Why is there a downturn?

Scan page 9

ORGANISED: Lefts ipporters on the union's Natnal Executive Committee have roved shaky under pressure om the full-time bureaucrats. Stephen Corbishley said that le CPSA Broad Left has some milarities with the POEU's. nlike the old Broad Left which jet secretly to fix deals, it is an en organisation, though the cialist Workers' Party exudes itself.

The CPSA Broad Left has ashed for more union demoacy, with considerable suciss, but (because of Militant's fluence) it is very bad in its blicy on women.

Unlike the POEU Broad Left, ie CPSA Broad Left has to ganised in many different itions of workers. This leads i different policy emphases different areas, for example, pposition to the Tories' Youth raining Scheme not being ashed strongly among Manower Services Commission orkers. | Recently, Stephen said, deate has declined in the Broad pft. Militant supporters are ow just over 50% of the Broad eft, and therefore do not need worry about arguing to win ipport.

NIS bnne from Sheffield. "Studen iutside interests. At my tech ibject people were interested ! colleges can be very hard to ional Organisation of Labour at it would be possible to orge paper 'Socialist Student'. few outside tech colleges this nal Union of Students execuS were the issues which NUS in't doing that, and it'sagoing e a lead. It looks like even the ity stressed that we should be • workplace branches. These as colleges are drawn more ana il of Economics said that there ting student issues and focus'es.. cannot hope to win fights ir won. Turning to the labour ect' slogan. it is an immediate is to be defended, let alone JOHN O'MAHONY, editor of Socialist Organiser, summed up at the end of the conference. He addressed himself to the mood of depression in the labour movement after June All around us is massive devastation, by the slump and by the Tories. What does the working class need as an answer to this? Socialism: the socialist revolution.

True, it was unlikely that a socialist revolution would be the first response of the British working class to the slump. A whole period is necessary in which the working class reorganises and reorients itself.

But what was possible was a radical Labour government which tried to serve the interests of the working class, and which depended for its ability to act on working class mobilisation. We didn't get that. What was also possible was an explosive trade union fightback. We haven't got that, either.

What we have got is a Tory election victory - Thatcher Mark 2. We have a TUC veering to the right, unable even to be decent trade unionists, and now talking to hangman Tebbit about what rope he should use.

Worse than the collapse at the top has been the collapse of rank and file militancy. For two decades the rank and file had been able largely to ignore the top union bureaucrats and to defy and even defeat governments. This rank and file militancy collapsed just when it was most needed.

There have been industrial victories - Michelin, Firth Derihon, Greenings, the Financial Times - but all in all industrial militancy is at a low ebb.

Reason to be depressed? Yes. But there is no reason to give in to the cosmic gloom and despondency which has overwhelmed sections of the Left.

The sun rises and sets, and short of nuclear annihilation it is equally certain that the class struggle will revive. Even devastation like that inflicted on the Chilean workers ten years ago could not indefinitely prevent revival of the class struggle.

Most important, and decisive for the future, is to learn the lessons. We often talk about the class struggle in military images. An army must analyse and study its defeats and setbacks.

Why has the labour movement lost ground?

The visible and obvious reas on is the slump, which undermines the strength of the labour movement through mass unemployment. But slumps produce varying effects. After the initial shock was over, the slump in the US in the 1930s spurred the workers to create mass industrial unions for the first time.

The reason why the slump has had such a bad effect so far on the British labour movement is to be found in what went before. The Labour government's betrayals in office opened up workers to despair and disillusionment. In 1973-4, tremendous industrial militancy pushed out the Tories and led to the WilsonCallaghan government - as the only thing the labour movement had to put in place of the Tories. And the result was attacks on the working class, cuts in real wages and in public services.

Why did it go like that? Because of the limitations of the labour movement itself, and especially because of the limitations of the rank and file militancy of the '60s and '70s. What is happening now has to be seen in the perspective of the last 20 years.

