Book review: Paul Le Blanc’s Trotsky ( Reaktion Books 2015 )

19 11 2015

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Paul Le Blanc’s Trotsky is understated, but the influence of Isaac Deutscher’s tragic hero brought down by cruel circumstances can be detected in his defence of Trotsky as an honest fighter for traditional Marxist values.  He asserts that “Trotsky who in order to remain true to the ideals that animated his entire life, followed a trajectory  that took him out of the centre of power.” [1] This  sidesteps Trotsky’s politics when he was at the centre of power. Instead, we have the image of Trotsky as a true Bolshevik- Leninist in his long-term intentions. So the main focus is on his failed attempt to create the Fourth International. It should go without saying that Trotsky was not pulled out of power by Marxist principles: he was pushed out of power by the old Bolshevik-Leninists and their ruling faction.

Paul Le Blanc’s  claim that Trotsky was the first of the Bolshevik chiefs to turn against the machine of dictatorship when it began to devour the Socialist dream is also a hollow one.[2] It would be more accurate to say the machine turned against Trotsky. He was  one of the most prominent architects of the state dictatorship over workers. Trotsky advocated a principle  which was later taken up and developed by Stalin: ” the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state.” [3] Another of Trotsky’s policies,  which Stalin made his own, was the complete subordination of the trade unions to the state: the role of trade unions was to increase productivity, not defend trade unionists against the state.

After the October Revolution, Trotsky repudiated his past criticism of the excessive centralism of the old Bolsheviks. Trotsky became the personification of bureaucratic centralism. His “red army” revived and copied the old Tsarist military apparatus with conventional discipline and hierarchy. Trotsky’s concept of the army was a structure of specialised military skills, separated  from wider social relations: a class neutral instrument to be utilised for proletarian ends. In the opinion of Bolshevik dissidents, it was very much a bourgeois model of a standing army in which elected officers and rank and file committees were unthinkable. The Bolshevik promise of a people’s militia was quickly forgotten.

From early 1918 Trotsky adopted authoritarian attitudes, rather than confidence in the class creativity of the workers themselves. [4] At the 8th party Congress, in 1919, Ossinsky challenged the excessive top-down centralism in the party:  the bureaucratic structure was the problem, not the solution.  In 1921, at the Tenth Party Congress, the Workers Opposition called for a return to grass-roots initiative and creativity. Trotsky denounced them as a dangerous deviation.The historic right of the party dictatorship came before the passing moods of workers democracy. In 1923, in the New Course, Trotsky considered party factions to be an expression of hostile class forces.  As late as the Thirteenth Party Congress, in 1924, he expressed loyalty to the party- right or wrong. This became the hallmark of Stalin: the party as an infallible instrument of history.

Where there is historical continuity in Trotsky’s views, it is from Second International Marxism. In 1905, he did not theorise Soviet Power as a revolution against the state. Trotsky saw the State as a class-neutral instrument. In Results and Prospects, he wrote: “every political party worthy of the name strives to capture political power and thus place the state at the  service of the class whose interests it represents.” [5] The state was a neutral machine that could be a powerful lever for revolution or reaction. Furthermore, the state had played a greater role in Russian history that it had in the west. This helped shape his concept of uninterrupted revolution in Russia. In the state socialist tradition, he predicted that” the proletariat on taking power, must by the very logic of position, inevitably be urged towards the introduction of state management of industry.” [6]

Trotsky’s concept of uninterrupted revolution, which later became known as Permanent Revolution, did not advocate simply waiting for the European revolution rather than make a start on building a state economy in Russia, as alleged by Gregory Zinoviev, in a crude and dishonest Bolshevik polemic in 1915. [7]  For Trotsky,  as for “most Bolsheviks, state power, state control over the economy and increasing productivity in state industry became synonymous with the struggle for Socialism.”[8]  As in  the ideology of the Second International, the economy was understood to be about technology. Bolshevik politics was about developing the productive forces, extending  state industry and productivity, not  workers democratic decision-making in production. As Paul Le Blanc explains, in Trotsky’s perspective: “a development of the  productive forces is the absolutely necessary practical premise of Communism.” [9]

In Trotsky’s own words:Marxism sets out from the development of technique as the fundamental spring of progress, and constructs the communist programme upon the dynamic of the productive forces.” [10] But this metaphysical theory is more Plekhanov’s mechanical materialism than Marx’s critique of political economy. Marx did not view the economy as a technological machine. Social relations are fundamental to production, particularly those which structure the work of the direct producers: “Production treated in isolation from social relations of production is an empty abstraction.” [11] Trotsky, in The Revolution Betrayed, among other inconsistencies, did see workers as the greatest productive force, which does imply social relations, but during the period of War Communism, when he relied on the resources of the Soviet Union, he saw workers as instruments of production to be directed and commanded by the state to any role or place. This approach anticipated  the theory of Socialism in One Country and Stalin’s  dictatorial methods.

Paul Le Blanc repeats Trotsky’s  polemic against Stalinist claims that the USSR was a fully fledged Socialist Society: “Socialism could not be reduced to a state-owned economy with a top-down Socialist planning in a single country.”[12] Yes, but this abstract comparison, just like Trotsky’s contrast of Stalin’s dictatorship with the Marxist concept of the withering way of the state, in the Revolution Betrayed, misses the question of why Trotsky defined the USSR as some kind of workers state because there was nationalisation of the means of production. [13] This limited critique of Stalinism, which assumed that, Stalin, as the head of the state economy, was an indirect representative of working class gains, reflects the fact that dictatorship from above, independent of the working class, was also – to a lesser extent –  a characteristic of Lenin and Trotsky’s regime.[14]

However, it is not simply about formal state property: “the real owners  of the means of production are those who can decide what to produce, for whom to produce, and how to produce.” [15] How could the Stalinist dictatorship be rooted in distribution and the poverty of objects of consumption? The separation of production and distribution was an aspect of bourgeois political economy criticised by Marx. Trotsky’s insight that “the means of production belong to the state, but the state, so to speak, belongs to the bureaucracy.” [16] called into question his own fixation on a nationalised state economy as proletarian. The thinking of the young Trotsky about productive forces had been more subtle  and flexible. In, Results and Prospects, he argued against any direct political expression of economic relations: the dictatorship of the proletariat was not automatically dependent on technical development. [17]

Trotsky’s mature political outlook was strongly influenced by his experience of the Bolshevik dictatorship over workers in 1918-23.He was unable to get to the bottom of Stalinism. As Paul Le Blanc observes, ” the tyranny with which he was most familiar was the one he seriously misjudged”.[18] In Trotsky’s 1905, in Our Differences, there was a warning against using a historical analogy, rather than a creative response to new historical realities. The older Trotsky was less perceptive. His analogy of the French Revolution with the degeneration of the Russian Revolution served to obscure, rather than clarify, the unfolding historical process. Trotsky’s role as a labour dictator distorted his understanding  of events and his  political thought did not identify, or keep up with, the unfolding counter-revolution based on party and state.

The spectre of Thermidor in  the party and state apparatus was raised by Bolshevik oppositionists in 1923. Trotsky dismissed their concern. Ten years later he still insisted that “only the peasants can become a force for Thermidor.”[19] The counter-revolutionary danger could only come from the party’s right, representing the peasants and private property.  When events proved him wrong, he then redefined Thermidor and applied it retrospectively to the events of 1923. The analogy rationalised  a notion of counter-revolution on the basis of the state property established by the October Revolution. So Stalin was still seen as a centrist, standing between the working class, represented by Trotsky, and the alternative of the private property represented by Bukharin. Yet the historical reality was that “The Stalinist road was a path of its own and it was this specific and historical role Trotsky did not understand.” [20]

Paul Le Blanc  skips over Trotsky’s reluctance to challenge Stalin when he held positions of power. In 1923, he agreed with Stalin that Lenin’s political testament should not be openly published. Nor did Trotsky explode Lenin’s bombshell at the Twelfth Congress. Instead, Trotsky concentrated on his proposals to make state industry more efficient and profitable.  Again in 1923, Trotsky preferred a deal with Stalin, to allow more criticism and less bureaucracy, rather than fight for rank and file democracy for party members. As late as 1925 he told Kamenev he was against any attempt to remove Stalin.[21] “Stalin first enunciated the doctrine of Socialism in one country at the end of 1924.Trotsky did not reply until late in 1926, almost two years later.” [22] As Trotsky explained, in 1920, it had already become clear to him that there would be no proletarian help from the west for a long period and meanwhile the focus was the Soviet Union. [23]

Paul le Blanc is proud of Trotsky’s internationalism, yet the prophet armed was an inconsistent internationalist. As a leader of the Soviet state, he put the national interests of the Soviet state before international class interests. Like other Bolshevik leaders, he was in favour of prioritising the consolidation of Bolshevik power in the USSR. The most famous instance is his signing of the Rapallo Treaty in 1922. This conventional secret treaty allowed the training and arming of the German army in Russia at a time when the Versailles treaty prevented this in Europe. This was the same army which attacked German workers  a year later. Trotsky was also worried that revolution in Afghanistan might create difficulties for the Soviet state, and the killing of the leaders the Turkish Communist Party did not prevent his support for conventional diplomatic ties with the Turkish Government. [24] At the Third Congress of the Comintern, Trotsky was the hammer on delegates who asked for the independence of the organisation from the Russian State.

Exaggerating the differences with Stalin and minimising the differences with Lenin has raised questions about Trotsky’s political integrity. Now, Paul Le Blanc has a rose-tinted view of Trotsky’s political integrity when he claims that “an essential quality of Trotsky’s revolutionary character was a commitment not to lie.” [25] But Trotsky’s conscience was not clear when it came to  a debate with Victor Serge, and others, about the Kronstadt revolt over fifteen years after the event. Paul le Blanc does has sympathy with the insurgents. In contrast, Trotsky sneers at them as a grey mass with big revolutionary pretensions. Even the Communist sailors involved were dismissed as well fed dandies! Was this deliberate misrepresentation or simply bad temper from the older Trotsky? The fact is the Kronstadt garrison had a proud revolutionary history. The sailors were in the vanguard of the revolutions in  1905 and 1917. [26] And Rank and file Bolsheviks in Kronstadt joined the revolt.

It was misleading of Trotsky to claim the Kronstadt Sailors in 1921 were new casual elements and dominated by the petty bourgeois. Many of the old revolutionary militants who had long service records were prominent in the insurrection. And behind Trotsky’s political rhetoric about the class composition of Kronstadt was the changing class composition of the Bolshevik Party itself. Only a tiny number of party members remained at the workbench in the factory. Nor was Trotsky  telling the truth when he claimed, “the Kronstadters demanded privileges.” [27] They did not demand privileged food rations:  they demanded equal food rations with exceptions for those working in hazardous conditions. This had also been the demand of striking workers in Petrograd, in February 1921, before Bolshevik military and police repression ended their strikes. There was widespread anger about extra rations for Bolshevik officials.  And not just extra rations. Top Bolshevik officials were receiving, in addition to special rations: extravagant use of cars, luxury apartments and holiday villa’s. [28]

The Kronstadt revolt did raise petty bourgeois demands to end grain requisition. Yet Trotsky himself had put forward proposals to the Politburo one year earlier to bring back market relation to phase out grain seizure. But, unlike the Kronstadt Rebels he did not raise this demand in public, he just left it on the politburo table. Whatever the subjective politics of the rebels, Trotsky still regarded them as objectively counter-revolutionary because their actions were a threat to the Bolshevik dictatorship, which he identified in an abstract way with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Although, what had been highlighted by the uprising was the habitual Bolshevik resort to coercion as a solution to any political difficulties and their lack of any significant working class support. Trotsky  and  other Bolshevik leaders had not made any attempt since the end of the civil war to revive the Soviets or working class democracy. [29]

Trotsky put a bureaucratic gloss on the repression of the Kronstadt sailors. He was keen to stress that Zinoviev was the party boss for the area of the revolt: it was not his  responsibility. However, as the head of the red army he did issue the ultimatum: surrender or be crushed. Trotsky also spread government propaganda that the uprising was simply a conspiracy against the Soviet regime. On March 7th,  the London Daily Herald printed his opinion that the Russian counter-revolutionary organisers had good timing for the  mutiny. [30]  However, a simple conspiracy would have started the rebellion when the ice had already melted and the battleships could then have converged on Petrograd. When  Victor Serge raised the issue of the pointless killings of hundreds of Kronstadt prisoners months after the rebellion had been put down, Trotsky gave a bureaucratic view: this was Dzerzhinsky’s department, not his. [31]

Trotskyist influenced writers, including those from who ironically claim to be from a tradition which values workers self-activity and Socialism from below, argue that the Kronstadt demand for freely elected Soviets and freedom for working class parties, which echoed the February demands of Petrograd workers, could only mean counter-Revolution. [32] “In this situation the role of maintaining the cohesion of the party and state apparatus became central.” [33] The only way forward for these writers was Bolshevik coercion:  a different form of counter-Revolution, hidden under the banner of Communism. These views contain a strange mixture of crude materialism and naive idealism. It was all about bad circumstances and good leaders. In Chris Harman’s view, “the  state, the body of armed men that controlled and policed society was in the hands of a party that was motivated by Socialist intentions.” [34]

The good intentions of Trotsky and a small revolutionary elite somehow promised a Socialist future, which appears to be Paul Le Blanc’s underlying view as well. Hence his focus on the Fourth International. His book is dedicated to George Breitman whose history of the Fourth International shares Paul Le Blanc’s view that the FI “would have to be created by those gathered around Trotsky himself and the Bolshevik-Leninist ideas and perspectives he symbolised.”[35] On Breitman’s view, Trotsky is seen as the sole voice of genuine revolutionary experience. Other experienced comrades such as Victor Serge, and Sneevliet, leader of the Dutch section, are regarded in terms of extreme factionalism, as centrists, formalists, schematists, routinists and petit bourgeois. This imitates the political intolerance of  Bolshevik- Leninism prior to 1917.

Trotsky gave himself the hopeless task of recreating  an idealised Leninism. Loyalty to the leader and his correct policies was the main organisational principle. Breitman tends to assume Trotsky’s critics were petit bourgeois and against discipline.  [36] Breitman uncritically regards Trotsky as the FI’s main asset. Yet Trotsky remained faithful to his  mistaken dogma of the Soviet Union as a workers state, which made him a liability. When Stalin’s army invaded Poland, and nationalised industry, Trotsky’s theory of the USSR as a workers state  became incoherent. He concluded the state ownership was a progressive measure.” But its progressiveness; its specific weight, depends on the sum total of all other factors.” [37]Trotsky could not develop  anti-Stalinist unity because anyone who disagreed with his unconvincing view of the nature of the Soviet Union was not a true Marxist.

Paul Le Blanc excuses Trotsky’s abandonment of the revolutionary ideals of 1917, by referring to the need for emergencies measures. He lamely asserts that it was more circumstances than ideology. But this does not explain why Bolshevik values and convictions remained constant through different circumstances. For example, state centralism, top-down discipline, and reliance on conventional methods. For Trotsky, whatever the political policy choices and their consequences, there was the orthodox  philosophy of dialectical materialism at work.  There was a natural class logic expressing historical necessity. [38] Trotsky’s dialectic was in things or objective categories so that even the miniscule forces of Trotskyism could become a powerful factor in world politics.

