19.09.2007
Beyond the prison walls
How should communists respond to any upsurge in industrial action? Last month's POA dispute offers some useful lessons. Jack Conrad examines the arguments
Gordon Brown and his government must surely be expecting bad times ahead. The global financial system is overblown, extraordinary fragile and showing all the signs of crisis. The US subprime fiasco, the stock market gyrations, the run on Northern Rock - all this probably heralds a general economic downturn. If that happens, historic time, which is always differential, will greatly speed up. Heightened international tensions, the militarisation of outer space, a US attack on Iran, the end of the Chinese miracle, communal war in India, meltdown in one, two, three, many third world countries, and everywhere growing despair, desperation and disorientation amongst all classes.
In the United Kingdom government revenues are bound to be squeezed - hard. Unemployment can only but mushroom. Whatever the Bank of England does, real interest rates are set to rise, including mortgage rates. Tens of thousands, maybe many more, face the horrible prospect of negative equity and losing their homes. Being a loyal servant of capital, not labour, Brown insists, even now, on imposing below-inflation wage settlements on the public sector workforce. That, and higher mortgage rates, means savage cuts in real living standards for millions of men, women and children. Whether this provokes a rash of wildcat strikes, limited, token action by the trade union bureaucracy or something more serious is impossible to tell. Struggle itself will decide.
Last month's Prison Officers Association strike is one of the many signs and portents showing that the spirit of militant combativity is slowly reviving. After a decisive membership ballot, the POA staged an illegal, lightning strike on August 29 in protest against how the government's two percent pay limit affects prison officers. Currently they have a starting salary of about £17,500, going up to some £25,000 after 10 years of service. Hardly a king's ransom. Their pay review body had recommended a 2.5% rise. But the government decided that this had to be staged: an initial 1.5% and then six months later the other one percent. Overall, this would stop them going over the pay limit.
Out of 35,000 members the POA claims that 90% came out on strike. Brown's minions succeeded in getting a court injunction, true. However, no further legal action against the POA followed. For all his PR bluster, Gordon Brown is no Margaret Thatcher. Hence no sequestration of POA funds, nor moves to break the union. To do that would require bringing in the police and crucially the army. Only with such a disciplined stopgap force could the lid be safely kept on the prison system, while a new, scab workforce was recruited, trained and finally deployed.
The British army is, though, suffering from acute overstretch because of Iraq and Afghanistan. So the government is hardly in a strong position. Even if it wanted to kill off the POA, the immediate means are lacking. And all the evidence indicates that the government has no such plan or intention. The POA strike lasted for little more than a few hours and like the government the POA is committed to further negotiations. Not further confrontation.
Of course, the POA's willingness to defy the anti-trade union laws should be celebrated by the left and emulated by other sections of the working class. However, in terms of their response to this, and other examples of sectional militancy, it is vital that communists get the balance right.
On the one hand, guard against the danger of tailism, being swept along by spontaneous events and thereby forgetting the necessary priority that must be given to high politics, Marxist theory and the fight for extreme democracy. On the other hand, guard against aloofness, abstentionism and looking down upon trade union struggles because by themselves they inevitably take place within, and cannot transcend, the circular political economy of capital and wage-labour.
With the POA there is another balancing factor we must get right too. Given low pay rates, bad working conditions and the fact that many of them used to be miners, engineering, steel, etc workers, prison officers often see themselves as part of the working class. Should we leave it there though? No, that would be mistaken. Prison officers are an integral part of the state's apparatus of force and that social position produces a contradictory consciousness. To the working class, against the working class.
POA conferences routinely demand further oppressive measures specifically directed against another section of the class - ie, Britain's 80,000 prison inmates. The vast majority of the prison population are not big-time crooks or natural-born killers. Most come from desperately poor backgrounds. They frequently have mental health problems. Often they are repeat offenders who have been convicted of essentially minor crimes. And too often when they come out of prison at the end of their sentence they are still unable to read properly, but are burdened with a hugely costly addiction to illegal drugs. A habit acquired inside. In other words, they are victims of the system.
It has to be admitted, that on one or two occasions, Weekly Worker articles on trade union disputes have come over as if we are Jeremiahs. Untrue, in fact. Our line has been to emphasise the duplicity of the trade union bureaucracy, the lack of tactical realism exhibited on the left and the necessity of having a long-term strategic vision. Of course, telling it how it is always hurts unthinking loyalists and the inveterate peddlers of official optimism.