The rank and file militancy was tremendously effective on wages and conditions. Its strength and success there was also the root of its political weakness. It did not have to concern itself very much with the problem of the official leadership structures of the unions, or with the political wing of the labour movement, the Labour Party.

The labour movement was sectionalised; chopped up into segments. The rank and file was without a socialist perspective into which it fitted its own activity. In this it differed markedly from the shop stewards' movement of the 1920s, which saw itself as one wing of a revolutionary socialist movement.

When the shop stewards' movement and the rank and file militancy were at their peak, what was going on in the Labour Party? Very little.

But by the time the struggle for internal democracy was shaking the Labour Party, the slump was already dragging down the rank and file industrial militancy.

The Labour Party struggle for democracy was, of course, itself a result of the experience of Labour in government in the '70s and of the industrial struggles. Yet the two currents, the industrial militancy in the trade-unions and the movement within the Labour Party, never properly cohered. They never united their strengths. The Left has had setbacks in the Labour Party because it has failed to win in Over the two or more decades before the present downturn, the labour movement was powerful, effective (for limited purposes), but incoherent. Its different strands - and in the first place its political and industrial strands - were not united into any integrated and coherent class strategy.

That's why we could not handle the Labour government which rode to power on a wave of industrial militancy in 1974. That's why the movement has reacted as it has to the slump.

The official leaders have always played a bad role. The slump, the entrenched leadership, but above all the disappointments and limitations of what the movement was and did in the period of its greatest power and strength - these are the reasons for the downturn.

The limitations of the rank and file movement, in turn, are to be traced back to the limitations of the Left - its confusions, divisions, and small numbers.

The class struggle will revive. Our job is to be ready for it.

The Tories are stepping up their offensive. The TUC wants to live with Tebbit's laws. But. maybe they won't be able to. There is still tremendous strength in the labour movement.

What do w e need to do now?

1. Repair the ravages to shop floor organis ation, only this time on a higher political basis. The shop stewards' movement must be equipped with socialist perspectives and a programme for trade union democracy which also concerns itself with the broader labour movement.

Is it whistling in the dark to talk like this in the middle of a slump? Remember how the Minority Movement, the most effective; integrated, and comprehensive rank and file movement ever, started! It was launched amidst the collapse of militancy in the early '20s, and was effective thanks to a strong political backbone.

2. Continue the fight in the Labour Party. The Labour Party is still the political arm of the labour movement. There is no serious alternative to continuing this fight.

3. The entire labour movement must be regenerated and renewed, and given the objective of taking power, in place of its old, merely reformist, objectives.

4. The struggles in the Labour Party and in the trade unions, the struggles of sections like blacks and women, must be linked together and integrated into a movement with a coherent strategy, not only against the Tories but against capitalism itself.

Get Name 5, We must organise and regroup the revolutionary socialists in the labour movement. This is the precondition for everything else. 'Build the revolutionary party' has become one of the most discredited of the sectarian catchcries. Those who counterpose this slogan to the existing labour movement, and to the task of changing it, deserve to be discredited.

But still... the Labour Party is a 'broad church' , the trade unions are vast and politically heterogeneous .. organisations. The only agency that can overcome the fragmentation and political incoherence of the working-class movement and the movements of the oppressed is an organisation of socialists with a clear-cut, comprehensive strategy.

The Socialist Organiser Alliance has made some impact in the labour movement. If we had been better organised, we could have made a bigger impact. To prepare for a new upsurge of working class struggle, we need to build and strengthen the Socialist Organiser Alliance now. Those not already organised supporters of the paper should consider joining the SOA.

SED!

Become a supporter of the Socialist Organiser Alliance -• groups are established in most large towns. We ask £1.50 a month minimum (20p unwaged) contribution from supporters.

I want to become a Socialist Organiser supporter/ I want more information.

Address Send to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL.

Scan page 10

4e two wrl veganm: ivet opicinvo is 190s rage iu *471