Strictly speaking, Trotsky did not have a theory of political economy for the Fourth International.[39] He believed that there was already an objective movement of economic collapse in the interwar years: the productive forces were stagnating. In this catastrophic context, immediate demands would be infused with revolutionary potential. The consciousness of the working class was secondary to this primary objective movement. While the consciousness of the masses lagged behind the objective ripeness of capitalism for revolution there was a crisis of leadership. The  tiny forces of Trotskyism would have the correct programme, expose misleaders, and bring the consciousness of the working class into conformity with the objective base. However, these leadership politics were not correct: there was no mechanical economic collapse or absolute decline of the capitalist economy.

Paul le Blanc  does present the views of those Bolsheviks disappointed in their leadership. There was a common critical theme: the leadership’s fear of the self-activity of the masses and the failure to give a chance to the creativity and initiative of the working class. Paul Le Blanc regrets the fact that the opposition groups such as Democratic Centralists, Workers Opposition, and Workers Group were not allowed to challenge the growing Party-State bureaucracy. Yet he seems to  regard the rising power of the party apparatus as some kind of natural phenomenon which had crept up on the virtuous leaders. Paul Le Blanc does not tell us how Stalin accumulated such powerful positions in the party apparatus.

Trotsky in, My life, states that for Lenin, Stalin’s appointment  as General Secretary was not a political  appointment, but a technical decision. [40] Later in his Diary in Exile he admitted that he had noticed that Lenin promoted Stalin. Moreover, “Lenin created the apparatus. The apparatus created Stalin.” [41] Stalin was one of the original  Bolshevik-Leninists. He was Initially co-opted by Lenin to the Bolshevik leadership, rather than elected.  Trotsky’s late self-identification with Bolshevik- Leninism was self-defeating. Despite his loyal defence of Trotsky, Paul Le Blanc does quote John Marot’s opinion that “Trotsky  and most of the top leadership believed that the road to Socialism involved substituting the political dictatorship of the Communist Party for the democratic self-organisation of the working class.” [41]

Paul Le Blanc’s Trotsky might have had good intentions, but Trotsky’s theoretical inconsistencies meant his  intentions were unpredictable. [43] For Trotsky, democracy inside and outside the party was not a goal in itself, the question for him was an instrumental one: democracy for what? [44] Post 1917, Trotsky did not, in principle, stand for the fullest and most developed democracy for workers:  mass participation and decision-making was not considered  essential. Rosa Luxemburg was an early critic of   Trotsky’s  theory of dictatorship:  workers democracy was not some kind of Christmas present following a period of loyally supporting the policies of a handful of socialist dictators on the bourgeois model. [45] Where Trotsky was consistent was in his stubborn loyalty to the  infallible leadership politics of Bolshevism and its lack of a firm commitment to workers freedom.

Reviewed by Barry Biddulph.

Notes:

[1] Paul Le Blanc, Trotsky. (Reaction Books 2015) p.11.  Later Trotsky’s Bolshevik- Leninism did not return to Socialism from below but was conditioned by the undemocratic and elitist methods of the 1918-21 period.

[2] Paul Le Blanc, as above, p.45

[3] Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, (  New Park Publications,1975) p.77 Although he was a scapegoat for Lenin and his faction at the Tenth Congress, due to his authoritarian politics, they all shared his general political approach.

[4] Ossinsky: “We stand for the point of view of the construction of Society by the class creativity of the workers themselves.” Communist, No 2, April 1918. The word retreat is often used in relation to the Bolshevik leaders, but how do you get back from the road that takes you away from the values of 1917. Ossinsky made the crucial point which Trotsky never really understood or would not accept:  Bolshevik coercion against the workers would create a new social force over workers.

[5] Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects, in Permanent Revolution, ( London: New Park Publications,1982 ) p.194. The State as an essential aspect of bourgeois society and social relations was not part of Trotsky’s political perspective.

[6] Leon Trotsky, as above, p. 199. His use of the word inevitable betrays a fatalistic evolutionism from the philosophy of the Second International. A situation of striking and locked-out workers in the coming Russian Revolution would logically lead a working class party to  intervene in the economy to defend workers interests. Hence, Permanent Revolution or going beyond the minimum programme. This assumed the Bolshevik party would be representative of a significant section of the workers and not a substitute  for them.

[7] John Riddle ( edited ) Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International, ( Pathfinder Press 1986 ) p.391. Zinoviev argued that since Trotsky rejected the Bolshevik perspective of a democratic republic or a national revolution, then he only stood for international revolution. Lenin mocked Trotsky, writing that if Trotsky was right, that the revolution would not be  national and democratic, then Russia was heading for a socialist revolution. This proved that Trotsky was  muddle-headed. p. 394. Trotsky explained his real point of view:  the perspective of a national democratic revolution was illusory. However, this was not an argument against a revolution in Russia, but an extension of its historic basis and class  aims. p.391. His objection was about the political inadequacy of the term bourgeois revolution. A workers government would have objective bourgeois revolutionary tasks, but to retain workers support would intervene in the economy and thus place collectivism on the agenda. He did not argue that the coming revolution would be Socialist. Hence, permanent revolution or moving beyond the bourgeois revolution.

[8] Simon Pirani, Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24, ( London and New York: Routledge, 2008) p.9. Kautsky and Plekhanov developed a theory of the economy from  Marx’s 1859 preface, and the German Ideology, which Marx wrote under the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment.  Even in the State and Revolution, Lenin did not envisage workers control in production: the model was the German Post Office with the Bolsheviks in charge of administration and accounting.

[9] Paul Le Blanc, as above, p.106

[10] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed,( London: New Park Publications,1989 ) p.45

[11] Alex Callinicos, Is There a Future for Marxism? (London: Macmillan 1981), quoted in, S H Rigby, Marxism and History ( Manchester University Press) 1998, p.149. See also Lucio Colletti, From Lenin to Rousseau ( New York and London : Monthly Review Press, 1972 ) Geoff Hodgson, Trotsky and Fatalistic Marxism, (Spokesman Books 1975) And Philip Corrigan, Harvey Ramsay, and Derek Sayer, Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory, ( New York and London : Monthly Review press,1978) Charles Bettelheim,Class Struggles in the USSR,1917-23,(Sussex: Harvester Press,1976)  Alex Callinicos,the Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx,(Chicago and London: Bookmarks,1996) And Peter Beilharz, Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism, (London: Coomhelm)1987.

[12]  Paul Le Blanc as above,p.106

[13] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, (London: New park publications, 1989)p.248. “the nationalisation of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet social structure. Through these relations, established by the proletarian revolution, the nature of the soviet as a proletarian state is for us basically defined.” Despite this dogma, the book is theoretically inconsistent, so nationalisation is proletarian, yet nationalisation and state ownership only changed the situation of the workers juridically.

[14] Baruch Knei- Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p.431

[15] Guglielmo Carchedi, Behind the Crisis (Haymarket Books 2011) p.9

[16] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, ( London: New Park Publications 1989)p.249

[17] Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects, in Permanent Revolution,( London: New Park Publications, 1982.) p.195-197

[18] Paul le Blanc, as above, p.84

[19] Leon Trotsky, The writings of Leon Trotsky,1932-33. (London: New park publications,1972 )p.77

[20] Hillel Ticktin, Leon Trotsky’s Political and Economic analysis of the USSR, in, The Ideas of Leon Trotsky, edited by Hillel Ticktin and Micheal Cox, p.67

[21] Leon Trotsky, My Life,(New York: Pathfinder Press,1970) p.483

[22] Richard B Day, Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation, (Cambridge University Press,1973 ) p.3. For the period when Trotsky  was at the pinnacle of his power, he was the central theorist of economic isolation. Trotsky was not against socialism in one country, he was against Socialism in a separate country. Also see, Alex Nove, Socialist Economics and Development, (London: Allen and Unwin,1986) p.91. “After his exile Trotsky became more emphatic in denouncing the principle of Socialism in One country.”

[23] Leon Trotsky, Tasks before the Twelfth Congress of The Russian Communist Party, ( London: New park Publications,1975)p.5. Until 1925, his focus was on the internal resources of the Soviet Union.

[24] E.H Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-23 vol,3 (Penguin Books,1966 ) p.303. See also Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions?(Chicago: Haymarket Books,2012) p.246. Trotsky was acting as a national statesman: worried about the prospect of a revolution in Afghanistan as causing difficulties for the USSR.

[25] Paul Le Blanc, as above,p.45. See also Baruch Knei-Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) p. 170.

[26]David Cotterill, ( Edited) The Serge-Trotsky Papers, ( London: Pluto Press,1994 ) Lenin threatened to go to the sailors when he found himself isolated by his Bolshevik moderates in 1917.In 1921, Bolshevik propaganda repeated the polemical exaggerations of Lenin that, the working class as an organised force had disappeared. Recent research has shown that working class were still significant in terms of organisation and numbers. For example, see Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24.

[27] The Serge-Trotsky Papers edited by David Cotterill,  (London: Pluto Press, 1994 ) p.162.

[28] Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24,( London: Routledge, 2008) p.58 At the tenth congress, a secret report of corruption of Bolshevik leaders involving:  cars, multiple rations, and luxurious accommodation, was hidden from the delegates. Simon deals with the period following the civil war to demonstrate the Bolsheviks lack of commitment to workers democracy did not simply flow from the circumstances of the civil war.

[29] Gabriel Miasnikov, the future leader of the workers group, was in Petrograd when the revolt broke out. He strongly criticised the Bolshevik resort to weapons as a knee-jerk response to the rebellion, instead of dialogue between communists.

[30] See also, Leon Trotsky,  Military Writings, vol 4 1921-23.

[31] The Serge-Trotsky Papers, Edited by, David Cotterill, (London: Pluto Press,1994)

[32] Duncan Hallas,  Trotsky’s Marxism. ( London: Pluto Press,1979)p. 32

[33] Chris Harman, How the Revolution was Lost, in Russia from Workers State to State Capitalism, Peter Binns, Tony Cliff and Chris Harman.(London: Bookmarks, 1987 )p.30 See also, Samuel Farber, In defence of Democratic Revolutionary Socialism, International Socialism 55, June 1992. The IS tradition greatly underestimated the political and ideological sides. And  David Rousset, The Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution, Alison and Busby, London, New York 1982. And John Rees, In defence of October, International Socialism, October 1991,p.62-64. The IS/SWP tradition is supposed  to stand for Socialism from below, yet Russia was considered to be a Workers State, without workers power from below, until 1928.

[34] Chris Harman, as above,p.22

[35] Paul Le Blanc, as above,p.99. George Breitman, The Rocky Road to the Fourth International 1933-38, Pathfinder, Education for Socialists, 1979.

[36] Mike Jones, New Interventions, Vol 9 Number 1, 1998-99 winter.p.30. The young Trotsky(1904) had described Iskra as a paper for the intelligentsia and the Bolshevik leadership were hardly proletarian.

[37] Leon Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, quoted in Alfred Rosmer, Trotsky and the origins of Trotskyism,(London: Francis Boutle publishers,2002) p.218

[38] Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours, (New York: Pathfinder Press,1972)

[39] Hillel Ticktin, Trotsky’s Political Economy of Capitalism in, The Trotsky Reappraisal, edited by Terry Brotherstone and Paul Dukes(Edinburgh 1992)p.217

[40] Leon Trotsky, My Life,( New York, Pathfinder Press,1970) p. 467, “under Lenin the post of General Secretary, established by the Tenth congress could only have a technical character, never political.” Stalin used his position to deal with dissidents following the ban on Factions at this congress. Trotsky supported the ban. Lenin defended Stalin’s many positions when, in 1919, Prebrazensky challenged the dubious practice of multiple positions and the accumulation of power in a Stalin’s hands. If Stalin was a man of authority then he had been given authority with Lenin’s support. Even in his last testament Lenin was not against the powerful position of a General Secretary.

[41] Trotsky’s Notebooks 1933-35, Introduction, Philip Pomper,(Columbia University Press,1986)p.27. In his, Stalin., The Revolutionary in Power, vol, 2 Trotsky had written something similar, “the Bolshevik party was created by Lenin. Stalin grew out of its political machine.” This suggests a looser connection. But the prominence of Stalin and Lenin’s role in providing him with positions in the party did worry Trotsky. It’s a thought which must have undermined confidence in his pure Leninist project.

[42] Paul Le Blanc, as above,p.119.

[43] Leon Trotsky, Our Political Tasks (1904) New Park Publications, undated.

[44]Leon Trotsky, Their morals and Ours, (New York: Pathfinder Press,1972)p.44-45. Trotsky polemic with Victor Serge is appalling. So demands for freedom from Serge are just his demands for freedom from discipline. The points Victor serge makes about excessive centralism, mistrust of debate and lack of confidence in the masses are points specific to the Bolshevik party following the October revolution. Trotsky prefers to think they are just abstractions.

[45] Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution, Leninism or Marxism, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The university of Michigan Press, 1961, p.76-79.





Workers Councils : the Red Mole of Revolution.

18 06 2015

Originally posted on the commune:

Sheila Cohen on workers councils

The red mole may weave unexpected patterns and assume strange disguises; it is digging, digging fast, and moving in roughly the right direction…’

Daniel Singer, The Road to Gdansk.

The term ‘Workers’ Councils’ can perhaps stand as a catch-all title for an unpremeditated, quasi-spontaneous, ‘ground-up’ organisational form reproduced over many periods and across many countries by groups of workers previously unaware of such a structure or of its historical precedents. Its highest form the Soviet, its ‘lowest’ the simple workplace representatives’ committee, this formation recurs time and again in situations of major class struggle and even everyday industrial conflict.

Why do workers always, independently and apparently ‘spontaneously’, adopt the same mass meetings-based, delegate-generating, committee-constructed form for their most powerful expressions of resistance? The answer is simple, because the form is simple; the form is constructed from the requirements of the situation, not plucked from…

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Hungarian Revolution – Interview with Nicholas Krasso

18 06 2015

Originally posted on the commune:

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More than fifty years since the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the events have faded and their meaning and importance to socialists perhaps lost in time. The struggles, the barricades, the workers councils and resistance to Russian imperialism are a vague memory even for those involved in the movement at the time.  The real struggles and aspirations of the Hungarian revolution will be reduced even further to the strong box of history by the official commemorations attended by the great and the good of the bourgeoisie who will claim the mantle of the freedom fighters of 1956.  In so doing they will continue such myth as the decisive role in the  fall of Stalinism in Eastern Europe was played by the prayers of Pope John Paul II and the foreign policy of the American President Ronald Reagan and his ally Thatcher.

All of these commentators who to point to some politician…

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Sheila Cohen’s interview with Tony Benn on 8th of January 2011.

8 06 2015

 

Bryan Simpson's photo.

SC Were there discussions on Ford’s [in the 1974 Labour government]?

TB Well, I wasn’t the Secretary of State for Industrial Relations, that was Michael Foot, and therefore anything of that character would have come up in his remit rather than mine – I was then responsible for overall strategic policy for the motor industry in Britain and so on, but obviously I picked up roughly what was going on…What was the particular thing you were thinking of?

SC I was really thinking of – the history [I’m writing] is of Ford’s Dagenham plant and clearly from the very beginning – certainly the ‘40s and ‘50s – it was a scene of tremendous industrial conflict, very frequent industrial conflict, and I know for example that the sewing machinists’ strike of 1968 certainly attracted the attention of Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle – what I’m trying to say is that because of the amount of conflict in a major manufacturing plant it must have been subject to cabinet discussion and you might have been present…?

