(Editorial from Labour & Trade Union Review, August 2002, No. 119)
Exit Mr. Fixit
There was a time, not very long ago, when a Labour Government complained that a powerful trade union had fallen into the clutches of a small clique of “politically motivated men ". The complaint of the New Labour Government today is that a powerful trade union has fallen out of the clutches of a small clique of politically motivated men—Sir Ken Jackson, Minister for Transport, John Spellar and company.
The politically motivated men who were accused of distorting the proper functioning of trade unions by the last Labour Government were of the left, and some of them were undoubtedly of the utterly unrealistic Ultra-Left . The politically motivated men, who have been diverting trade unions from their proper business in the era of New Labour are of the Ultra-Right.
The essential difference between Sir Ken Jackson and Derek Simpson is that Jackson was a Government agent controlling a trade union for Government purposes and Simpson is a trade unionist without a party-political agenda.
In the days when the left ruled the roost, to brand somebody a “trade unionist pure and simple” was to classify him as being of the Right because he was not an enthusiast for socialist revolution. In these New Labour days the trade unionist pure and simple is of the Left because he is an obstacle to political control of trade union activity in the capitalist interest.
The first thing the media said about Simpson was that he had been a member of the Communist Party, the implication being that he was a wild Ultra-Leftist. But there were members and members of the Communist Party—trade unionists and ideologues. Many of the ideologues are now in Whitehall, gnashing their teeth at the election of Derek Simpson. The CP trade unionists were among the most realistic elements of the trade union movement of those times. ( Arthur Scargill was not in the Communist Party.) And they have maintained an integrity over the past twenty years, while the ideologues no longer know what the word means.
On the day when the old political order gave up on the attempt to hold on to power by cheating, the new order was assessed as follows for Londoners:
“The Evening Standard can reveal that the Amicus leader is a militant hard-liner and proud former Communist who despises the Prime Minister and New Labour. He is in fact an old-style militant and favours a resurgence in far-Left militancy.
“ Supporters say he is a straightforward negotiator who considers the options of industrial disputes and strikes only as “ a last resort “.
“Those close to him, however, paint a picture of a man so consumed by the union movement that it lead to the break-up of of his two marriages.....
“One union official said : “He’s right when he says he’s not a Blairite—he was a Communist until well after the Berlin Wall collapsed. He is not a natural Labour man. He is a very determined and committed union man who will stop at nothing to get his own way.” (July 22)
A couple of strange assumptions are made here: that a natural Labour man will tend to be a Blairite, and that a committed union man is not a natural Labour man. And also that a committed union man must be addicted to “far-left militancy”.
There is more to trade unionism than strikes. Ernest Bevin—the union boss who conceived the post-1945 reform and placed the Labour Party in the position to enact it—saw the trade union as a necessary part of the corporate structure of democracy in an industrialised society. And the Communist Party, although it hated Bevin, helped to preserve the trade unions as corporate elements of society for two generations after Bevin.
If Simpson “was a communist until well after the Berlin Wall collapsed” that is entirely to his credit as a trade unionist . Perhaps he would still be a Communist if there was any Communism to be.
We were
not admirers of East Germany because we thought there were over-riding political
reasons why it would not last . But it is beyond serious dispute that the condition
of working class life established by the East German regime and other East European
regimes were better than the conditions existing in some parts of Britain, and
there has been a radical worsening of the conditions of working class life there
since the Berlin Wall collapsed.
There is integrity in Simpson’s position. But what of the Communist ideologues who now form part of the Blair regime ? When did they cease to be Communists, and why did they become Thatcherites? They slithered from the one position to the other without explanation, or even admission . The Sun illustrated an interview with Sir Ken with a cartoon showing the return of Swamp Things. The actual Swamp Things are in Whitehall.
The Times published a comparatively reasonable and well-informed article/interview on Simpson (July26), describing him as a “former” Communist who believes the Labour Party has become undemocratic, revealing that he “has been on strike only once”, and quoting him as follows:
“I’ve never believed in the Third Way. It was just a way of trying to cover over unequal relationships with words. It was one of those things which people repeat but it means nothing. It is like the emperor’s new clothes, everyone goes along with it and then suddenly somebody points out that nothing is there ...
