Socialist trade union
International Viewpoint #75 • December 11, 1989 especially the blacks.
(t) Property for personal use and consupport sumption shall be constitutionally protected.
Land
THE Socialist Movement (originally the Socialist Conference)
(u) The state shall devise and implement was formed three years ago from the hard left in the British a land reform programme that will include
Labour Party and the trade unions as a reaction against the and address the following issues: abolition of all racial restrictions on ownership and continued drift to the right and advance of what is known as use of land, implementation of land
"new realism". The Socialist Movement has adopted what it reform in conformity with the principle of calls a "twin-track" approach, working both inside and affirmative action, taking into account the victims of forced removals.
outside the Labour Party. Its aim is to rebuild the left in both wings of the organized labour movement. Here Alan Thornett
Workers reports on an important and successful conference recently
(v) A Charter protecting workers' trade organized by the Socialist Movement aimed at strengthening union nghts, especially the right to strike and collective bargaining, shall be incorthe left in the unions.
porated into the constitution.
ALAN THORNETT
Women
(w) Women shall have equal rights in all spheres of public and private life and the state shall take affirmative action to eliminate inequalities discrimination and between the sexes.
The family
(x) The family, parenthood and childrens' rights shall be protected.
International
(y) South Africa shall be a non-aligned state committed to the principles of the
Charter of the Organization of African
Unity and the Charter of the United
Nations and to achievement of national liberation, world peace and disarmament.
*
FORWARD
TO VORKING CLASS DEMOCRACY
UNITE, MOBILISE
*SOCIALIŞMI
22
HE Socialist Movement's two-day
T
trade union conference, held on November 11 and 12 in Sheffield, was attended by over 550 trade unionists — the overwhelming majority of them non-aligned militants. This highly successful conference, organized around the theme "The way forward for the left in the unions" represented a significant step forward in the organization of a political fight-back against the domination of rightwing new realism in the British trade union movement.
### Comprehensive policy statement adopted
The conference adopted a comprehensive policy statement which pointed to the contradictions in the present political conjuncture in Britain, with the rise in the level of class struggle on the one hand and the continued dominance of new realism on the other, It put it this way:
"On the one hand the five years of retreat which followed the miners' strike has now given way to a more confident mood expressed in this summer's industrial upsurge, with its series of remarkable strike votes expressed in the strength of the strikes that followed....But on the other hand, recent struggles show that many of the features that have been so destructive in the past are still present. The London Underground strike ended in classic fashion with a deal agreed over the heads of the rank-and-file by their leaders. The British Rail strike could have won much more by completely getting rid of the strings attached, and in our view, the defeat of the dockers was due, in major part, to the failure of the TGWU (Transport and General Workers' Union) leaders to adopt a policy of defiance of the Tory anti-union laws."
Despite this contradiction - with the leadership continuing to move to the right the clearest expression of which being the adoption of the reactionary Policy Review Document by the Labour Party conference with the backing of the trade union leaders) and the rank-and-file moving towards militant action - there has until now been no initiative at the level of the rank-and-file of the unions to challenge this development and fill the vacuum of leadership created by it.
Movement in opposition to new realism
This is why this conference was long overdue and why the Socialist Movement which grew out of opposition to "new realism" was best placed to organize it. The conference was sponsored by over 40 labour movement organizations - trade unions, Labour Party branches, Trades Councils and political organizations, including the Communist Party of Britain (which controls the old Communist Party daily the Morning Star), and its industrial wing, the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions (LCDTU). Some 160 trade union branches and nine trades councils sent 250 official delegates. The rest attended as individuals or were sponsored by Labour Party branches, campaigns or disputes.
It was the biggest unofficial rank-and-file gathering of its kind in Britain for over ten
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SOUTH AFRICA / BRITAIN sector. (r) Co-operative forms of economic enterprise, village industries and small scale family activities shall be supported by the state. (s) The state shall promote the acquisi- conference wins wide tion of managerial, technical and scientific skills among all sections of the population,
December 11, 1989 • #175 International Viewpoint years - showing that despite the damage which has been done by ten years of Thatcherism there is still a keen response to this kind of initiative - and a desire to organize against the right. Many of those attending represented a new generation of trade union militants brought forward by the new mood of militancy at the level of the rank-and-file as expressed in the industrial militancy that has emerged over the last year and a half. At the present time this is expressed most clearly by the ambulance workers' dispute.
The opening plenary on Saturday was
Jeremy Corbyn (MP), and included Tony Benn (MP), Micky Fenn (victimized Tilbury docks' steward), Anne Speed (Irish TGWU), Anne Henderson
Broad Left-railworkers' union), Debbie Epstein (Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights and Socialist Teachers' Alliance), Kim Moody (Labor Notes, USA), Rauion Corriz (General Motors, Barcelona) and an ambulance worker involved in the current industrial action. The Sunday plenary included four other current disputes - Pergamon, • Chronicle, Sheffield CPSA and Islington NALGO (local government) striking childcarers, and myself moving acceptance of the policy statement on behalf of the conference organizing committee.