TB Well, I don’t recall it offhand but there may be references in the diary to cabinet discussions on it – but it wouldn’t have been my responsibility at any stage – that’s why I may not be able to be very helpful. But I knew some of the trade union leaders in a personal capacity and they would have known my sympathy and support for them.

SC Jack Jones?

TB Well Jack Jones I knew very well and there were quite a number of others who were more directly involved…Your idea is to get to the root of these problems and how they were being approached?

SC Well, it would be very interesting – obviously I’ve been talking to workers and activists at Dagenham, and it would be interesting to hear from the point of view of someone quite high up in government when these big strikes were happening – for example there was a 9-week strike for pay parity [with other car companies] in 1971, and that was brought to an end by Jones and Scanlon doing a sort of deal…I assume there would have been general discussions when Ford’s might have come up?

TB I was very much involved during the Winter of Discontent, as I was on the Cabinet committee looking after it, and what struck me about that was the extraordinary sense of powerlessness that ministers had – they pretended they were running everything but actually they didn’t know what was going on at all and when I suggested that one of the ways of dealing with one of the problems was to go and talk to the trade unions they spoke as if I was suggesting negotiations with North Korea…and the Labour governments always sided with management when it came to any big issue – they used language that sounded better but in the end they were always on the management’s side – ‘We’ve got to be realistic’ – you know what I mean – realism is like partnership…[laughs].

SC And of course Ford’s was the one that – the bakery workers were the first to strike in the Winter of Discontent but Ford’s – the phrase that was used was that they ‘drove a coach and horses’ through the 5 per cent limit – do you remember anything about that strike?

TB Well that was Jack Jones I think – what was Jack’s role in the 5per cent thing? Because he had opposed the pay policy – when did we have this system of [the £6 limit]?

SC Well, that came in in 1974 – that was very much Jack Jones’ idea – but then by 1977 the members of the T&G, which had supported the Social Contract [at top level] were getting very rebellious, and he got swept aside at the July 1977 conference – the delegates voted against any more pay restraint.

TB Yes, I remember that…I think Jack felt that he had been let down by the government, and when his union vetoed the 5 per cent it did open the whole way for the Winter of Discontent. The whole WoD argument was really – [it was] the price we were paying for the pact we made in ’76 – when we made the big IMF agreement – and the Cabinet agreed to making these cuts, and these cuts had to be applied, and therefore we were driven into a situation where really the IMF forced us to have a conflict with the trade union movement.

SC Would you agree with the argument…that the WoD strike let in Thatcher?

TB Well, looking back at it now I think it was the IMF in imposing these cuts – which I very much opposed, but I was defeated in the Cabinet – I think they had in mind the removal of the government because although it wasn’t a very left-wing government it was a trade union government, and I think that they in effect carried Thatcher into power because the strikes led to her being able to say ‘The unions run the country’ which was a load of absolute nonsense…

SC So that would indicate that the people running the IMF already had the neo-liberal policies that Thatcher and Reagan wanted to bring in.

TB Well, I think they were pushing their standard line but that behind the scenes there were people saying Well, this is a way of getting rid of the Labour government – and Thatcher of course had a very clear strategy of her own to destroy the trade union movement, to destroy local government, and to privatise public assets, and she understood the root of the – how the three pillars of our support were trade unions and local authorities and public ownership.

SC Getting back to Ford’s – I have read your diaries and very often what you seem to be saying in the diaries and a number of other places – the direction of your thinking is that Ford is being managed from America and Ford UK was forced –

TB Well I think what is happening is that the internationalisation of capital has created a completely new situation where in effect although we pretend we run a country ourselves the real power rests with international corporations and international organisations like the IMF or the European Central Bank which are not elected by anybody and are just running their own outfit and governments are required to fall into line otherwise they will be punished, and one of the punishments they can impose on you is to create a situation where you are so unpopular that you’re defeated, which is what I think they did in bringing Thatcher in.

SC Yes, I think you were making exactly that argument in relation to Ford – do you remember what happened which made you think this isn’t right, they’re making decisions which are having an impact on British workers…?

TB Well, I think I just concluded that Ford was an international corporation of enormous power, and what they did in Dagenham had been imposed on them by the American headquarters.

SC I presume that the Americans were not happy about the amount of conflict that was going on at Dagenham and other Ford plants in Britain.

TB No, but in a sense they were responsible for the conflict that they faced…I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn’t really involved – I observed the scene, and this is what radicalised me, because I was radicalised by being a Minister, when I got there and realised that power didn’t rest with elected governments or Parliament, it rested elsewhere, and that interested me in socialism and changed my view about the way that politics is presented to people – but that isn’t to say that I was involved in a day to day way with what was going on in Fords – I would read it in the papers and I would know how the government would react to that…

SC When you came in as Minister for Industry in 1974, you had these very interesting notions of workers’ plans and so on – the idea that you were going to bring shop stewards in and discuss how factories were going to be run, which was much more radical than worker participation…

TB Well I used to talk to shop stewards which very much shocked my Department because my Department worked with management and with the very top level of trade unions and when I – I remember on one occasion I asked them to get on to the shop stewards for something and they’d never heard of them and didn’t realise who they were and then they [shop stewards] used to come to my office and that didn’t please the top elements of the trade union movement either because they felt they were the ones who should be dealing with it and if the minister was talking to the shop stewards the thing had a slightly revolutionary flavour about it which worried them a bit.

SC Do you remember meeting any Ford shop stewards?

TB Well, I would have met them but particular meetings with them I can’t recall off hand…But I used to learn so much more from the shop stewards because they knew the companies they worked for were in trouble and they used to alert me to it.

SC I mentioned the sewing machinists’ strike earlier, and of course that’s now been rather inaccurately portrayed in the film ‘Made in Dagenham’ – have you seen that?

TB No, I haven’t.

SC It sugared it a bit – but I know that at that time – have you read a book by the convenor and a manager at Ford – it came out in 1980 – and the main pivot was the 1968 sewing machinists’ strike…?

TB No, I haven’t read the book. I’m not surprised to find there were individuals in a company that would find a common interest in describing what was happening because these people do work together closely and when a situation gets out of control they would want to wonder why and how it could be put right.

SC In that detailed account one of the things they say is how a strike by about 300 women brought the whole of this gigantic multinational to a halt really quite quickly, so they had this bit of dialogue about how they brought in the Prime Minister, the Queen etc – this strike meant that a lot of very important people had to pay a lot of attention…

TB To a real situation, yes.

SC Yes, and one involving quite a small number of people – and Barbara Castle, who obviously you worked with at the time…the film rather inaccurately depicts how she met the shop stewards from the sewing machinists and she sort of cajoled them – she actually did do this thing of sitting down and kicking off her shoes and ‘all girls together’ type of thing – which these women, being very nice trusting working-class women did fall for really, and she persuaded them to go back to work with a mixture of promises including the Equal Pay Act which if you look at her diaries – an entry just before the strike – she’d agreed to a resolution by Lena Jaeger MP to begin the process of an Equal Pay Act – it’s always depicted as if the strike itself launched the Equal Pay Act, but in fact Castle herself had [already started the process]…Anyway, she gave them quite a big increase and promised a tribunal – because what these women wanted was an upgrading, but Fords knew that if they gave them that all the other workers would want the same…I wondered if you had any memories of that?

TB Well most progress is made by people doing something – if you come up with a new idea like equal pay or votes for women or votes for men in the old days of Chartism at first you’re ignored, then if you go on you’re mad, then if you go on you’re dangerous, then there’s a pause, and then you can’t find anyone at the top who doesn’t claim to have thought of it in the first place! I mean now you won’t find anyone who argues women shouldn’t have the vote or shouldn’t have equal pay – so campaigning on specific issues with demands is the way progress is made – and we’re seeing it now with the universities and the students’ fees and so on – that is going to have an effect – and it’ll be very much assisted by people at the top who will claim that they’d thought of it in the first place. All progress is made in that way.

SC Another area where you might have been involved was with the GLC in the 1980s where they were setting up various [research projects] and one of them was around Fords – do you have any memory of that?

TB No, I don’t remember that, but the GLC was very very active…Livingstone appointed someone to run the Planning committee at the GLC – I suppose his role was to make local government more comprehensive, not just dealing with rates and services, but also dealing with the life of the community including the industrial life and trying to integrate it into a more national plan…and it radicalised a lot of people including the London Labour Group. That would have been an initiative that derived from Ken’s administration in London… What about the MP for Dagenham?

SC Jon Cruddas – I interviewed him very early before I really knew much about the situation – but he was very helpful and he did make a wonderful statement about the importance of the history—he said it was like writing a history of the industrial working class in Britain – because Fords Dagenham represents so much…

TB When was Cruddas elected? ’97 I think – but before that…I’m trying to think who the MP for Dagenham was…Billy Bragg was very much involved – he lived in Dagenham…The relationship between the TUC and the national leaders and the shop stewards is a very interesting one because there was a certain jealousy – They didn’t like ministers intervening, working with the shop stewards because they saw that as being against the systems that they operated, which were at top level. I remember on one occasion the European Union offered money to support a study on the movement of labour in and out of the Welsh labour market, and I said Well this is ridiculous – instead of doing that I will give the money to the trade unions to do the work because [then]…when the report is complete there’ll be somebody there on the spot to watch it – and I was called in by the General Secretary of the TUC and told that as a minister I had no business to give money to trade unions without his permission and it just reminded me of the way that power operates – it always moves to the top if you don’t have some pressure from underneath.

SC Do you remember the fuel protests in 2000?

TB Well, it was a very very big political event because of the impact it had on so many people and was a reminder of the power – the political power that exists because of technological circumstances which may not be generally understood…

SC The government couldn’t do much because the oil companies told them not to interfere…The drivers brought supplies to a halt very quickly because of the Just in Time system…Blair didn’t know what to do and the people who brought an end to it were the trade union leaders themselves.

TB Well…during the Winter of Discontent I was responsible for fuel supplies and the tanker drivers were in dispute and they wanted me to go up to Buckingham Palace and get the Queen to sign a State of Emergency…and the goverment wanted to then take army drivers and train them to drive the vehicles…That was when I suggested they talk to Jack Jones, and they really spoke as if I was guilty of the most gross treachery. But it was – was it in the – where was it that tanker drivers did bring down a government – was it in Chile?

SC Oh yes – they were unfortunately on the side of the right and they staged a general strike and that was what launched the situation in which the revolution took place.

TB Because they do have enormous power – if you can close down oil supplies…

SC You tend to think that in today’s economy workers don’t have much power but that’s an example of where workers do have enormous power…

TB They do, yes.

SC Do you remember the huge protests against pit closures in 1992-3?

TB Oh yes, yes.

SC That was another enormous popular uprising – quite extraordinary. Groupings were meeting all the time, and I always curse myself for not making the suggestion that the power workers, who themselves have so much power, be involved – go out on strike and stop all these pit closures. And of course there are still power workers.

TB Yes. Actually just trying to work out who really runs a modern society is very interesting because it’s partly international where we have no control at all and then within a society it is complicated things like who do you depend on to keep the wheels of industry turning and that may turn out to be quite a low-level shop steward position…

SC For example the construction engineering workers’ strike a couple of years ago – they just walked out, and what was interesting about that is that they were unofficial strikes, they broke every trade union law in existence, and nobody did anything against it. To me that illustrates the power…And it’s very frustrating – what do you think about the present situation?

TB I think that there will be a great deal of resentment. The amount of anger there is that Cameron has built up, and the fact that it is coming out through young people…the press treat the students in a rather more sympathetic way because I think many of them have got children…So they haven’t made them out to be too awful and I think if this spreads it’ll have a political effect – I think it produced Ed Miliband as leader of the Labour Party because he picked up what was going on and I think the Liberal Party’s in very serious trouble – so I think something will happen, I think the present coalition may not last.

SC I hope you’re right, but I’m dreading – things like cuts to libraries…

TB Yes, they’re doing it on such a scale, but there isn’t the same body of public support for it, I don’t think – because Thatcher said she was saving the country from the trade unions, but nobody believes that now.

SC Very interesting – the result of the General Election in May was really quite rewarding in a way, because obviously the Tories would have been hoping for a landslide in their favour…

TB They didn’t get one.

SC And that means a lot.

TB Well, the later Brown became a bit more progressive – Brown as Chancellor in ’97 opened the doors to the market and helped trigger the thing – but then when it went wrong he decisively moved in on the banks and I think by then there was beginning to be a feeling about that Labour might be handling the thing rather better than had been believed, and that limited the Tory victory in the election.

SC My own feeling would be that even though it had been so long since the Tories had been in office there was still some memory of how awful they’d been, and people…I think the real issue is that all the parties are converging politically and have been now for about twenty or more years and obviously that leads to a lot of disillusionment – I don’t know if you saw the BBC news last night – they were talking about the by-election that’s happening this Thursday – Saddleworth and Oldham I think – and they were asking people about obviously how they were going to vote and they also came out with some quite worrying statistics about how many people were just completely disillusioned with politics and didn’t care about voting – and one of the most depressing things was that they interviewed workers in one of the new factories there and one just said ‘Oh I’m not voting, I’ve never voted, I’m just not interested’, and the other one said he’d vote for the BNP. So that’s very depressing – and people clearly are, understandably, totally –

TB Well I think one of the most powerful weapons depressing the value of the democratic process is pessimism – and there’s left pessimism, people saying they’ll always be let down, and then people say They’re all the same, and to overcome pessimism is the most important way of bringing about a change because it has to be credible because – the expenses scandal did an enormous amount of damage and to build up the idea that you can do something is the most important thing you can do – and going back over history and showing how it has been done in the past is a way of overcoming that pessimism.

SC Well unfortunately – I don’t know if you know, but unfortunately young people today are very very ignorant of history – we find this where we’re teaching [University of Blah aka Bloggs Polytechnic] – the students we teach are not really ready for university at all – their vocabulary is almost non-existent and they don’t know any history…When I started there I was absolutely staggered – they don’t know when the First World War was – they don’t know anything at all. I’ve been teaching a course…about politics and economics…they’re all Business Studies students, and some of them don’t know who the Prime Minister is – and you ask them a question like Where did the Industrial Revolution take place? And I had one student saying Russia? [and] if you rob people of their history…they just drift around in a vacuum thinking that life has always been like it is now…

TB Well, history is a very radical thing – if you really do know your history then you’re learning a certain direction, and your role as a teacher – Peasants’ Revolt, English Revolution, Tom Paine, Tolpuddle Martyrs – it’s all there – miners’ strike – and just relating it to…Because the conclusion I’ve reached in my old age is that every generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again – there’s no final victory for an idea and no final defeat for an idea, and trying to look at the situation and see how the battle’s being fought now is the key to making progress.

SC Yes. I also think what you’re saying about people learning that they can win and so forth – you see this in these kind of, for want of a better word, spontaneous struggles, like the student struggle, and being involved in this has taught these young people, is still teaching these young people about organising…

TB Yes, yes.

SC And another interesting aspect is that they very much rejected what would now be to them the Old Left, like the SWP and so on – they’re not really running these things, however sympathetic they are to them.

