31.01.2008

Fighting Unions: Not much 'organising'

Dave Isaacson reports on the NW day school-cum-rally last Saturday

On Saturday January 26 Manchester’s Friends Meeting House hosted an Organising for Fighting Unions day school. Another is set to take place in central London on Saturday February 2. The attendance of around 60-70 people was just about reasonable, but not really the “fantastic” result which was claimed, especially considering that Manchester had hosted an OFFU rally in the Mechanics Institute last March which was full, with around 250 people. Upbeat exaggeration and hyperbole, however, are something we expect from comrades in the Socialist Workers Party and this occasion did not disappoint on that front.

As usual with any ‘day school’ the SWP plays a leading role in organising, it was more of a rally. There were two plenary sessions with ‘big name’ top-table speakers and a choice of four workshops in between. All in all, the event lasted only three hours.

The first plenary was led off by Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association. He was at pains to emphasise that prison officers were just ordinary workers and that the prison service is “ours”. This was rightly challenged by a few comrades in the short amount of time allowed for contributions from the floor. However, in some ways his speech was one of the more radical of the day. He told us that his members were ready and willing to defy the law and courts and break the anti-union laws again, and that “a fighting union asks, it demands and then it takes back”.

Next up was Jane Loftus, president of the Communication Workers Union and an SWP member. In contrast to Caton, her contribution was particularly dull. A bland statement full of platitudes. There was nothing she told the audience that everyone there would not have already known. When Jason Travis of Permanent Revolution asked her why she had not spoken out against the calling off of the CWU strike, she simply failed to respond. Like many speakers after her she pointed out that “we cannot ignore the question of Labour”, but nobody could bring themselves to offer Respect - the organisation which established OFFU - in either of its two incarnations as any kind of alternative. Indeed there was no discussion of any political alternative at all. Even when questions such as the ‘war on terror’ or abortion rights were spoken about it was from within the framework of trade union politics.

Although OFFU resides at the original Club Row headquarters of Respect, now occupied by the George Galloway Respect Renewal wing, it seems that the SWP is still running the show. But there were stalls from both sides of the split and Renewal had a good number of comrades at the event. CPGB members from the north west also had a stall, causing obvious discomfort amongst some SWPers. However, a Hands Off the People of Iran comrade who approached leading Manchester SWPer Mark Krantz to ask if he could book a Hopi stall at the forthcoming World Against War event in Manchester was told he could not because Hopi is not affiliated. However, the CPGB (which is affiliated) will be sure to book a stall that will feature plenty of Hopi material.

The four workshops were entitled ‘Organising to win: union organising at work’, ‘Spreading the word: using the media, publicising disputes and campaigns’, ‘Migrant workers’, and ‘Destroying the myths’. I went to the session on migrant workers, which was very interesting and informative. It was led by Chris Rae from Trade Unions for Refugees and Unite organisers Mike Thompson and Bartek Jaskiewicz. Mike and Bartek spoke about their campaigns to organise Polish migrant workers and forge unity between them and their British brothers and sisters. Bartek also spoke about his own experience as a migrant worker in struggle with his employer. It was a real shame that we did not have longer for this session - we had to finish just as comrades were widening the discussion out to the political issues at the heart of the question, and as we were beginning to organise and lay out some action points of what we could actually do. One important suggestion made just before we rejoined the plenary was that there should a strong focus on migrant workers as part of the Manchester May Day celebrations.

The final session that we returned for was less grounded in reality than anything I had heard throughout the day. There were lots of platform speakers, some of whom spoke well, but no time for any contributions from the floor. Perhaps comrade Travis’s earlier question to Jane Loftus was too much for the organisers? Amongst yet more platitudes and calls to get involved in this or that campaign one comment from Karen Reissmann - victimised mental health nurse and SWP member - is particularly worth reporting. She told us, with a straight face, that workers in Britain “have never been in a better position to fight over the past 26 years”.

Surely all of us wish this were the case, but it is not enough to simply say it when it is patently not true. I assume she follows Chris Harman here in seeing the miners’ 1984-85 Great Strike as the highest example of the downturn. Yes, workers are fed up to the back teeth with neoliberal attacks and there are stirrings of resistance, but organisationally and politically we are terribly weak. Unless we start to address these questions, which OFFU appears to have no intention of doing, we will simply be unable to rise to the challenges ahead.