fighting for our programme and, crucially, begin to give the opposition to the Blairites coherent and organised political expression. However, sect amateurishness continues to hinder us. The alliance's component organisations continue to compartmentalise their activity in the crudest way - ie, 'trade union work' is placed in one pigeonhole while 'alliance work' or 'youth work' are in others. This finds spurious theoretical justification on the grounds that the alliance is nothing more than an (electoral) 'united front of a special kind'. Though this theory is most closely associated with the Socialist Workers Party, the actions of the other groups points to a de facto submission to its logic on their part too. The natural results of this can be seen most clearly in the adaptation of comrades to their current environment. It also leads us into the quite absurd cul de sac of work being duplicated by each sect. A good example of this is the situation on the tube where we find at least two rank-and-file bulletins run by different component groups of the alliance exist - the AWL's Tubeworker, and the SWP-backed Across the tracks. Though the AWL offered to place Tubeworker at the disposal of the SA, stupidly this was not taken up - and with the launch of the SWP's effort we perhaps begin to understand why. The SWP in particular regards the Socialist Alliance as only fit for a 'walk-on, walk-off' role in trade union questions, as in anti-war and anti-racist work. On March 16 we have the opportunity to start to put this right with the SA-organised trade union conference. We must seriously address these issues and set ourselves two goals. Firstly, we must cohere our forces and begin to build a fighting rank-and-file movement within each and every union. What that means in specific unions will, of course, depend on the particular circumstances. In some instances the right policy will to be to work within 'broad left' formations to bring them together; in others we should work openly as a Socialist Alliance fraction. The first step of uniting our forces will, however, develop the foundations for the rank-and-file movement that we need. Secondly, the programmatic basis for our union work - one that avoids tailing the defensive programme of the union bureaucracy and articulates an independent working class position - must be laid. And that can only mean putting the Socialist Alliance at the centre of all our work - making it the focus of the struggle to overcome the main weakness of the working class: the absence of a party. James Mallory
Worker