TB No, but you see when I look at what happened in 1945, which was a very radical move – my mind goes back to a troopship rally we had – [I was] going to South Africa to learn how to fly in January ’43, and we decided to have a meeting on war aims – and I was in aircraft in second class, which was the lowest rank, and I was sent to see the colonel in charge of troops for permission to have a meeting, and I said ‘Sir, can we have a meeting on war aims’ and he said ‘No politics in it, Benn!’ and I said ‘No no no, of course not’, and of course we had the most wonderful political meeting, and there was one lad there and he said ‘Look, in the 1930s we had mass unemployment, but we don’t have unemployment during a war.’ He said ‘If you could have full employment killing Germans, why can’t you have full employment building schools, building hospitals, recruiting nurses, recruiting teachers –‘ because he said ‘I’ve never heard of any generals saying “I can’t bomb Berlin this week because I’ve exceeded my budget”!’ It was a very radical, opinionated [attitude]…In effect in 1945 what people decided to do was apply the same focus of attention on the needs of peace as [was] focussed on the needs of war! It wasn’t ideological, in a funny way, but it was practical – people saw all of a sudden an opportunity to do – and that gave us the Welfare State, and that Welfare State did change the balance of power in favour of Labour – and it was that that made Thatcher decide she had to restore the status quo ante and change it, and how you get people to realise that this is – this is where history comes in, to understand what was going on…

SC Yes, that there have been different sections of capitalism…Free market capitalism and you have these different stages…But that raises [another] issue – Do you think the creation of the welfare state…was in some ways a response to the ‘glorious’ role of the Soviet Union during the war? Ordinary workers would look at what they did and think Well, we want some of this…

TB I’m not sure, because the pact that was made in 1939…I think reduced the influence of socialism as such, but I think what people wanted to do was very socialist in its implications and it required us to learn all sorts of ways of management – but I’m not sure that Britain ever was radicalised ideologically, I think common sense told us that this is what you had to do to deal with the situation and out of that you learn something…

SC One thing that’s always puzzled me…Given that the 1945 government came in on such a huge surge of support, and that they did do some quite progressive things, why on earth was it that they lost out to the Tories? [Detailed reading later gave me an answer to this].

TB Well, first of all – there were shortages after the war, and Churchill, who was Leader of the Opposition, he said Set the people free, and there was that resentment of the controls, but also another factor…It was the resignation of Nye Bevan, when the Americans pushed Attlee into a rearmament programme…The left groups that were ‘purer’ than anybody else – there’s so many of them, there’s the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Socialist Workers’ Party, the – all these groups…And the two people in the SWP, Lindsey German and John Rees, came to the conclusion that the next thing to do was to take an issue, have a campaign, draw people broadly in from all over – even Michael ?Antrim, the Tory chairman, offered to speak at one of the Stop The War meetings – and it’s been very successful – and now they’ve set up the Coalition of Resistance, which is a similar idea – and it corresponds with my impression that all progress is made when people do something – and if you bring a little ideological understanding – not too obviously, but into the campaign – then people begin to ask Well why is this happening, how can we win? And I think that is a very positive thing…I’ve heard [Lindsey] speak many many times – she’s a brilliant speaker.

SC That reminds me – you’ve heard of the National Shop Stewards’ Network, I’m sure…

TB Yes, yes.

SC Well I was involved in that from the beginning, because it [seemed] very similar to what I used to do is to set up a non-sectarian rank and file trade union network – remember Trade Union News? That collapsed because of [sectarianism] and then I became involved in the NSSN and from the beginning the same problems were there – the two main groups involved were the Socialist Party and the SWP – they were running it and splitting over it and so forth – and it never ever did what it should have done, which is to build on existing activists on the ground, because there’s always, even at times like this, about 2000 really committed trade union activists…

TB Yes, yes yes.

SC …and these are the people that really do need to be regionally brought together for discussion…

TB Yes, yes.

SC It’s very simple, but it would be extremely effective – and you always do have an upsurge sooner or later and the workers explode into action and there’s no really conscious leadership

TB Yes, that’s right.

SC So I think what the NSSN should do is a really important task, but not surprisingly it’s now in the throes of falling apart because the SP leadership want to turn it into another anti-cuts campaign, which seems completely pointless…

TB Is it just an ideological split?

SC Yes – the SP have been the major villains – they wanted to get involved because their strategy is to get in with left-wing trade union leaders and create another working-class party – Bob Crow wanted to create a working-class party, and it was BC who came out with the idea for a NSSN – some of the activists at the RMT conference took him up on it and it did get started – but basically the SP’s role’s always been for example to have strings of left-wing Gen Secs at these conferences when it should be shop stewards so from the very beginning they handled it in an incredibly sectarian way…At the same time the SWP set up something called ‘Fighting Unions’…they weren’t building it…

TB Yes, yes.

SC I just wondered if you could [help].

TB Well, I go where I’m asked and I will work with anybody I agree with, and I just won’t get involved in the sectarianism. What’s that magazine issued by the Communist Party…? I get sent it every week, and it demands socialist unity on page one, and then on pages two three four and five bitterly attacks anyone else who’s working for socialist unity, and in a way it’s a luxury we can’t afford.

SC I agree, but when you think about it’s a luxury – we haven’t had that unity, we’ve never had it – even in the early years when the first CP was set up, so…The left is its own worst enemy.

TB If you do something it does create a local coalition that isn’t sectarian, and then people try to take it over for their own purposes…What’s your own political affiliation?

SC I don’t belong to anything…Years and years ago in 1970 I joined IS, as it then was, and then they had a very non-sectarian rank-and-file perspective which was very good for a few years.

TB Who were the people you worked with then?

SC Well, I was very young and naïve and I really didn’t know anything, so I personally wasn’t really…I only became as aware of things as I am now in the 1980s – I regret that – I was involved with a number of people in what was called the Discussion Group, and we sent documents to the IS leadership…I doubt if you would have heard of any of the people there was a guy called Tony Polan who wrote quite a sophisticated analysis of Leninism, though I don’t remember what it said…IS expelled us in 1973, they said we were forming a faction, and then we just became active in the Labour Party, and I continued to be active for many years but then like so many people – especially after I moved to Islington South, which as you know was a hotbed [of Blairism]…

TB Well the Labour Party has the great merit that it has – it is all things to all men and provided you don’t set out a group to take it over from the inside, which they will immediately expel, it’s possible to hold any view in the Labour Party…

SC It is, but it can be so frustrating – the ward meeting that finally decided me to leave was when they were discussing whether to close a nursery or an old people’s centre and I said ‘Well, don’t close either of them’ but they just looked at me as if I was…And I just thought ‘I don’t want to be in this thing any more’. I suppose if I lived in Islington North I might join…What I’ve been doing is ever since I got involved in organising a trade union conference in the late ’80s and I remember going to a huge meeting where you spoke and it started up something called the Solidarity Network and Dave Chapple was involved in that. And that was an organisation of strikers and ex-strikers, which again sort of faded away, but during this process of organising for the conference, which was in Sheffield, and you were actually there, I came across this American organisation called Labor Notes – I read an article about it – and I thought This is exactly what we want, because again it’s totally non-sectarian, concentrated entirely on workplace activists – now that organisation was set up in 1979 by people who were in the American IS, who by that time had split from the British IS because they, in the US, wanted to continue with the rank-and-file perspective and not just form a party, which [Tony] Cliff wanted, so they had this rank-and-file perspective for a number of years and that meant they could get this paper [off the ground]…And they also have conferences every two years.

TB There’s a lot going on in America but it is a bit disconnected – the internet I think has brought greater contact…There’s so much going on, and the difficulties in getting people together are a bit off-putting.

 

 





Book Review : An Unfinished Revolution, Robin Blackburn (Verso 2011)

7 06 2015

Originally posted on the commune:

lincoln_front_lg

In January 1865, Karl Marx, on behalf of the International Working Mens Association, wrote these words to Abraham Lincoln  :”it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enslaved race and the reconstruction of a social world.” This comment flatters Lincoln, he  was not  a son of the working class and did not single mindedly rescue an enslaved race. Robin Blackburn’s lengthy  introduction to the historical documents, which  provides the historical and political context,  reveals that the comments  were not entirely an accurate  reflection of Marx’s opinions and views on the course of the American Civil War. Marx did argue, that in the long run, Lincoln and the Union would be compelled to free the slaves, but meanwhile, in the words of Raya Dunayevskya :” The cost in lives was so frightful and the…

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Big business,trade union officials, and the police, fighting a secret class war against trade union activists.

28 05 2015

BLACKLISTED: The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists

DAVE SMITH and PHIL CHAMBERLAIN   New Internationalist 2015

Reviewed by Sheila Cohen

It’s as if Blacklisted contains within its covers two books – or even three: the stern, investigative study of chicanery in master-blacklister Ian Kerr’s front room, the respectful, earnest tome touching its cap to those same ‘unions’ who ignored the workers for so long; and the joyful, raucous celebration, joining in with the mass of shouting, singing, laughing workers. This book reads like an unpredictable roller-coaster through the ups and downs of trade unionism, fully illustrating the contradictory dynamic between movement and institution found within this Great Movement of Ours.

Blacklisted brings us a valuable account of the massive difficulties experienced by activists attempting organisation within a notoriously corrupt, frequently fly-by-night sector. Perhaps the history is a tad overdone – I’m not sure we needed a whole chapter devoted to the tragic 1972 building workers’ strike – but the curse of the notorious ‘lump’ is dissected in painful detail, with the depressing and accurate conclusion that ‘the spread of bogus self-employment has been relentless, regardless of the wording of…nationally-negotiated… agreements between the employers’ federations and the unions’ (p66). Oh, those unions.

One of the first to pay tribute to the book is Gail Cartmail, Assistant General Secretary of UNITE, who announces ‘Our collective resistance will defeat blacklisting…’ Yet both building worker unions, UCATT and UNITE, were slow to grasp the nettle wielded so painfully against activists. Cartmail herself is quoted as having rather observed rather grudgingly that ‘union collusion may have taken place in the past’, though ‘it shouldn’t have happened.’ As the authors observe, ‘this may not have satisfied every blacklisted worker’ but the official’s public apology and the ‘wholehearted support’ she gave to Crossrail activist Frank Morris (pp242-3) is said to have earned some respect for the beleaguered bureaucrat.

The authors themselves use the Introduction to criticise the trade unions, however apologetically. Despite ‘diligent research and campaigning by trade unions…corporations have compromised the ideals of some…’ (p18). Enough said, at least at this point. The detailed history reveals much ‘compromising’; in their  detailed account of the doings of The Consulting Association (TCA – aka blacklisting exercise) the authors note ‘The spying operation may have been set up by building firms but…some trade unions are implicated too.’ This can hardly be a surprise to anyone aware of the half-baked ‘business unionism’ associated with unions like UCATT (see below for details).

‘Only an ordinary bear…’?

With its description of the mechanics of blacklisting, the book offers poignant accounts by activists of the horrific effects on their lives. Leading steward Graham Bowker described the impact on his marriage: ‘It’s…like: “When money stops coming through the door, love goes out the window”. Well, that’s a true fact…’ His was not the only marriage to suffer from the strain. For electrician Jake McCloud ‘it was the end of my marriage…I was only an ordinary bear but…I fully appreciated that my missus couldn’t take any more’ (pp26-7).

These ‘bears’ were, of course, very far from ‘ordinary’. As committed activists, they – like their counterparts across the workforce – make up the lifeblood of the trade union movement. Unlike the TUC and ‘many trade unions’ who ‘put the issue on the backburner’, citing ‘lack of evidence’ (p8) the Bowkers, McClouds and Smiths were living that ‘evidence’ day after day. Indeed, in what might be called a backhanded compliment, the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) files ‘suggested that being a union activist was the overwhelming criterion for inclusion’ (p35).

By March 2009, after the ICO raid on the TCA offices, more details of the files could be revealed, showing the common use of phrases such as ‘will cause trouble, strong TU’, and ‘ex-shop steward, definite problems’. Although it was claimed that the objective was to identify individuals who could harm the company for any reason, such as dishonesty or poor workmanship, ‘the files suggested that being a union activist was the overwhelming criterion for inclusion’ (p35).

The TCA itself was as assiduous as the ‘left’ should be in its focus on activists – a layer within the movement which can be seen as key in its commitment to genuine worker representation and awareness of the bigger picture. As the authors put it, ‘being a union activist was the overwhelming criterion for inclusion [on the blacklist]’. Amongst those activists, ‘those who raised genuine safety concerns may have been prejudiced’, ie included on the blacklist, according to a mysterious figure known as the Deputy Information Commissioner (p35). Given that safety is a central issue within the construction industry more than most, raising such concerns would have been a key activity for committed worker representatives.

Despite the eventual exposure of the TCA’s unsavoury activities, the ‘sanctions’ eventually imposed by the ICO were essentially toothless; an employment law professor commissioned by UCATT reported that ‘the list does not contain some of the heaviest users [of the blacklist]…this does not seem an adequate response.’ Even more to the point, the activists named felt ‘frustrated that, after the initial media splash, the story had vanished from public view’ (p41).

The next chapter, ‘Conduct which kills freedom’, concerns itself mainly with the 1972 building workers’ strike. The defeat of this protracted dispute was a catastrophe for the future of employment regulation in the industry, ensuring the survival of the dreaded ‘lump’ – cash payment in hand rather than legitimate wages based on a secure employment contract. We are informed that ‘The trade unions in the building industry have campaigned on this issue for the last 40 years’ (p64). Yet the only change over the years seems to be one of terminology:  what are referred to as ‘umbrella’ payroll companies now ‘set up all new starters as directors of their own individual limited company’ (p65). So much for ‘campaigning trade unions’.

As the relatively reformist 1970s turned into the neo-liberal 1980s and beyond, we arrive at a ‘flexible market’ in construction in which ‘profits appear to be put before people every day of the week’ (p70). Yet the next section shows that none of this is inevitable. Vic Heath, elected as AUEW convenor for the Barbican site, recalls how ‘the activists first built the union by organizing a meeting about the lack of toilets and welfare facilities’; when the contractor refused to supply them, ‘the men all walked a quarter mile to the nearest public facilities…After three days of lines of workers tramping along the main road…and back, the firm capitulated’ (p71).

This victory also allowed for ‘newly established union representatives’ who linked up with another site on the same project and formed a joint shop stewards’ committee, making that ‘the Barbican…one of the best-organised sites in the industry’. Even more importantly, the Barbican stewards linked up with activists from other sites to form the rank-and-file Joint Sites Committee, which ‘brought together activists from different unions and different trades’ (p72) and played a central part in later anti-blacklisting struggles. Activists don’t care which union you’re in.

And yet, and yet…Those activists make a lot of sacrifices. Dave Smith, Blacklisting’s  primary author, lost his job time after time whenever he was elected UCATT safety rep. Other activists faced more direct assaults; steward and safety rep George Fuller and fellow activist John Kean were  ‘violently attacked by strangers’, after which they both ‘found themselves blacklisted’ (p81).

Nor was the persecution confined to conventional building sites. In the late 1980s, after the oil rig Piper Alpha ‘accident’ had murdered 167 workers (a safety valve had been ‘deliberately removed’ from the rig) workers occupied both oil and gas rigs, forming the cross-industry Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC).

Yet little of this class-based feistiness is found in the top echelons of ‘the unions’. To quote Pat Corby, former head of the EETPU construction sector and now chair of the JIB: ‘I believe in social partnership…I want to work with employers and make things better…’ (p101).