Style, tone and impression matter, however. It is necessary to expose the inherent limits of trade unionism and how the various left groups lie programmatically imprisoned behind the thick walls of common-sense economism. Yet, especially in the period of more concentrated struggles that lies ahead, communists must show that defeat is far from inevitable. Even short, partial and defensive strikes can win. There will doubtless be setbacks and even significant defeats. Despite that, it is worth noting that small, though often hesitating and always inadequate, forward steps are already being taken.
That needs to be understood, highlighted and enthusiastically welcomed. After all, communists are partisans and we earnestly want to see working class organisation and confidence strengthened. In other words, the Brown government must face the widest opposition: the working class should not bear the cost of capitalism's crisis. This will not happen by itself, of course. It must be energetically fought for, and if it happens would undoubtedly feed into the objective basis for a mass Marxist party - ie, a Communist Party - which is vital if partial victories are to be made permanent. Only possible through socialism and the transition to universal freedom.
Criticisms
As the reader will be aware, last week Cameron Richards went into print rounding on the Weekly Worker article on the POA dispute which had been penned the previous week by Jim Moody. Such polemics, it should be stressed, are perfectly normal within our tradition. CPGB members actually have a duty to criticise what they think is wrong. Anyway, comrade Richards says his "real" target is the CPGB's Provisional Central Committee (September 13). That is why I have taken up the task of replying.
Basically, the argument presented by comrade Richards is that most of the left took a principled stand on the POA dispute. George Galloway, Respect, the Morning Star, Workers' Liberty, Socialist Party in England Wales all got it right. "Unequivocal support" was offered. Praise is heaped on Mark Hoskisson of Permanent Revolution for his "dynamic analysis". The comrade said that the left should back the POA strike but "call upon the union to defy the court injunction and intensify its action". Such an approach "hastens the break-up of the capitalist order". Masterful. As if economic struggles can do that.
However, comrade Richards says, the Socialist Workers Party and the CPGB got it wrong. Why?
Chris Bambery's paper could "not quite bring itself to offer its solidarity". Frankly, that is not my take on the relevant article. Socialist Worker forthrightly declared: "Every trade unionist should oppose the use of anti-union laws and welcome any assault on Brown's pay freeze." However, it did not use one of comrade Richards' quality control formulas: ie, "full" or "unequivocal" support. Worse still, the writer, Simon Basketter, dared tell what seems to be an inconvenient truth: "many officers have a proven record of racism and violence".1
What of comrade Moody's piece? Apparently it read as a "rather neutral and 'objective' commentary". It was "certainly not a partisan, communist defence of the prison officers' action". Indeed its stress, if anything, was "to knock the prison officers rather than praising the stand they took".2
The idea that communists are obliged to spell out an explicit "defence" of prison officers taking illegal action is misplaced. Almost risible. Everything in comrade Moody's article implied support for the POA strike and opposition to the anti-trade union laws. Kind of taken for granted on the left. Eg, the CPGB's Draft programme stands by the right of all workers, including those in uniform, to withdraw their labour if they so wish and the same document calls for the smashing of the anti-trade union laws in no uncertain terms.
In fact, comrade Richards' real gripe is that the Weekly Worker's line of argument was not dissimilar to Socialist Worker's. Comrade Moody too highlighted the contradictory social position of prison officers: both workers and direct instruments of state oppression. Saying this presumably counts in comrade Richards' book as knocking prison officers and the POA. Not mine.
Our article also gave a thumbnail sketch of that section of our Draft programme which deals with prisons and prisoners: rehabilitation, not punishment; ending overcrowding; the provision of cultural facilities; the right to vote, etc. Comrade Moody urged the POA to seriously take up these demands "¦ as well as pay. Presumably another example of knocking.
Statements
Elsewhere comrade Richards has gone further. Much further. Comrade Richards and myself have exchanged quite a few email postings on the subject of the POA dispute. And in order to really see where the comrade is coming from it is necessary to quote from some them. For example, he wanted the CPGB's PCC to issue a special statement on the POA. He even went to the trouble of drafting his own statement, complete with slogans: "Trade union solidarity with the POA! Victory to the prison officers!"
Here he argued for what he thinks we should have said: "The CPGB wholeheartedly supports the pay struggle of the POA and praises the methods it used on the day." And after lavishing praise on George Galloway he lambasted the SWP. Prior to that, in another positing, the comrade described the Weekly Worker's front page featuring 'Frederick Engels and the dialectic of nature' - presumably instead of the POA - as a "serious error".