But it was not just its size and scope of representation which made the conference important — it was the democratic basis on which it was organized. It represented a sharp break from previous similar initiatives which were rigidly controlled and which discussed short unamendable statements made available on the day.
A break with undemocratic traditions
Each of the previous initiatives in Britain over the past 30 years was controlled in this way. The oldest, the Communist Party based LCDTU, formed in 1965, never achieved any real independence from the left trade union bureaucracy, and has now declined in size. The Broad Left Organizing
Committee (BLOC) was always dominated by the Militant Tendency and never gained a real implantation. It has ceased to function on a national level. The various "rank-and- file" initiatives of the British Socialist
Workers' Party have long been abandoned as the SWP adopted their "downturn" theory and pulled back from challenging the bureaucracy in the unions.
This conference discussed a comprehensive policy document which was circulated in advance and open to amendment via discussion in the 36 workshops held during the
The central themes of the conference were: Build a fight-back against new realism; defy the anti-union laws; support those in struggle; and democratize the unions.
These were the key lines of divide which the conference sought, with some success, to draw in the trade union movement. The line of divide between those in favour of a class struggle line in the unions and those who seek to collaborate with the employers and the government.The policy statement went on to address all the traditional "trade union" issues; the employers' new technology, the changing nature of the workforce, privatization, the defence of the NHS, the fight for higher wages and the defence of working conditions. The statement was particularly clear on the anti-union laws issue facing the unions today in Britain and one of the important lines of divide.
"Socialists have to establish 'defiance, not compliance' as the policy of the movement....because the trade unions will continue to be defeated whilst these laws are obeyed. It cannot be credibly argued that a trade union movement of nine million members affiliated to the TUC (Trades Union Congress) has no alternative but to comply with the Tory laws. these laws are complied with, new ones are brought in — new legislation is being introduced in the coming years to challenge unofficial strikes and abolish the closed
And it is clear on the repeal of these laws by a future Labour government: "We cannot accept the continued criminalization of trade union activity. We must campaign for the complete repeal of all anti-union legislation adopted by the Tories since 1980 and for the restoration of trade union immuni-
Self-organization of the oppressed
But the statement went well beyond these issues. For the first time in Britain a conference of this kind attempted to make the issue of women in the unions, black workers in the unions and lesbian and gay workers in the unions central to its agenda. For the first time at such a conference there was an out lesbian speaker on the main platform in the opening plenary. The policy statement had sections on ecology and the unions, the poll tax and the unions, and discussions on international issues such as international links and the effects of 1992 and the single European market on the trade unions in Britain.
John Palmer and Rauion Corriz introduced the workshop on the single European market which developed into a debate between those supporting the policy statement which saw 1992 as a re-organization of capital on a European scale to the detriment of the working class Europe-wide and those who attempted to amend the statement arguing that: "... the concentration and socialization of capital symbolized by the market represents a move forward in the organization of production creating new structures and links across national boundaries which can only be to the ultimate benefit of workers sharing a common class
This key sentence in the amendment was
BRITAIN defeated. There was a third strand to the debate — support for national sovereignty — but few supported it. There was also discussion about building international links and resisting the effects of the big market and the fight for a workers' Europe, East The workshop on Broad Lefts (left-wing rank-and-file groupings in some unions) adopted an amendment to the policy statement which proposed a list of principles on which such broad lefts should be built. This debate went to the floor of conference.
Noone disagreed with the principles as such, on the contrary, but the extent to which they should be "preconditions" for supporting broad left formations or on the other hand be objectives to be fought for inside the broad lefts themselves was controversial. The conference steering committee supported the latter, seeing the former as too restrictive and requiring broad lefts to be near perfect before they could be supported by the Socialist Movement. This was not cleared up in the debate, since the mover stressed they were not preconditions and the seconder stressed that they were.
It was pointed out that most of the broad lefts which had sponsored the conference fail to meet all the criteria concerned. The amendment was carried against the platform with the ambiguity unresolved.
### Labour Briefing largest organized force
Although the Communist Party of Britain sponsored the conference and had a stall at it, they had no serious political intervention and proposed no amendments to the policy statement - which is far to the left of the line they support in the unions.
Nor were the biggest organizations of the far left there either. The Militant does not support the Socialist Movement and was completely absent and the SWP, which does support the Socialist Movement, was only there in small numbers - possibly because they had a national conference.
The largest organized far left force was
Labour Briefing.
The conference took several important practical initiatives designed to strengthen the work of the Socialist Movement in the unions. A new Socialist Movement Trade
Union Steering Committee was elected at the conference from regional meetings of delegates and from caucuses of members of individual unions. This committee was charged with carrying out the decisions of the conference and organizing the trade union work of the Socialist Movement, and organizing solidarity with those in struggle.
Various other practical decisions of the conference will be implemented as well, including caucuses of members of several of the unions present, a conference on the poll tax and the possibility of a conference of the European left. The Socialist Movement plans to publish the policy statement almost immediately as a pamphlet for sale 23 in the trade unions.