By contrast, the Joint Sites Committee shows little respect for employers, perhaps because none has been shown to them. As the authors put it, ‘improv[ing] conditions on building sites…[means] an ongoing guerrilla war. ‘ While the JSC had originally been set up in the 1960s (see p71) it was ‘resurrected’ in the early 1990s by two Scottish building workers, Chris Clarke and Mick Dooley, ‘attracting a new generation of union activists’ (p101). In 1992, the JSC organised Vascroft workers building a hotel; the site became ‘a famous industrial-relations battleground’ as workers fought low pay and inadequate facilities. After a torrid saga of sackings, reinstatements and yet more sackings, ‘Mick Dooley arrived on site …and occupied the tower crane…for ten days the occupied tower crane and the JSC picket brought the site to a standstill.’ Dooley and Clarke were included on the blacklist for their pains.

Low-Intensity War…

In the late ‘90s, things were looking up, with ‘an unprecedented building boom’ lasting until the 2008 slump. Steve Kelly was the first shop steward to be elected on the Jubilee Line Extension (JLE), alongside Jim Turner, who recalled, ‘[T]here was a massive sense of empowerment…straight away there were issues and we were winning…We had seized control and they had no redress’ (pp108-9). Turner’s statement captures the underlying mechanics of workplace union organisation and consciousness.

During this period ‘the Jubilee Line electricians played a leading role in building a national rank-and-file network’ with ‘contacts on major projects across the country’, and one-day strikes and demonstrations ‘involving over 10,000 workers in total’. The event was described as ‘a total day of action that the AEEU had never seen before. This was just solidarity, stewards talking to each other, sticking together…’ (p111).

After Labour won its decisive majority in 1997, UCATT executive member Tony Farrell told conference delegates: ‘One of the greatest things…[is] they are going to outlaw the blacklisting of trade unionists…’ But he spoke too soon; while draft regulations were drawn up in 1999, they were never implemented. The government eventually claimed that ‘There has been no blacklisting – covert or overt – since the 1980s.’ Although the TUC and other unions supported immediate regulation, it seems ‘UCATT, the Transport and General and the GMB all supported the government’s position’, while Amicus made no submission (pp121-2). By 2005 the Labour government had decided that ‘evidence of blacklisting was only anecdotal’.

FROM HERE Finally, in 2010, the government banned the use of blacklists, but ‘fail[ed] to make blacklisting a criminal offence’, thus ‘doing nothing to eradicate, and even less to compensate the victims’ of blacklisting (p124). The case of Howard Nolan bears this out; refused work on two separate Balfour Beattie sites in 2001 and 2006, Nolan’s case was rejected because the claimant had ‘sat on his hands for too long’, while ex-shop steward Phil McNeilis lost because he had ‘slept on his rights’ (p127). Further claims were being rejected on identical grounds as late as 2012.

But worse than this was the clause that only direct employees could put in any kind of legal claim. Since the whole structure of the building industry is based on casualisation, this puts a massive Catch-22 in the way of the very workers who most need legal redress.

Luckily for activist Mick Dooley, his unfair dismissal claim succeeded in reaching a full hearing at the Central London Employment Tribunal in January 2010.  However, ‘with commendable chutzpah’, Balfour Beatty simply argued that the information on his file justified Dooley’s dismissal. Since only employees are covered by unfair dismissal legislation, Dooley was left without redress (p129).

Worse,  ‘[d]uring 2010, there was a notable change of attitude by the unions…’ after union solicitors Thompsons began receiving letters from companies threatening claimants with costs. The firm began telling clients that ‘the union was no longer prepared to represent them’, and as a result ‘to date only three claimants have [won] Employment Tribunal[s]’ (p132).

Among those three was Steve Acheson. Interestingly, the industrial relations manager at blacklisting employment agency Beaver Management Services Ltd (BMS), was an ex-Amicus official, one Jim Simms. After Unite intervened on Acheson’s behalf, Simms offered him a job; and yet, and yet…Acheson ‘worked for [only] 16 weeks before he was made redundant’ (p136). His TCA file read in part ‘Acheson is understood to have gathered support from fellow workers for strike action…[it may be] that BMS has knowingly taken Acheson onto their books…this may be a manoeuvre to contain…the EPIU activist element of Unite…’ It might indeed.

Another activist badly served by his union is Blacklisted co-author Dave Smith, the subject of a 36-page file at the TCA. Though Smith swiftly supplied a copy to UCATT, ‘his former union declined to provide any legal representation for his claim’ (p138). Oh, those unions.

Shortly afterwards, Smith and a left-wing solicitor, David Renton, devised a new strategy; they would submit Smith’s claim as a test case in the European Court of Human Rights. An Employment Tribunal granted the Information Commissioners Office the right to examine Smith’s TCA files; the ICO passed on the file to Smith himself, and the activist discovered not only which companies had registered  information about him, but also ‘to identify dozens of [other] activists…’

Carillon was forced to admit that they had blacklisted Smith for his trade union activities, yet he still lost his case; the activist had never been a direct employee of any of the companies concerned, and UK employment law only protects employees. Yet the judge’s conclusion that ‘he has suffered a genuine injustice’ was enough to cause jubilation: ‘[s]upporters packed into the…pub…to celebrate’ (p141).

And yet, and yet…Less than a year ago, the UK government admitted that blacklisting was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and that the only reason Smith – once again – would lose his case was his employment status. But that same government ‘has now intervened in the case in order to fight against Smith…’ This review is being written on the day of the 2015 election; it will be interesting to see whether a Labour-dominated coalition will take a more, um, labour-supportive approach. In fact we learn that ‘the case is still ongoing’ (p143).

While ‘[t]he blacklisting files provide documentary evidence of…systematic breaches of the European Convention of Human Rights’ it turns out that ‘the Human Rights Act…is only applicable to public bodies’ (p144). In fact two blacklisting cases have been lodged with the ECHR, but as Terry Brough, one of the activists concerned, argues: ‘[B]lacklisting will never be resolved by legislation…There’s only one way to beat the blacklist and that’s…strong trade union organisation.’ In this, Brough displays a wisdom beyond that of this Oxford-educated legal helpmates.

Brough’s conclusions are borne out by a very different case described in this chapter; in 2012, low-paid hospital ancillary workers in a Swindon hospital who had suffered systematic racist bullying by corrupt supervisors took 21 days of strike action ; when they complained, they were disciplined and their GMB union reps targeted. All the GMB strikers were employed by construction company Carillion, shown to have blacklisted building workers during the construction of the hospital. In 2013, the GMB began a High Court claim against Carillion; GMB member Dirk McPherson had been blacklisted after complaining about lack of safety equipment at the Pfizer site, and that November ‘blacklisted workers finally made it to the Royal Courts of Justice’ (p150).

Ironically – if that’s the word – ‘Unite and UCATT [had] both announced their intention of joining the claim the week before…’ (p150). Well, better late than never. Maybe. In fact, as the subsequent chapter shows, ‘senior union officials’ including former UCATT general secretary Alan Ritchie, had ‘agreed that certain aspects of the scandal were not going to be covered. One was any involvement by trade unions. Union officials were called but the question of collusion barely raised…’ (pp166-7).

In fact Glasgow MP Ian Davidson, who had consistently supported the investigation, insisted – rightly – that its focus should be ‘on working-class people…the whole middle-class constituency would love to think they had been blacklisted…and they would get in the television studios and be far more articulate…and therefore…attention would be diverted’ (p167).

The Select Committee report, issued on March 14 2014, came out clearly in support of direct employment. Yet ‘[T]he government rejected [its] main proposals, citing…the need for “flexible employment structures”.’ In response, the GMB issued a 26-page report on blacklisting to every Labour councillor in the country, and Knowsley, Hull and Tower Hamlets became ‘the first council[s] to agree not to deal with blacklisters.’

When UNITE leader Len McCluskey visited Southampton to highlight the case of blacklisted rigger John Wheeler, councillors agreed not to deal with blacklisting companies in the city. In February 2013 MSP Neil Findlay organised a summit on blacklisting which resulted in the Scottish government informing public sector bodies that it could end contracts if firms were found to be blacklisting, and in autumn 2014 Islington ‘became the first local authority to throw a blacklisting…firm off a public contract.’

Yet ‘the more direct-action approach adopted by the Blacklist Support Group…had a mixed response from union leaders…’ (p172), for whom the strategy was to ‘establish a new relationship with the companies’ and look to Labour. For UCATT general secretary Steve Murphy: ‘If we politically get Labour into power we can then say…you won’t get the job unless compensation is paid to blacklisted workers’ (173).

Yet this more ‘political’ approach had little effect on the behaviour of the blacklisters themselves, and the writers are forced to conclude that ‘if [blacklisting] was ever to be defeated, it needed to be fought industrially on building sites’ (179).

In 2007, when London ‘won’ the Olympics, government, unions, employers and the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) signed a Memorandum of Agreement  which called for an ‘ethos’ of direct employment (p180). And yet, and yet…Almost immediately Paul Corby, now ‘industrial relations consultant’ for the ODA sent the Director of Construction, Howard Shiplee, email which castigated blacklisted electrician Steve Kelly and described the suggestion that the GMB should be signatories to the agreement described above as ‘idiotic’ (p181).

Not only Kelly but two other ex-stewards from the Jubilee Line, Dave Auvache and Jim Grey, found themselves blacklisted after only a few weeks. As Grey recalled, ‘[T]here was a shop steward in place…[but] it turned out he was appointed by management…’ Grey was elected as steward, but immediately afterwards Auvache was sacked because ‘his name [had] come up on a list…’

FROM HERE In response, ‘the Blacklisting Support Group immediately mobilised 60 trade unionists to an early morning protest outside the Olympic site’ (p184). Nor was this merely a token action: ‘The protests continued for a number of weeks, blockading the main goods entrance to the project when protestors repeatedly crossed a zebra crossing while carrying their banners’ (p185). In early 2011 supporters of the blacklisted three were ‘assaulted by armed plainclothes security guards’ when they attempted to hand out leaflets to IOC members, and later the ODA locked its doors and refused entry to Morris and his representative, Steve Headley of the RMT. As Jim Grey commented later, ‘All the jigsaw pieces fitted into place…They always denied that there was a blacklist on the job…but obviously there was all the way along’ (p188).

There was no way the activists were going to give up, and in fact their organising saw spectacular success; a meeting at Conway Hall arranged via text messages ‘by a handful of union activists’ saw 500 workers ‘crammed’ into the building. As the authors emphasise, ‘This was the start of the biggest industrial battle seen in the UK building industry for decades’ – in any industry, for that matter.

While the basic issue was blacklisting, the meeting focussed on the ‘rumour’ that eight of the largest contractors had decided to withdraw from the JIB agreement; the eight had decided to leave the existing industry ‘partnership’ agreement and unilaterally set up a new set of terms and conditions to be known as BESNA (Building Services National Agreement). The agreement would allow unqualified workers to carry out the work currently done by skilled electricians, with the pay rate reduced from £16.25 an hour to as low as £10 – a 35% pay cut.

Among the obvious objections to this proposal, one issue stood out; safety. In the words of Stuart Hume, a Grangemouth electrician ‘who had never been involved in any union activity before’ – ‘This…is putting electricians out of work…but it’s also [a] health and safety issue, with these people not qualified to carry out electrical work’ (p190).

The meeting elected a national rank-and-file committee made up of Steve Kelly, UNITE activist Kevin Williamson, Steve Acheson and Labour councillor Jim Harte among others. But in a gesture of broader working-class solidarity, it also co-opted ex-Rolls Royce convenor Jerry Hicks, who had himself been ‘blacklisted’ for his impressive record of workplace trade union activism. As Kevin Holmes, a ‘twenty-something electrician from Blackburn’, recalled: ‘[T]hat first…rank-and-file BESNA meeting. Electrifying…I can’t describe the buzz in the room, to be part of something so massive…’ (p190).

‘Wildcat Walkouts…’

The committee immediately started organising early-morning protests, firstly at a Balfour Beatty site at Blackfriars, then as far afield as Glasgow, Manchester and Lindsey Oil Refinery (the scene of strikes by construction engineering workers in 2009). While the ‘sparks’ at first organised protests at Stratford involving leafleting of Olympics workers, before long ‘[r]outine protests escalated into occupations of building sites…and wildcat walkouts on major blue-book sites.’ Just as significantly, ‘[r]ather than a top-down…leadership structure…regional rank-and-file committees [were] elected in London, Scotland, Wales, the Northwest and the Northeast’ while ‘younger electricians new to union activism…were encouraged to take on leading roles’ (p191).

There was mutual support between the activists and directly-organising young protestors such as the Occupy activists, with the ‘sparks’ marching to St Paul’s ‘in solidarity with the anti-capitalist protestors’. As electrician Paul McKeown put it, ‘There was a lot of excitement in the air that things will turn in favour of the masses instead of the bosses…That spurred people on’ (p192).

Following a day of action on 9th November 2011, UNITE balloted its members at Balfour Beatty for official strike action, receiving a vote of 81% in favour. Although the company obtained an injunction against the action, the rank and file ‘simply ignored’ this and organised nationally coordinated mass walkouts in Newcastle, Glasgow, and Manchester among other cities, extending the action to oil refineries and power stations such as Grangemouth and Ratcliffe. Workers on Balfour Beatty sites in Aberdeen and Glasgow walked out after young electricians held ‘impromptu meetings in the canteen’ (p194).

In one of the best actions of all, over 300 electricians blockaded posh Park Lane outside the Grosvenor Hotel where an Electrical Contractors’ Association dinner was being held; ‘the great and good of the industry, in…black ties and dinner jackets, were forced to…run the gauntlet of…sparks jigging to The Irish Rover’. It is unclear whether this was linked to the High Court’s rejection, the very next day, of the Balfour Beatty injunction request, and the company withdrew from BESNA.

In any case, ‘BESNA was dead.’ This is attributed to ‘the combination of rank-and-file militancy and official union action…’ yet it remains unclear whether the second of these factors was anywhere near as effective as the first (see below). As the authors acknowledge, when electrical firms continued to victimise activists like Jason Poulter, Gail Cartmail  of Unite raised the case in her Select Committee evidence ‘but again it was the rank and file that resolved the issue.’

As car-worker activist and socialist Rob Williams put it, ‘The guys working with Jay [Poulter] and Kevin [Holmes]…decided not to go to work…we were outside the plant and the cars were going in…We were in constant contact with those inside…and [heard] there were meetings taking place…and…different groups of workers had agreed that they were going to come out…[what] I will never forget was the different demeanour: guys were going into work with their heads down…but when they came out…[t]her drove out in long lines of cars beeping their horns, absolutely ecstatic. What a day!’

The old phrase ‘festival of the depressed’ comes to mind. Unsurprisingly, Jason Poulter was reinstated the next morning.

Yet another activist, Stewart Hume, was /redeemed/ by a similar /outbreak/. Made redundant after an ‘interview’ with Balfour Beattie management, his case was raised in Parliament. Yet ‘it was when the Grangemouth workers voted to walk out over it that he was miraculously reinstated’ (p197). The lessons are crystal clear.

It seems, however, that those lessons were wasted on management. In a very similar case, electrical supervisor Garry Gargett, working on Crossrail, noticed a section of 11,000-volt  electrical cables covered by scaffolding and debris. He took a photograph of this dangerous set-up and was about to take it to his supervisor when ‘he was intercepted by a…manager, removed from site and dismissed’ (p200).

