WeeklyWorker

28.01.2010

Lessons of the NUWM and UWC

Mark Fischer takes a look at the National Unemployed Workers Movement and the Unemployed Workers Charter

In 1986, Communist Party members organised around the factional journal The Leninist launched the Unemployed Workers Charter, a militant campaign for a mass unemployed organisation along the lines of the National Unemployed Workers Movement, founded in the early 1920s.

The UWC was a direct response to the 'Jarrow 86' fiasco - a cynical publicity stunt aping the 1936 unemployed march to London and engineered to bolster the chances of the Neil Kinnock-led Labour Party in the 1987 general election. We took the opportunity to contrast the militant tradition of the NUWM with the begging-bowl charity-mongering of Jarrow - both the 1986 version and the 1936 original.

In fact, Jarrow 36 was framed as a direct alternative to the NUWM and its high-profile hunger marches. It was overtly 'non political' - with the exception that it took the overtly political decision to exclude members of the Communist Party and NUWM. The nature of the stunt was illustrated by the fact that "… the divisional agents for both the Conservative and Labour parties were sent ahead to prepare the way and support came from the political right as well as the left. At Harrogate, the Territorial Army took care of the Jarrow crusaders; at Leeds a newspaper owner gave food and drink; at Sheffield the Conservative Party were the hosts, and in Chesterfield it gave meals and accommodation and again in Nottingham" (P Kingsford The hunger marchers in Britain 1920-1940, London 1982, p219).

The NUWM could not have been more different. Established in 1921, under the leadership of a founder-member of the CPGB, Wal Hannington, the NUWM had 100,000 in its ranks at its height. Six spectacular hunger marches were held between 1922 and 1936, beginning in places such as Glasgow and south Wales, and ending in huge demonstrations in London. But it was not all about these well publicised initiatives. The NUWM led countless pickets, street meetings and factory occupations against layoffs. It represented thousands of unemployed men and women in dealings with labour exchange officials. It was a movement, not simply a campaign, with deep and vibrant roots in the class.

So we in The Leninist were always clear that, while we claimed the political heritage of Wal Hannington's organisation - there was even a physical continuity in the shape of our honorary president Jack Dash, legendary dockers' leader and member of the original NUWM - the UWC's primary purpose was to agitate in the ranks of the movement for a reborn NUWM, not present itself as the finished article.

However, that dialogue with the workers' movement took an active form, not simply a journalistic one. The UWC took hundreds of unemployed workers and their supporters to lobby the annual TUC congresses. We mobilised supporters to stand on the picket lines outside dole offices, alongside striking members of the civil servants' union. In one memorable Hackney incident in 1987, we managed to positively deflect the anger that many claimants turning up for their giros initially felt towards the strikers:

"So, led by East London UWC, hundreds of unemployed workers converged on the town hall, where they faced locked doors and a building deserted by all the local Labour Party dignitaries. The door, however, somehow got kicked in (tut, tut …) and nearly 150 unemployed streamed in to demand their rights!" (The Leninist June 4 1987).

Of course, political times have changed massively since the 80s. The reality of unemployed is now largely experienced as a personal tragedy rather than a social phenomenon. This atomised and impotent state for masses of people is the fault of the leadership of the workers' movement - both then and now. As we noted about the failed Employment Training slave-labour initiative of the Tory government, "technically ET is a flop. Politically, however, it has been a runaway success. The Tories have succeeded in establishing the principle of work-for-dole not simply among wide swathes of 'public opinion', but also, crucially, with the TUC and the leadership of the Labour Party" (The Leninist April 10 1988).

The principles we agitated for via the UWC campaign still remain the key demands for the movement in its fight against unemployment.

As the pledge made by members of the first national hunger march in 1922 put it, "… realising that only by the abolition of this hideous capitalist system can the horror of unemployment be removed from our midst, I here and now take upon myself a binding oath, to never cease from active strife against this system until capitalism is abolished and our country and all its resources truly belong to the people" (W Hannington Unemployed struggles 1919-1936 London 1973, p81)