The CPGB's PCC does not routinely issue statements. Such occasions are a rarity. After discussion the PCC rejected comrade Richards' draft for two main reasons: one because we thought that the politics lacked the right balance, two, because issuing a statement on the POA (and not the RMT strike on the London underground and the collapse of Metronet, for example) would give entirely the wrong impression. Namely that the PCC considers the POA dispute was/is of truly historic importance. Needless to say, we are not of that view.
What about the claim that running with a front page on August 30 featuring a fractal image designed to illustrate the dialectic of nature was a "serious error"? As I pointed out to comrade Richards, he would have been spot on if we had planned a mobilisation to join the POA on subsequent picket lines or to sell/intervene on pro-POA demonstrations/rallies. There were no such CPGB plans, of course, because there were no such POA picket lines or demonstrations/rallies. August 29 was designed to be a one-off.
Nor do the editors of the Weekly Worker - unlike those of the Morning Star, etc - consider themselves duty-bound to hold up a flattering mirror before the trade union bureaucracy. So, as we published after the one-day POA strike, all we could honestly do as communists was to comment; and admittedly in a rather Olympian fashion at that. Suffice to say, the CPGB has no members on the POA executive. Nor in the POA. Nor even in prison.
The notion that Engels and the dialectic of nature - we carried a three-page article by myself - should not have featured on the front page, but rather the POA, is, the reader ought to know, characteristic of a rather long-running moan issued every now and again from a loose minority in the CPGB. I have consistently replied to the comrades that they are pandering to, or actually embracing, economism. That is, elevating trade union politics over Marxism. And that far from being 'obscure', the Weekly Worker boasts one of the biggest circulations reported by the left press in Britain. That must say something about our relevance and accessibility.
Comrade Richards' argument clearly falls into the category of economism. An assessment reinforced after reading his draft statement. Nowhere does he deal with democratic questions such as prisoners' rights. Workers are dealt with purely in terms of wages and conditions: ie, as wage-slaves.
However, I have readily agreed with comrade Richards on one thing. It was an error, though not a serious one, for us not to have taken on the rest of the left: Galloway, Respect, Morning Star, SWP, PR, SPEW, etc. I do not know why comrade Moody chose not do that (except perhaps time pressures). The Weekly Worker specialises in reporting/polemicising with the existing left. A conscious strategy. So, while in no way going along with comrade Richards and his categorisation of the left vis-à -vis the POA dispute, there were for me plenty of juicy targets just asking for pointed criticism.
Doubtless there are those 'hard' sectarians who, afraid of their own shadows, cannot countenance the idea of supporting the POA. Perhaps the Revolutionary Communist Group falls into that 'purist' camp. These Stalinoids have a long, and it has to be said an honourable, record of championing the rights of prisoners and exposing the many crimes and abuses that take place in Britain's prison system. Maybe I am being unfair about the RCG. I really do not know. The current edition of the RCG's sleepy Fight racism, Fight imperialism came out too late for the POA dispute - it is dated August-September.
As explained on countless occasions, it is perfectly principled for genuine communists to enter into all manner of alliances with all manner of allies - the sole proviso being that we retain the right to criticise and exercise that right. So there is nothing wrong at all with enthusiastically supporting the POA in its pay battle with the Brown government. Moreover, it also seems quite clear that the POA has moved sharply to the left in recent years. Comrade Moody puts this down to the influx of former NUM and other such militant workers coming into the prison service over the last two decades. Exiles from the decline of industrial capitalism. It would be more than worthwhile investigating this further and doing some serious research. Prison officers in the past were typically recruited from amongst failed policemen, ex-army and other such types. And, of course, social circumstance determines social consciousness.
So it is more than noteworthy that Brian Caton - POA general secretary - openly writes against capitalism. Not just its symptoms. Unusual nowadays. Even given the present batch of left-talking trade union officials. Caton is not unsympathetic to SPEW and its Campaign for a New Workers' Party. The majority of the POA's executive seem to consider themselves old Labour. Therefore comrade Richards' call in his draft statement for prison officers to be "split" from the "most reactionary" elements in the POA is either badly worded or simply off beam. But that is the least of his problems.