On the same project, veteran activist Frank Morris was effectively sacked when the EIS contract on which he was working was terminated ‘just 36 days after…Morris had submitted a formal grievance about the bonus.’ This effective sacking of a leading activist launched ‘the UK’s biggest-ever industrial dispute to get a blacklisted shop steward reinstated’ (201). And it was with this action that we return to the ‘festival of oppressed’ theme and the singing, shouting demonstrations shown in the video described above. As the authors describe the dynamic:

‘The Crossrail dispute quickly developed a new tactic of flashmob picketing. Without waring, hundreds of building workers…would appear out of nowhere and blockade the main roads outside Crossrail sites. The stations at Tottenham Court Road and Bond street were his repeatedly by this tactic…the huge 12-feet-high…hand-painted banners took on an iconic status as they were unfurled…in front of red London buses. The space in between the banners became mini celebrations…’ (p202).

Vigorous tactics came into play when, after a worker suffered 60 per cent burns from cutting through a high-voltage live wire at Crossrail, activists occupied the Office of Rail Regulation. As 2013 came in, rank-and-file flashmob protests celebrated the new year, and in March that year 170 mainly blacklisted workers attended the Blacklist Support Group AGM, with Frank Morris winning a standing ovation when he spoke about his struggle.

As the authors continue the story, ‘From that point on, Unite threw its full weight behind the battle to get Frank Morris reinstated…[I]t was without doubt the Unite leverage campaign that would land the killer blows.’ These ‘killer blows’ apparently consisted in ‘an upsurge in councils passing motions banning blacklisters from public contracts…protestors with vuvuzelas and a giant inflatable rat’ – a tactic, like the vuvuzelas, copied from the vigorous, if highly bureaucratised US trade union movement.

In fact that very movement became involved when, in August, Unite organisers flew to Chicago, where Ferrovial – one of the contractors involved in Crossrail [check] – was bidding for a lease to run the Midway Airport. Here, the Unite delegation met US union leaders and Democratic politicians who promised support in the battle against blacklisting (illegal in the US since President Roosevelt’s union-friendly regime in the 1930s). Among other expressions of support, Unite Food and Commercial Workers pledged, ‘We will do all we can to help our British sister union in its fight against blacklisting…’ (a statement published on the Unite website).

How they ‘helped’ is unclear…But the authors argue a few pages later (p207) that ‘Rank-and-file activists may have kick-started the Crossrail dispute but it is only the global political influence that a union like Unite can exert that swings a private meeting with a US senator so close to the top of the Democratic Party’ (p207). This leaves open the perhaps subversive question – what exactly did the US senator do?

This perhaps ungracious critique is sharpened by the account in the next chapter, ‘How much did the unions know?’ Given that it begins with a quote from a blacklisted worker  – ‘I’ve spent about 11 years unemployed on and off…The thing that gets me the most, is when the unions are mentioned.’ A strange comment from one apparently well-served by US senatorial support…But perhaps not.

In fact, in an apparent turnaround from their positive stance, the authors report here that ‘For as long as rumours of a blacklist had circulated, so had suggestions that some union officials were…involved in the process.’ And in fact when the blacklist files finally emerged into the light of day in 2009, ‘the speculation of a union connection ended…there were entries that named a trade union or a union official as the source of the information’ (p209). As the authors themselves ask, ‘If someone chooses…to become an officer for a trade union, they often have a history of activism themselves. Why would they provide information about their own members to the employers?’

A good question, to which one answer might be ‘bureaucratisation’. Here, the authors dig into current industrial relations literature to present the alternative models of ‘partnership’ and ‘organising’ (pp210-1). While they state that as part of the Organising Model ‘[e]mphasis is placed on building grassroots networks of activists’ the way this ‘organising’ approach has actually panned out, particularly in Unite, was shown by my own initially well-intentioned research[i] to be a grotesque parody of the sort of grass-roots activity characteristic of the construction activists.

An Unnecessary Problem…’

Leaving aside theoretical debate, the authors’ comment that ‘[i]t is hardly unusual for union officials to adopt a more conciliatory approach…than the members and activists they represent’ sums things up nicely. As master blacklister Ian Kerr himself commented, ‘I can sympathise with the union officials…One or two people chose to disrupt a site. The poor union official had to resolve the two sides. Sometimes he didn’t want an unnecessary problem, nor did his union often, of an outbreak on a site of unofficially generated action…’ (quoted p211). Pity the poor union official, indeed.

As the authors now report, ‘The fact that some in the movement were prepared to work with blacklisting organizations…was confirmed’ when Economic League director and company director Jack Winder commented, ‘While I was with the League we had very good relations with certain trade-union leaders, who were concerned about problems caused by the far left.’ Those ‘certain leaders’ included EEPTU leader Eric Hammond, who had negotiated ‘the mother of all sweetheart deals’ with Rupert Murdoch in the mid-1980s, after which a group of the more independent activists broke away to join the EPIU (p212).

But, as the authors out it, ‘The biggest jewel in the crown of…the EETPU…was not Wapping but the Joint Industry Board…[whose] social –partnership model delivered high union membership…and…cash for the union machinery’ (p213). The JIB’s ‘moderation’ included opposition to the 1984-5 miners’ strike and was rewarded by honours from various governments.

Not surprising, therefore, that ‘many electricians viewed [the JIB] with suspicion. They argued that the prospect of assured subscriptions…as long as there was no disruption…meant that the union machinery tended to side with the employers…against the best interests of its…members’. Blacklisted electrician Andrew Allison, for example, recalled how he was ‘called a professional industrial hijacker by the area official of the EETPU…we were working normal…and he wanted people to work 7 days and 12-hour shifts.’ This theme of ‘EEPTU officials supporting employers’ emerged from talking to many other workers (p213).

Such loyalty was rewarded by the powers that be; in 1979 Tory minister Patrick Mayhew allowed the JIB to substitute its own dismissal procedure for the government’s own unfair dismissals legislation, meaning any electrician registered with the JIB lost their right to take a claim for unfair dismissal to an Employment Tribunal. This cosy arrangement was ‘invoked on numerous occasions, especially when union activists had been…victimised’. The one ‘positive’ aspect of this set-up was that electrical contracting retained direct employment (as against the lump), but this advantage was erased in 1987 when the EETPU and ECA set up a co-owned employment agency ESCA Services. Since then ‘[t]he industry has seen widespread casualisation…[with] ESCA at the forefront of this process…[as] one of the largest agencies supplying temporary agency to the building industry’ (pp214-5).Not surprisingly, activists were at risk in this context, with many ending up on TCA’s lists.

Nor is the EETPU the only union to behave in a decidedly undemocratic fashion in this milieu. UCATT leader Albert Williams was found to have faced serious allegations of ballot-rigging, with UCATT full-timers ‘receiving…free holidays and…golfing days’ from building companies. Funny how golf and complacent corruption seem to go hand in hand. In 1991 Channel 4 documentary ‘The Ballot Fixers’ revealed how Taylor Woodrow and Costain had invited UCATT’s leaders to Thames cruises, social evenings and overnight stays at posh hotels.

Finally, in the same year, an anti-corruption slate stood for the UCATT executive, beating all the incumbents. Many previous UCATT officials resigned, with some immediately moving to the EETPU, despite that union having now been expelled from the TUC. Its continued habit of making sweetheart deals, moreover, led to serious disquiet amongst activists as to the union’s involvement in blacklisting.

‘We pay the dues for the men’

The continued trend towards union mega-mergers, with the EEPTU merging with AEU to form the AEEU/Amicus, left the same suspect core of full-time officials in the leadership of what eventually became UNITE. Throughout this period of name-changing and restructuring, workers continued to be filed onto the blacklist, along with comments like ‘EEPTU says NO’, ‘Reported by local EEPTU official as militant’ and ‘…suspected of being EPUI members’ (p218). As investigating MP Ian Davidson delicately put it: ‘The “EETPU says no” would seem to suggest that there had been some input from a trade union’ (p218).

When in May 2003 DAF sacked 11 electricians from its Piccadilly site, including the long-suffering Bowker and Acheson, the victimised workers picketed the site for months; their unfair dismissal tribunal heard [manager] Michael Fahey protest, ‘Amicus is our union!’ to which the defence lawyer responded, ‘Your union? The employer’s union?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Fahey, ‘we pay the dues for the men.’ It has to be said that this section is confusing, with no previous reference to or identification of Fahey or of ‘Mr Furnage’ (in fact an Amicus official) in the legal judgement’s conclusion that ‘It was more than likely that Mr Furnage [sic] told him that Mr Acheson…was on site.’ The ‘sic’ suggests that it might been Mr Furney who suggested that: but we are left in the dark. Even more confusingly, another ‘F-man’ (Amicus official Roger Furmedge) enters the picture: as far as I can tell, he and Furnage are one and the same.

We could have done without these problems, but the basic point is crystal clear; union officials were colluding routinely with company management to exclude activists and add them to the blacklist. As a Tribunal judgement interprets DAF’s correspondence as confirming ‘that it would in effect screen for trade union membership’ (it should perhaps of substituted ‘activism’ for mere ‘membership’). Significantly, as the authors point out, ‘This was in the public domain five years before The Consulting Association was raided’ (p223).

‘Business-friendly…’

The targeting of the EPIU by EEPTU leaders was well-known in the industry. As one ex-Amicus official, Jim Simms, told the authors: ‘The EPIU was more or less blacklisted en bloc – it was civil war between AEEU and EPIU.’ At the same time ‘The employers obviously supported the EETPU and AEEU because they were business-friendly.’ A longstanding TBA file on one Frank Westerman was in fact terminated when he became an official, leading to the perhaps controversial conclusion that full-time trade union employment militates against activism. Indeed, Westerman provides useful evidence on this point: ‘As an officer of the union, I would oppose the EPIU…’ He would also ‘oppose the T&G and UCATT.’ Perhaps most significantly, ‘The important thing for us was always the agreement’ (p224). Instiutionalism personified.

In 1992, when Westerman was the EEPTU official responsible for the Vascroft site in Kensington (scene of the crane occupations), the company ‘cut a deal’ with the EEPTU, who ‘appointed a “steward” from outside the job who wouldn’t cause…any trouble’ (p225). As victimised activist Chris Clarke put it, ‘That business with Westerman was as cynical an operation as I have seen in 40 years in the labour movement.’

Westerman himself comments, ‘There were lots of things…at that time that people should not be proud of…All that fraternal stuff that goes on at conferences, when you get out on site it’s a different ball game…’ It would be interesting to have more details.

Moving on to the Jubilee Line (J/L) and Terminal 5 (T5) projects, the authors report that ‘the names and national insurance numbers of every electrician working for [contractor] Drake and Scull were circulated by [its] head of human resources…Scores were…added to [the TCA’s] blacklist. But it was an identical entry that appeared multiple times…that caused the most outrage…“Above information arose from liaison between union, contractor and managing agent at J/L”.’

The full-time union official for Drake& Scull was again our old friend/the above-mentioned Frank Westerman, who was ‘adamant’ that he had never heard of TCA: ‘At the end of the day, someone still has to…meet the employer and make the deal – and that was my job.’ Unfortunately, when the TCA entry for blacklisted electrician Michael Anderson turned up, it showed that four separate blacklisting firms operating at T5 had forwarded information about Anderson to TCA, with ‘all… contacts nam[ing] the Amicus union official [Westerman] as the source of the information’ (p227). Blacklisted steel erector Phil Willis also owes his TCA file to ‘a T.U. officer source within UNITE – amicus[ii] (FW)’ (p228).

The blacklisting of veteran Brian Higgins (see above) led to an investigation into the conduct of another union official, UCATT’s Jerry Swain; he and colleagues found ‘there was no case to answer’ and the UCATT executive took no action (p230). While Higgins condemned the union’s (non)response as ‘a downwright disgrace’ and called for an independent inquiry, general secretary Steve Murphy wrote to Higgins that without ‘some concrete evidence that UCATT officials were involved in blacklisting…it would be futile to have an…inquiry.’ So much for putting your members first.

Unlike the secretive UCATT executive, the authors of Blacklisted state categorically that ‘information has undoubtedly found its way from union officials to the TCA. The blacklist was an open secret in the building industry.’ This is confirmed by UCATT activist/ex-official Stuart Emms, himself the ‘beneficiary’ of a TCA file: ‘I was quite sure that blacklisting was going on…’ Emms himself had written to the Morning Star in 1999 that ‘…there has been a general move by employers to sack [activists]…The union will probably threaten the employer with an industrial tribunal…But the employer will gladly [put up with] this to break union organization and…the steward concerned will be blacklisted’ (quoted p231).

While many officials have denied being involved with blacklisting, ‘the names of officials do appear as the source of information on TCA documentation…’ (p232) and there is certainly evidence galore of collusion and hobnobbing between union officials and employers. The authors describe the ‘opulent venue’ of the Goring Hotel in Belgravia, where ‘directors of blacklisting firms met union officials from the EEPTU, AEEU, Amicus and UCATT…’ Ex-TCA chair and Skanska boss Stephen Quant recalled how he hobnobbed with union officials:  ‘You can normally make a deal…provided…people had…a constructive manner…If you had a relationship with people that is ongoing, they are less susceptible to…outside influences’ (presumably those of activists in their own union). Further, while ‘some people were unreasonable…Many of the people on the trade union side were very reasonable…Amicus and…the EETPU…were quite sensible’ (p233-4).

This is not, of course, a case of innately ‘treacherous’ individuals but of the impact of a full-time union position far from the daily class war on the sites: ‘…even activists who were themselves blacklisted when working on site were prepared to socialize with employers once they took up the role of full-time officers…’  (p235). Former UCATT official and blacklisted activist Stewart Emms (see above), noted that when an official ‘I could never get into this going out and having a free beer with them…I remember George Brumwell once told me, “sometimes you get more from sugar than salt” ’ (pp235-6. Emms appears to be unusual in his tenacious loyalty to rank-and-file activism. As he reflected, ‘I’m not surprised some of the officials’ names are on the files…some of the officials got too close.’ Yet, as the authors point out, any delusions (and they were many) of genuine friendship between union officials and company directors were naïve, to say the least: ‘The industrial-relations managers were doing their job. They were playing the union officials…’ (p236).

Yet the cultivation of such ‘friendships’ was more than just social climbing: ‘[d]eveloping a friendly relationship with contractors was seen as part of the job’ by union officials. Why? Because officials could thereby ‘increase membership by recruiting the whole workforce…en masse…’ Hardly trade union democracy at work.

As ex-UCATT employee Jonathan Jeffries informed the authors ‘…union recruitment often involved recruiting the company rather than the workers.’ In his own words, ‘The contractor would suddenly bring in all these membership forms filled in…and…deduct the subs. This isn’t the usual situation…This is their employer saying you have to be in the union’ (p237). As the authors point out, ‘This way of doing things very often results in workers being signed up to the union without their knowledge.’ Yet the practice has been ‘repeatedly acknowledged’ by senior union officials. While Unite’s Gail Cartmail gave supportive evidence to a Parliamentary select committee in September 2012, including the point that employer payment of trade union contributions ‘is another way of sidelining genuine trade-union involvement’ (pp238-9) it is clear from much of the history outlined above that the Unite leadership was firmly involved in just such ‘sidelining’ for much of the lamentable history outlined in this book.