“Capitalism means that there is a difference between capital and labour and there always will be. Too often partnership has been about what the employer wants.....
“This government has only really been interested in big business......
“PFI never works because it is based on those companies making profits. So public money is going into profits. It is hire purchase, let us make no mistake. If I couldn’t afford a television and I went to Dixons to buy it on hire purchase I might end up paying for two televisions. The stakes are different, it is megabucks with PFI but it is the same thing .......
“The union movement is where Labour used to be. You only have to look at what someone like Roy Hattersley says. He used to be regarded as a rightwinger and now he is seen as a leftwinger. It has gone that far."
The interviewer, Christine Buckley, does not challenge Simpson’s statement that, under Sir Ken’s regime, “This has been more of a Mafia than a trade union”. For example, the election of regional officers was replaced with appointment by the General Secretary. And that the union was committed to Government policies such as rigging the London Mayoral election without consulting the members.
Simpson was made to give up his union job as a condition for contesting the election, and he was forbidden to attend the union conference during the election campaign, while Sir Ken used the union apparatus for electoral purposes and then, after the third recount, tried to use election rigging by his own supporters as a reason for declaring the election invalid.
Sir Ken’s election organiser was a member of the government: John Spellar, Minister for Transport. Spellar was a protege of E.T.U boss Frank Chapple who gained control of the Union by exposing ballot rigging by the Communist Party and then proceeded to establish a tight regime of anti-Communist control which was in many ways a mirror image of the regime he had overthrown. Spellar felt, no doubt, that he was still fighting that good fight.
Sir Ken predicted doom in an interview published in The Sun (July 19), and Trevor Kavanagh, Political Editor of The Sun, explained the situation in an accompanying article:
“It is easy to feel sorry for workers who survive on £13,000 a year ...... how can you raise a family, pay off a mortgage and put money aside for a pension on that ?
“But the hard truth is that they do at least have a job, and one of the reasons they have that job is because of—not in spite of—the employment laws the unions now want to unravel ........
“Before we sympathise with low paid local government employees, let’s remember how far we have come and how big a price we have paid. In each of the five years leading up to Labour’s defeat in 1979, we lost a colossal 11.663,000 working days on average in industrial disputes....
“By contrast, in 1999 the number of strike days was down to 242,000....
" This phenomenal improvement .... came about because Margaret Thatcher rammed through employment laws which gave workers control over their own leaders.....
“These unions want the same “ job protection” comrades in Europe enjoy. But one man’s job protection is another man’s dole ticket."
So there we are. This article was written in support of Sir Ken when he was still thinking of getting the election ruled invalid because of the improper conduct of his supporters. People of Sir Ken’s calibre were needed to stifle union activity in a situation of economic prosperity in which millions of people were admittedly not paid enough to raise a family in comfort, but in which it was vitally necessary that they should be prevented from trying to do anything to improve their conditions, because the harsh truth was that their condition was as good as it could get. The dilemma was that the workers, having been given control over their leaders, were not facing up to the fact that they would worsen their condition if they tried to improve it, and were electing a leader who was trying to improve it.
Sir Ken gave up the attempt to hang on to power the following day, and he gave an interview to Radio 4 in which he reviewed the history of socialism and concluded that it didn’t work in any of its forms.
So that’s where New Labour has led us: socialism is impossible; working-class conditions are as good as they can get under capitalism; therefore the only rational object of political power is to deter the workers from engaging in delusive efforts to improve their position because, as Sir Ken puts it, that would lead to a Return To Chaos.
And that’s Progress!
That’s Radicalism !
August 2002, No. 119
LEADING
ARTICLE
Exit
Mr Fixit
The
Roots of Arab/Jewish Hostility
Brendan Clifford
Notes
on the News
Gwydion M Williams
Whatever
Happened to the Milosevic Trial
John Clayden
Stupid
Money and Market Bubbles
Michael Alexander
Editor
John Clayden
Please note:—This is an additional issue to the double July/August issue.
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