Events
Funnily enough, I actually wanted comrade Richards to do our POA article, as did the PCC. The Weekly Worker's editor, Peter Manson, rang him shortly after the PCC had met. But comrade Richards was unable to write the article at such short notice, so we got comrade Moody to do the job instead. How then to respond to comrade Richards, when in a subsequent posting, he announced that the short editorial article in SPEW's paper, The Socialist, was a "thousand times" better than comrade Moody's? It could hardly be a fit of pique at not being asked to write.
Though repeatedly asked, comrade Richards has as of yet to come up with any serious reason for such a damning assessment. Normally, especially given the sequence of events, I would have expected a much more comradely attitude. SPEW did offer the POA executive uncritical support. Yes. It treated the POA as just any other union. Comrade Moody's article supported the POA in its pay dispute and sketched out the long struggle conducted by prison officers to establish their right to organise and to strike. The POA broke with its 2001 no-strike deal on August 29. Excellent. We make no bones about that. But what about the role of prison officers in meting out oppression?
Programme
In his giddy enthusiasm for the POA strike and in his desire to bash the SWP, comrade Richards has taken up arguments that are normally associated with the SWP. An irony. Hence in one particularly memorable posting the comrade mangles Karl Marx in true SWP style. He has the great man declaring that a single strike is "worth more than a thousand programmes (or something like it)". This is worth expanding upon.
Marx actually wrote: "Every step of the real movement is more important than a dozen programmes."3 This was in his Critique of the Gotha programme, where he included a letter he had written to Wilhelm Bracke in May 1875 as a foreword. When he refers to a "step of the real movement" Marx surely had in mind an historic event on the scale of the Paris Commune. It happened only four years previously and had shaken the whole bourgeois order in Europe to its foundations. I am sure Marx was not thinking about two-a-penny sectional strikes like the one staged by the prison officers (which lasted for a mere few hours).
Moreover - and this is obvious with even a casual reading - Marx wrote in the attempt to generally improve, to upgrade, to rescue the programme of the German SDP. Marx fully appreciated the importance of programme - he authored a good few after all: the Manifesto of the Communist Party and the Demands of the Communist Party in Germany, to name just two. It was because of the importance he attached to the role of programme that he disobeyed doctor's orders and took time out to pen his criticisms of the draft Gotha programme.
This had been cobbled together by Marx's comrades, the Eisenachers - notably August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht - and the followers of the state socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle. The draft was to be presented to the unity congress of the two groups meeting in Gotha. However, it was a melange of Marxist and Lassallean ideas. Marx's comrades had agreed a series of rotten compromises, the result of diplomatic hagglings, not hard politics and polemical victories. Justification: the holy grail of unity.
Marx objected. He vigorously attacked this "deplorable" situation that was bound to prove "demoralising for the party".4 He presented a list of eviscerating criticisms. He also offered the advice that unless his formulations, or something very much like them, were adopted, then it would be better, far better, to stay as separate organisations and find areas where there could be common actions. Rather disunity and maintaining principle than unprincipled unity.
Needless to say, Marx was not objecting to the German party equipping itself with a programme. Nor was he urging his comrades to instead concentrate their efforts on giving "full" or "unequivocal" support to this or that strike. A worrying suggestion.
Marx defended the old Eisenach programme of 1869. Given the unification of little Germany - which left out Austria and was brought about by the Prussian state in 1870 - he recognised the need for updating. The Marx-Engels team advocated a big Germany, a single and indivisible German republic won from below. Obviously, the Marxist programme had to take account of that development and adjust strategically and tactically according to the new situation.
Neither Marx nor anyone else genuinely standing in the Marxist tradition has ever denied the tremendous importance of programme. It was Eduard Bernstein who sought to belittle the programme and elevate the organisation of the party into a thing in and for itself. Unconsciously this was echoed and turned into doctrine by the SWP's founder-leader, Tony Cliff, who routinely warned of the danger of adopting a programme by invoking the Marx passage quoted above.
That comrade Richards apes the philistinism of the SWP, and at this particular moment in time, is very bad news. Ditto his remark that the POA had given communists "a lesson in the class struggle". What lesson exactly would that be? Organising a strike in order to improve one's own pay? If the comrade really thinks that, then it is clear that he is using the POA dispute as a Trojan horse to smuggle economism into the CPGB.
We are determinedly political and all and every attempt to water down or downgrade the importance of the programme will be vigorously opposed. Indeed at this particular moment of time we are engaged in a redrafting of our programme and our comrade Mike Macnair has written a pamphlet on the subject which we are about to publish.
In the meantime the SWP, SPEW, Respect, etc have taken themselves to the point of disaster.