In fact, what was described as a ‘mafia tactic’ by one UCATT executive council member, appears, according to the authors, ‘to have…been part of the training given to some union officials.’ As future RMT leader Steve Headley recalled of his time at UCATT, ‘On my second week I was given training…[which consisted] of going to the office of a subcontractor…and negotiating a number of membership forms that the subcontractor would fill in and give to the union. At no time were any workers talked to or even approached…’ (p239).

As the authors conclude, ‘the exceptionally cosy relationship between certain union officials and building employers resulted in the very…managers responsible for blacklisting union members being invited to union conferences’ (pp239-40). Union as institution par excellence. Even after unions’ complicity in blacklisting was revealed, persecuted activist Steve Acheson was ‘continuously barracked by senior members of UCATT’ while speaking at the union conference. In response to shouts of ‘Name names’, Acheson duly read out a section from Ian Kerr’s notes which described how UCATT regional secretary George Guy, asked whether he would ‘employ’ Acheson, replied ‘I bloody wouldn’t’. The notes also record the head of industrial relations at construction company Vinci commenting that ‘Unions will have a problem now as they will get on site and cause problems.’ Leaving aside the grammar, the comment is significant in its distinction between ‘unions and the ‘they’ who belong to them, aka activists.

While both Unite and UCATT have carried out internal investigations into ‘collusion’ by union officials, these took place before either had access to the full TCA database. No past or present officials of either union suffered disciplinary action after the investigations, which had found that ‘there was no case to answer’ or ‘insufficient evidence’ for further action. Enter Gail Cartmel, who later told the Blacklist Support AGM in 2011 that union collusion may have taken place in the past but ‘shouldn’t have happened’ (p242). As she later ‘admitted’ to the authors, ‘If there have been failings of union officials in the past, then all can see how Unite has recognized those failings and responded to the magnificent campaign led by the Blacklist Support Group’ (p243). Better late than never, Gail!!

As the authors comment, changing the corrupt practices revealed by the TCA files ‘involves changing the way the trade unions have operated as well as the employers…the evidence suggests that…a culture developed among a cohort of union officials…that has led to a flow information to the blacklist files…’ I have left out the many qualifications in that statement, but the next paragraph refers to a ‘virtual conveyor belt of union officials immediately taking up posts as senior industrial relations managers or consultants with construction firms…’ One Jim Thomas, ex-Unite officer, is currently industrial relations manager for Laing O’Rourke] (p243), while UCATT national president John Flavin is now ‘working on industrial relations’ for Laing O’Rourke; a party to celebrate his 40 years in the industry ‘included high-profile guests from many of the big contractors and global property developers, as well as UCATT official Jerry Swain, himself involved in blacklisting activists (see above).

So much for ‘the unions’ – and, boy, it’s a lot. In the next chapter, ‘Under constant watch’, we move on to those more logical enemies, the security and surveillance services. The Economic League, for example, which had ‘spent decades…monitoring  subversives’, was a key resource for the police, including the Special Branch, in identifying and targeting union activists, which they saw as ‘a key part of their work.’ As one Special Branch officer told the BBC: ‘It was very, very important that trade unions were monitored.’

Of course it wasn’t so much ‘trade unions’ as the activists within them who were so ‘very, very important’ to this work. Interestingly, the writers cite Ford’s Halewood plant as another workplace where job applicants’ names were submitted to the Special Branch – probably the Dagenham plant too, as many of the more politicised applicants for employment there were excluded or, once employed, later dismissed[iii]. However, the Special Branch didn’t have to do all the work – ‘the League had good relations with certain trade-union leaders who felt they had problems with the far left’ (p247).

As the authors report, ‘The construction industry had its own links with the secret state to ensure that an eye was kept on activists’; this was confirmed by former UCATT president John Flavin, ‘now an industrial-relations consultant for Laing O’Rourke’ (p248). Such team-shifting seems to again suggest that the Special Branch would get inside help in activist-spotting. Flavin confirms that ‘industrial relations managers…met regularly with a Special Branch officer…’ (p248). The traffic appears to be two-way: ‘former detective superintendent Brian Morris…became group manager for blacklisting firm Laing O’Rourke…[and] is now…security advisor to Crossrail’ (p249).

Yet none of these significant ‘coincidences’ would have been noticed if not for the on-the-ground ‘expertise’ of activists themselves. After Dave Smith was granted a third-party disclosure order against the ICO, his solicitor Declan Owens was asked to look through the TCA files; Owens suggested Dave carry out the research himself, and it was when he came across names like Frank Smith, Lisa Teuscher and Dan Gilman that these files ‘contained information that only the police could know (p250).

While Teuscher and Gilman were middle-class activists, Frank Smith was a bricklayer who had been involved in actions across London for better pay and conditions. As he recalled, ‘I was in poverty…it just became harder and harder to get onto any job where there was a decent run of work…’ Once again, it becomes clear that ‘the unions’ were at the bottom of this: as Ian Kerr testified, ‘The main part of [his contacts’ jobs] was to keep a very good liaison with their opposite numbers in the unions’ (p251). Although there was some attempt to implicate the police and portray the TCA files as pertaining to criminal activity, there were at the most 20 files in the database ‘relating to theft or similar…The remaining 99 per cent appear there due to trade union and political activism’ (p253).

This did not, of course, indicate that the police were not – at Special Branch level –  heavily involved in monitoring the activities of blacklisted or on-site construction trade unionists. The SDS (Special Demonstration Squad), an ‘elite’ police undercover unit, was central to such operations, as became clear after undercover spy Mark Jenner, calling himself Cassidy, appeared at the radical Colin Roach Centre in Stoke Newington claiming to be an out-of-work builder. While the aims of the Special Branch were defined as being in opposition to ‘domestic extremism’, this phrase, as two Guardian journalists pointed out, was ‘taken to refer to political activity involving…“direct action”…’ (p255). Construction activism would fit very nicely into that category.

Jenner also spied on anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigners, and some of his information ‘appears to have made its way on to the blacklist files…Three…trade unionists…in contact with Jenner [reported] on how they were “observed” or “apprehended” while protesting against fascists on Remembrance Day 1999. ‘The files o[included] two trade unionists…[who were]part of a loose grouping of activists known…as the Away team’ (p256). In November 1999 one member of this ‘loose grouping’, Frank Smith, was stopped and searched; as he commented, ‘..what has that [protest] got to do with me being a builder? How would a building company know anything about that? It could only come from the police.’ And the incident was transformed on Smith’s TCA file as evidence that Frank was ‘politically dangerous’. Police Officer Peter Francis is quoted as recalling, ‘I knew Frank was involved in Militant but it was primarily his role within the Away Team that I was interested in’ (quoted p257). Take note, Militant – oops sorry, Socialist Party.

The TCA’s focus on workplace union activism as the main enemy is /demonstrated/emphasised by its listing of RMT activists Steve Headley and Mick Lynch, ‘leading to concerns in the union about the extent to which it had been targeted’ (p259). In general, ‘Jenner’s considerable involvement with trade unions…over many years is beyond doubt’ (p261). And we thought ‘trade unions’ were ‘old-fashioned’.

True, the ‘glory days’ of the Special Branch industrial section ‘had shrunk to just two detective sergeants and two detective constables by the mid-1990s (p262). But the entire role of the section and an ‘almost identical’ branch of MI5 was ‘to spy on trade unions’ (p263), and in cases where those ‘unions’ (or rather their members) reasserted themselves, the police agents were swift to respond: ‘Unite members involved in a British Airways dispute in 2014…complained about being put under surveillance by the Asset Protection group [good name], which is…staffed by police officers’ (p266).

Our construction activists’ experience of the wider political context led them to become active in the environmental movement. One recent Balfour Beatty AGM was  ‘taken over completely’ by building worker supporters of comedian Mark Thomas, who had campaigned against the Ilisu Dam in Turkey; this project ‘would have destroyed a key cultural site and caused thousands of people to be relocated.’ The campaign against the dam was supported by the London region of UCATT. Balfour Beatty withdrew from the project, and the Dam has never been built (p268). The lessons of politicised activism and ‘trade union power’ are significant.

A similar episode involving the Australian Builders’ Labourers’ Federation (BLF) and its leader Jack Mundey its recorded here. Mundey, whose name is included on the blacklist, and his union refused to demolish the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney to make way for a car park; ‘the BLF imposed a green ban, and…the Gardens still remain today’; the same occurred when the historic Rocks community in Sydney was threatened with demolition (p272).

This chapter ends with a return to Steve Acheson’s lonely protest outside the Fiddlers Ferry power station; after the company claimed that the action ‘presented a potential threat to the national grid and national security’, Steve won an appeal at the High Court in October 2009, with the judge describing this ‘argument’ as ‘fanciful bordering on paranoia’ (p279).

Yet activists continued to draw police attention with their ‘various days of action’ over terms and conditions, in addition to blacklisting. Incredibly, the City of London police issued weekly what they called a  ‘terrorism/extremism update for the City of London business community’ (p279). Some community. In an early issue, the document follows what it calls ‘a round-up of terrorist activity around the globe’ with notice of a construction industry day of action. Later, it warned of an electricians’ strike at Balfour Beatty, concluding the article with a reminder to ‘remain alert’ alongside the anti-terror hotline number. Terrorists indeed…

The real criminal activity, of course, lay with the police themselves. In October 2014, over five years after the ICO raid and ‘repeated denials…of any involvement by the police with The Consulting Association, John McDonnell MP was able to name the head of police liaison at NECTU (National Extremism Coordination Tactical Coordination Unit) as the senior officer who had given a powerpoint presentation on activist ‘extremism’ to the TCA (p282).

Blacklisted’s last chapter, ‘Own up! Clean up! Pay up!’ draws our attention to the fact that while blacklisting has by now been fully uncovered, with MP Michael Meacher ‘set[ting] out clearly’ in a speech to blacklisted workers in 2013 that ‘the failure to bring justice is borne by every section of the state.’ And yet, and yet… ‘still no-one has offered any redress’ (p285). The truth is coming out, but…‘[s]o slowly that some blacklisted workers who played a key role in the campaign have passed away without seeing justice’ (p285).

On 20th November 2013 – better late than never – the TUC held a National Day of Action on blacklisting which was ‘hailed…as a marvellous success’ (p286). Leadenhall Street in the City was closed for an hour as the Blacklist Support Group and unite protest blocked the road outside the Laing O’Rourke ‘Cheesegrater’ development. Yet TUC demands to blacklisting companies to ‘Own Up!’ have been, like so many other demands, ignored by the powers-that-be. While one – and only one – firm, Balfour Beattie, has attempted to defend its use of TCA, the ‘justification’ offered was their ‘seek[ing] to…prevent any disruption caused on our construction sites…by unofficial and unjustified [!] industrial action…’ (p287). Well, we, um, already knew that.

Meanwhile, despite the activists’ welcome exposure of these vampires to the light, ‘to date not a single set of TCA minutes’ has been disclosed by any of the firms involved. The authors wonder in their conclusions whether, ‘Given the revelations about the undercover policing of protest movements that the secret police thought were a threat to democracy…were trade unions also considered a threat to national security?’ Wow, what a thought. Of course, as pointed out above, passim, it is less ‘trade unions’ than their activist members who can be ‘accused’ of that disturbing threat.

Indeed, the role of ‘the unions’ in their more institutional capacity remains less than /galvanic/. The TUC has ‘called for the companies to “Clean Up!”’ (p289), but this, like so many ‘calls’, has gained little in the way of a response. Indeed, of the 39 ‘alleged’ TCA contacts named by Ian Kerr, ’78 per cent remain in senior HR roles within construction while 61 per cent are still working in HR at the same firms they [worked in] when…interact[ing] with the TCA’ (p289). One Dianne Hughes, for example, ex-HR professional at Carillion, is now HR director for the Big Lottery Fund – somehow an apt career move. As for Sheila Knight, former personnel director for the appropriately-named Drake and Scull, one of her many successful career moves includes ‘teaching employment law and human resource management’ (p290). Ms Knight is clearly skilful at managing human resources.

Any remorse over their exposure as blacklisters is clearly remote from the conscience of these high-flying entrepreneurs, or indeed their ‘human resources advisors; as Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) employee relations ‘expert’ Mike Emmott told his audience at the Manchester Industrial Relations Society in November 2014 that blacklisting was ‘a big fuss about very little’. Employers’ federations clearly agree; not one has discussed the issue at their meetings.

More than five years after the TCA raid, eight of the contractors involved have launched a compensation scheme, clearly spurred on by a High Court group litigation order involving – those same eight contractors (p290). However, any celebrations would have been abruptly curtailed after it was discovered that ‘the cast majority of those on the blacklist were likely to be offered a one-off payment of £1000 ‘without an apology but with the proviso that all legal claims were dropped’ (p291). At this, the BSG delegation walked out of the meeting where the proposals were put forward. As they summed up their response:

‘These are not proposals designed for genuine negotiations. It is a piss-take masquerading as a publicity stunt…They can shove their grand right up their profit margin.’

The ‘compensation’ scheme was nevertheless launched (unilaterally), with a breathtaking ‘spin’ giving the impression that ‘unions’ jointly supported the scheme. Left-wing MPs, taken in by the statement, welcomed the development and announced that the scheme had been ‘agreed between trade unions and employers’. However, only a few days later they realised that the firms had ‘completely ignored’ the MPs’ own recommendations. The catalyst was a letter sent by the industry’s spin doctor which claimed falsely that unions and blacklisted workers supported the scheme. MPs also took apart the low levels of compensation offered. Yet ‘[d]espite grovelling apologies to MPs and promises to…make amendments…no changes were made and the scheme remains fundamentally the same…’ (p293). Meanwhile, ‘the most glaring omission from the compensation scheme was any offer of jobs…’ (p294).

The need for a full public inquiry has been raised by ‘every major trade union’, but David Cameron reaffirmed his opposition to this as recently as last summer; analysis of construction companies and their political donations shows – no surprise – that construction companies like McAlpine are regular contributors to the Tories. While the Labour Party, to its credit, pledged a full inquiry by ‘the next Labour government’, at the time of writing we know too well that…there is no next Labour government.

The final section of Blacklisted, headed ‘A series of lucky breaks’, illustrates how arbitrary the whole process of exposure has been. An ICO staff member ‘happened to read the article in the Guardian’ on blacklisting and dropped it on ICO investigator David Clancy’s desk; Clancy himself had happened to visit Steve Acheson that morning and heard of yet another withdrawn job offer. There’s more; but as blacklisted worker Mark Thomas sums up the dynamic, ‘The tragedy is…we were lucky to get this. The tragedy is we have grabbed [only] a snippet of this.’ The authors note that ‘[e]ven when legislation did make it on to the books it was not enacted’ (p297). If anything, investigation has shown that blacklisting has extended its reach beyond construction to retail, railways, airlines and banking…and beyond. As the authors point out, ‘blacklisting is a global phenomenon that has been going on for centuries’ (p298). This is a class war. And like class war in general, it’s never over – until the final victory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[i] Sheila Cohen ‘   ‘, Gall ed

[ii] Sic – the TCA files are full of grammatical errors.

[iii] Cf Sheila Cohen ‘Notoriously Militant: the Story of a Union Branch’, Merlin Press 2013, Chapter Five.





The Guardian, the Socialist Worker and the National Gallery Dispute

24 05 2015

CAMPAIGNING AND CONNIVING: A HISTORY OF ‘UNION JELLYFISH’ AND ‘MANAGEMENT SHARKS’. Sheila Cohen gives her view of the dispute at the National Gallery.

In recent months, a strange alliance seems to have grown up between the staunchly liberal Guardian and the ‘revolutionary’ weekly Socialist Worker. The joint cause celebre? Recent strike action by staff at the National Gallery. A recent SW’s issue (February 21st 2015) headlines its back page: SUPPORT THE GALLERY STRIKE, with PCS rep (and SWP veteran) Candy Udwin shown addressing the masses; meanwhile, Polly Toynbee has already spoken up at least twice in the pages of Britain’s favourite liberal newspaper.

They’re right to be concerned. The threat – and the reality – of privatisation has been hanging over the National Gallery for at least a year. As early as April 2014 Guardian writer Hugh Muir reported ‘A Picture of Discontent’ at the Gallery over ‘proposed new working arrangements that might mean longer hours worked and less pay for working weekends’, and noted ‘disgruntlement about the failure of the top brass to pay the visitor and security staff London’s £8.80 living wage.’

Union-management talks had ended with the PCS [Public and Commercial Services union] announcing that ‘the gallery was expected to start paying the living wage on 1 April’. Yet ‘That proved illusory.’ The gallery was supposedly ‘hop[ing] to move to the living wage once new working practices and finances allow.’ Meanwhile, this vague promise was outweighed by the £28,000 bonus paid to gallery director Nicholas Penny in 2013 – on top of his ‘basic’ annual salary of £140,000.

Not long afterwards, it looked as if the union was starting to mean business. Reporting on a one-day strike against privatisation in May 2014, the PCS newsletter announced ‘strong support for the action …The galleries at Tate Liverpool were closed, as was London’s National Gallery…NG members staged a demonstration against plans to privatise visitor services and the gallery’s intention to use private security guards for its new Rembrandt exhibition.’

By the 3rd July, the gallery was again facing strike action over privatisation after workers were told of management plans to outsource services like ticketing, security and information. Responding to the gallery’s announcement that it was seeking a ‘partner’ to manage a range of services involving about 400 jobs, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka declared ‘This is a disgraceful and cynical move that risks undoing the long history of professional and trusted work by staff at this world-famous gallery, and we will be mounting a vigorous and visible campaign against it.’

The only problem is – they didn’t.

Only a week later, at a TUC anti-cuts demonstration on July 10th, a group of National Gallery workers were handing out leaflets warning of Penny’s sweeping privatisation of sections of staff. One activist later recalled that ‘In the afternoon on 10th July we were each side of [the branch secretary], pleading ‘You have to do something.’ As he later pointed out: ‘The fact is that on 10th July, with that national action, the whole National Gallery shut down – it was paralysed for the national TUC protest.’ So why not do the same for the threatened NG workforce?

Later that July, things began to look more hopeful; the PCS did agree to hold a ballot, and the outcome of the six-week process, announced on September 15th, was a staggering 98.5% vote for strike action. The only problem was…The strike was never called. National Gallery workers never received the call to walk out from the PCS leadership.

As a result, the process of privatisation has inexorably continued. Although the union continues to call workers out on protests of various kinds – always getting an enthusiastic response – these ‘actions’ are too little and much too late. According to Socialist Worker, the PCS has organised ‘a public campaign that thousands backed’ – but the much-sought-after blessing of ‘public support’ has never been known to divert a cuts-happy management from its mission. While the same paper has urged its readers to ‘sign the petition against privatisation’, petitions do not a victory make. Nor, even, do very high votes for strike action if – fatal flaw – they aren’t actually followed up by that strike action.

This is what happened, or didn’t, last September, and it is why, according to experienced PCS activists at the gallery, nothing can now stop the rising tide of privatisation of jobs and even gallery attendance. The recent ‘flagship’ Rembrandt exhibition, for example, carried an entry fee.

Meanwhile the PCS itself has unintentionally revealed just how little its leadership has achieved in its ‘campaign’ to stop privatisation. For example, a letter inviting members to a meeting on 3rd December 2014 reported that two weeks previously management had presented PCS officials ‘with an ultimatum…[to] accept or reject [management proposals]’. The NG’s management had refused to agree any possibility of staff opting out of these proposals. Yet the union continues to plead: ‘We feel the opt-out is a reasonable position.’

Show me a neo-liberal manager who believes in being ‘reasonable’…And in fact ‘The managers refused to accept any of the amendments we had suggested.’

A Theme Park…?

As one of the reps I met on July 10th puts it – forcefully – ‘This Pathetic, Gullible Union lack of Action at the only time an effective campaign could be fought is why the National Gallery has been turned into a theme park/venue/Conference Centre …NEVER IN THE FIELD OF UNION CONFLICT HAS SO MUCH BEEN LOST FOR SO MANY BY SO FEW! A 98.5% STRIKE VOTE THROWN AWAY!’

As always, there is a back-history to this story of (unnecessary) defeat. A new NG Director, David Cummings, had been in position since 2012, during which time he had introduced ‘five categories on how to do your job, with one for him.’ Cummings’ regime had instigated what the reps described as ‘The Disneyfication of the National Gallery’ with associated ‘chaos, noise, flash photography…The paintings are in danger.’ This philistine approach included increasing threats to staff security as temporary contracts were introduced for gallery assistants, while management-level staff remained civil servants.

Not surprisingly ‘People have had enough – they want to act.’ Yet rank and file NG workers were being ‘hampered by the union.’ By now, as these reps pointed out, ‘PCS is our weakest point.’ Instead of any concrete fightback against management, what had come from the leadership was ‘True to the rhetorical form of union “left” leaderships.’

At this point it should be recalled that the union’s general secretary, Mark Serwotka, was a professed revolutionary when he stood for election, while the vast majority of the NEC belong to ‘revolutionary’ groups like the SWP and Socialist Party. Despite politics which would seem to be galavanised by such a rank and file response, the 98.5% strike vote had ‘scared them – [they were] terrified by how strong it was – [it was as if they were saying] “We don’t know how to handle this”.’

The reps recalled that years earlier ‘The staff were institutionalised, they did what they were told…’ But unionisation and workplace resistance had changed things – at least for a time: ‘Our strike action eight years ago won the right not to work late in the evenings.’

Yet now the union leadership had apparently said ‘We can’t expect people to stay out.’ It seemed that somehow the – highly radical – PCS had lost its ‘killer instinct’, as the reps put it, adding that with the September ballot result ‘The union had victory in the palm of their hand.’ It was as if ‘The PCS is losing sight of protection of smaller parts of the union.’

‘How ungovernable we were…’

At one stage, NG workers had successfully struck for the right not to work in the evenings. As another rep pointed out, ‘You wouldn’t have a contract if people hadn’t fought. If you “can’t afford” to strike, you can’t afford not to strike. Back in the day, how ungovernable we were – “No one can tell us what to do”. But now the union’s blown our subs on executive salaries…and recently two of our members were asked to leave the PCS building.So much for membership participation in an allegedly left-wing union.

Meanwhile, with PCS ‘cooperation’, privatisation seems to be becoming a real possibility. In September 2014 a private firm was brought in to manage the much-promoted Rembrandt exhibition; yet the PCS had allowed this scandalous concession ‘because management spoke to us’.

Although the PCS was now pleading for a Fighting Fund, there was little explanation of what the union was ‘fighting’ for. Meanwhile, union rhetoric continued to promote a hopelessly moralistic approach. One letter to the membership in late November 2014 declared that officials ‘believe[d] that we have taken part constructively…We were…disappointed to be told at a meeting on 24 November that [a management document] included none of our proposed amendments.’

They were also ‘disappointed’ that ‘the Gallery has not felt in a position [!] to pay the London Living Wage as promised…’ And yet, on the grounds that ‘the Gallery is proposing a higher basic rate for some staff as part of the new working arrangements…’ the union argues that ‘This should mean that the majority of…staff will be willing to sign up to the new proposed new contracts with greater flexibility’ [our italics].

This stands in sharp contrast to when the gallery opened its Bronzino exhibition in 2010; although the ‘entire Sainsbury wing’ was given over to contractor CIS, at that point ‘PCS members wouldn’t cooperate.’

‘Compromise Solutions’?

By early December 2014 workplace reps could report that the Information Desk had disappeared, and staff were now expected to be ‘mobile’ between different parts of the Gallery while simultaneously trying to sell membership schemes. These would allow the affluent to get into exhibitions ‘while bypassing the plebs’.

In an Address to the Staff sent out on the 11th December 2014, director Nicholas Penny took it upon himself to ‘describe the Gallery’s needs’ in an attempt to win round the workforce. He reminds staff that in July 2014 the National Gallery had announced its intention to ‘look into outsourcing some…services connected with security and visitor reception.’ Additionally, they had ‘entered into an agreement with CIS who are currently responsible for the Gallery Assistants working in the Rembrandt exhibition and…the Sainsbury Wing cloakroom’.

In September, management had graciously ‘agreed to a pause in our plans…to see if an in-house solution could be found’ – this at the request of the ‘joint trade unions’. Yet, by the December deadline for these discussions, no agreement had been reached, and they would now ‘proceed next week, as previously intended’. Predictably, a central factor in these ‘plans’ was ‘greater flexibility…We cannot continue with the complex concessions…agreed over the last twenty years…’

The PCS response, ‘proposing some compromise solutions’, is dismissed as ‘not appropriate’, while the union’s description of outsourcing as privatisation is ‘corrected’ by denying that the Gallery would cease to be a public institution. Never mind the fact that ‘it is perfectly true that work would be contracted to private companies…’

The next chapter in the ongoing saga was a PCS announcement of ‘Proposed Strike Action during Xmas 2014’. This had been provoked by the NG’s announcement that ‘they plan to put out to private tender our Security, Visitor Services and Visitor Engagement functions…’ The union was ‘extremely disappointed that the Gallery has walked away from the possibility of an in-house alternative.’ Yet that same union had already bent over backwards to ‘offer…an agreement that would allow more flexible working for Visitor Services staff.’

As the PCS letter pleads, ‘When it looked like the talks had broken down, PCS wrote directly to the Trustees…and the PCS Assistant General Secretary also offered to meet the Director – appealing for them to avoid an unnecessary dispute.’ Anything, anything rather than a strike.

Inviting hysterical laughter, the letter continues, ‘Unfortunately the privatisation proposal does not appear to be about the practical needs of the Gallery but seems to be an ideological attack; using private profit-making companies to attack loyal Gallery staff.’ Welcome to the 21st century, comrades, where moral disapproval does not a victory make.

The letter continues ‘Privatisation threatens…our terms and conditions…and our trade union rights. This leaves us with no choice but to take on…a battle to change these plans. It is a big task, but it is possible to win.’ But not really, not now.

The central purpose of all this rhetoric was to announce ‘Three days of strike action to take place on some of the busiest days for the Gallery: Saturday 27th December…, Monday 29th December…and Saturday 3 January 2015.’ Fighting talk – but our experienced reps pointed out that the leadership is ‘Too scared to lose a bank holiday by doing 3 consecutive days.’ The union’s plea ‘We…hope everyone…comes to the picket lines from 9.00 if you possibly can’ is undermined by the observation that ‘Scabs will be in by 8.00 am.’

Finally, the most recent PCS communication in my possession, dated 7th January 2015, begins ‘PCS has sought over the last three months to head off a damaging trade dispute with the National Gallery [over]…plans to privatise major parts of the Gallery’s functions which would lead to approximately 2/3rds of staff being outsourced into the private sector’.

This leaflet attracted the comment ‘Why were they trying to head off a trade dispute? Management threw down the gauntlet – staff wanted to pick it up and fight but PCS bottled it at the one point when action would’ve been effective’. Once again, there is no denying that.

‘By the end of November,’ the union letter continues, ‘it became very clear that the National Gallery did not wish to seek an agreement…At the same time the [NG] went back on their promise to pay the London Living Wage…’ Yet ‘Despite this, PCS wrote…to the Director and…Trustees asking for a meeting to try to avoid a dispute. However the Gallery went ahead and announced…that they were going ahead with…privatisation.’ The moralistic condemnations are depressing, especially when accompanied by the pointless claim that ‘The employer is clearly alarmed by the potential damage PCS industrial action would inflict.’

Yet even this rhetoric is too little, too late: ‘The Gallery have now announced…that they will introduce a private company, CIS, to take over services in the Sainsbury wing.’ Pointing out that ‘This is in breach of procedures’ (!), PCS would now be ‘running a statutory branch ballot over the above trade dispute.’

In response to the earnest plea ‘This is the most serious attack ever faced by [NG] staff and we urge everyone to vote yes in this vital ballot’ the PCS activists’ comment runs ‘They came, we saw, we conked out!’ Even more hilarious is their written comment under the signature ‘Paul Bemrose, PCS National Officer’ which continues his title with the phrase ‘for the prevention of cruelty to management.’

Yes, it’s a laugh a minute all right, but as these activists have made clear during the whole post-non-strike period, the real consequences are far from funny. As one ex-NG employee summed up the realities: ‘I don’t want to be sold – passed on like a bucket. But we were given no choice – [management] were gradually taking the ground – taking over new territory…’

Another rep remembered that ‘Before CIS was in the Gallery, I said If one [private contractor] sets foot in this building, we walk out – but that didn’t happen…Some complained, but [we had] no real voice…’ Commenting on the current fame of Candy Udwin (see above) he pointed out that ‘She’s seen as a “union firebrand” – been in the papers – but she’s not a warder, she works in the [union] offices – she’s gone along with this.’ As indeed had most if not all the National Executive Committee members working in the ‘offices’, ie as full-time union officials.

The same rep pointed out: ‘Management’s no longer scared. And now CIS pays £10 an hour – no London Weighting any more… Staff are there from 7am to 10pm.’ This was a central part of the ‘corporatising’ of the gallery; ‘At 6pm there can be a corporate coach coming in. Now the Gallery lets visitors take photos of the pictures …There are people with drinks in hand in the Gallery – the general public are an irrelevance.’

It isn’t just these ‘shop floor’ activists who have found the new regime intolerable. One letter circulated by a ‘Former Information Officer and Deputy Team leader’ in early August’ 2014 states:

‘I have decided that I no longer wish to work for an organisation which, I believe, takes its staff for granted and treats them with a staggering degree of disrespect. Many of you are aware that since November of [2013] the Information Department has undergone several major changes. This is a process which has been very trying on all concerned…[and] has been forced through…by senior managers with seemingly little or no experience of working in a front line capacity…I have found that I cannot work in such a poorly structured environment [where] myself and my colleagues are expected to compensate for the lack of managerial support… As we all know, the people who work here are the heart and soul of the gallery.’ But not valued as such, clearly, by an aggressively neo-liberal management.

A photo in the most recent issue of Socialist Worker, which continues to ‘campaign’ for its very own PCS Executive member, Candy Udwin, displays NG workers marching on Downing Street with a banner declaiming: ‘Dear Mr Cameron, Please halt the privatisation, Sincerely, National Gallery strikers’. You really couldn’t make it up. As the stalwart NG reps summed up the whole melancholy process: ‘When we shut the gallery down, they were panicking…Now they’re laughing.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 








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