Any Lessons?
Sheila Cohen, author of Ramparts of Resistance, a recent history of US and UK trade unionism, looks at what lessons might be learnt from the last couple of decades of struggle, victory and defeat.
US and UK? An odd pairing. But the working class in struggle in both countries has had more in common than you might think. In Britain, where even the horrors of Thatcherism have failed to entirely destroy a residual class consciousness, the American labour movement is rarely perceived as anything but a bastion of business unionism; while for Americans the British labour movement is about as invisible as the British prime minister, for all his ineffectual claims to a non-existent “special relationship.”
Yet in my research for Ramparts— not to mention my own activity within the US labour movement— I discovered a very different story. American workers, once caught up in struggle, are principled, creative and above all energetic, with a kick-your-ass combativity lacking in the more moralistic atmosphere of British social democracy. And for any American readers of this article, I would humbly solicit greater awareness of the brave, committed and continuing struggles waged in the pit of New Labourism by an honourable band of British rank and file trade union activists.
Uncanny Parallels
So what, on both sides of the Atlantic, have the last two decades taught us? The 1980s saw uncanny parallels between Britain and America in terms of a series of long, brave but ultimately unsuccessful strikes. Mass struggles like the British 1984-5 miners’ and 1986 printers’ strikes echoed those of the US “P9” meatpackers and International Paper workers in length, numbers and sometimes desperation. Yet by the end of the decade, an impressive upturn signalled by the Pittston miners’ strike of 1989, which mobilised workers across the US, showed predictions of an “end of history” of workplace struggle to be, as so often, premature.
And yet, once again in both countries, in both countries the 1990s brought similar long and often unsuccessful struggles like the Decatur “war zone” and Detroit newspaper strikes in the US, Timex and the Liverpool dockers in the UK. Indeed, as the 20th century turned into the 21st, the pattern could be summed up in almost monotonous terms of defeat (Detroit) followed by victory (UPS! Seattle!), apparent lethargy (mid-to-late ‘90s) followed by scorching challenges to the newly-elected Blair’s policy of “fairness, not favours” for unions.
Monotonous, however, it isn’t. Turning to the lessons, perhaps the most crucial has already been pointed out: that there is never, despite appearances, a permanent lull in class struggle. Shown historically over and over, this truth is not only encouraging, but deeply significant for shaping labour movement strategy.
There are, of course, less positive lessons from the last two decades—otherwise every strike would have been won, Thatcherism would have been crushed, and we would not now be lumbered with the surreal absurdities of “New Labour” or the murderous ineptitude of the Bush cabal. So why did they lose? Leaving aside the huge inequalities in class power (no small matter), the answers are a mixture of leadership cowardice and stupidity, rank and file reformism, and the specific morality of the working class within capitalism.
Learning from Heroic Defeats
Take the two seminal losses of the mid-1980s, the miners’ strike in Britain and P9 in the US. Ramparts shows clearly that in the first case, the strike could have been won on at least two occasion: a simultaneous dock strike in July 1984, and the pit deputies’ action that autumn. In the first case, the union leadership called the strike off at the first hint of trouble by strikebound owner-drivers; in the second, while government chicanery easily ensnared the semi-managerial pit supervisors, there seems to have been no attempt by the miners’ union leadership to persuade them to hold out.
With the 1986 struggle of meatpackers’ P9 local in Austin, Minnesota, the scars run deeper. After refusing to support the P9 strike against wage concessions on the grounds that it broke union “solidarity”—in other words, other locals had been forced to accept pay cuts, so P9 should too—the leadership of the United Food and Commercial Workers eventually placed the P9 in trusteeship and informed the company that the strikers would be restarting work. If this is not an example of the classic bureaucratic “sell-out,” it’s hard to know where else to look.
So the first “lesson” is, yes, good old bureaucratic betrayal. It’s hard to deny that the leadership of the movement, in its continuing anxiety to cosy up to capitalism rather than confront it, has played some part in draining the strength from rank and file resistance.
Yet by no means all the problems lie with the leadership. Those involved in the kind of struggles which can transform lives and consciousness tend—understandably—to believe in the justice of their cause to an extent which can obscure the vicious tenacity of the enemy. As Women Of The Waterfront, supporters of the Liverpool dock strike, wrote, “We firmly believe that we will win this fight because morality and human justice are on our side.” Yet this assumption is, unfortunately, part of the lack of class clarity associated with many defeats.
This is a difficult criticism, as is the further analysis of working-class reformism contained in Ramparts. Here the central point that reformism (politics which seek no more than reforms within capitalist society) is pervasive across the labour movement, from the most militant steward to the most hardened bureaucrat, raises the depressing issue that militancy alone is not enough to achieve lasting gains.
Reasons for Hope
Ramparts presents what is ironically a more hopeful perspective in arguing that working-class consciousness more often bespeaks the absence of a coherent ideology than an ardent commitment to reformism. This leaves a space in which the experience of struggle can promote breaks and leaps in consciousness.
As regards the recent history of the labour movement, the lesson might be that gut-level resistance amongst previously “non-political” or even conservative workers contains the potential for a sharper class perspective than is often allowed for by even the most left-wing leaderships. Simply building on what is already there—the kick of resistance to capital—is not a matter of abandoning socialist ideals but of generating activity which can fuse such broader political awareness with everyday strategy and tactics in workplaces.
So what goes wrong? This is where the a complex analysis of “trade union bureaucracy” can come into play through examining the process behind the well-trodden path from militant to bureaucrat, which constantly removes union representatives from their class roots. The institutionalization inherent in trade unionism generates the tendency for even the most militant of worker representatives to put the needs of “the union”—the structure of organisation and negotiation—before those of the members. Such dynamics, and the associated “blame the members” syndrome, are only too familiar within the movement. But they contain within them, routinely, the seeds of union atrophy.
It may seem bizarre to present the lessons of mass struggles and defeats like those of the 1980s and ‘90s in terms of the apparently parochial issue of accountability to union members and their interests within the workplace. But that, essentially, is what trade unionism and, yes, class struggle is about. And this crucial principle—member-led direct democracy within the union—stands side by side with the equally crucial requirement of class independence. Despite all the bravely-fought battles of the 1980s and ‘90s, it was deference to management mantras of “competitiveness” and adherence to forms of co-operation and “partnership” which undermined the gut resistance from the roots to the attacks of capital.
So, two key watchwords, and two only: class independence and union democracy. If it’s that simple, why haven’t we done it? A major component in the answer is neglect of a crucial constituency: the already-existing layer of committed activists within the movement.
This army of shop stewards, departmental reps, branch (local) secretaries and the like are already in place. Not only are they in unions, they help organize them. Not only do they look after their members, they are the members—they work alongside those they represent. Not only do they lead struggles, large and small, against capitalism, they are often aware and supportive of broader social movements—yes, really.
It is this layer of activists that hold the key to putting the lessons of the last two decades—and those before them—into effect. Workplace activists are the closest we’ve got to a leadership which is not only an advanced section of the working class, but is actually a part of that class. And it is this in-class leadership which can most benefit—and most benefit the rest of us—by learning the lessons of class independence and trade union democracy.
Maybe that way, we’ll have a non-“treacherous” leadership in place when the next upsurge comes around.
Sheila Cohen is the author of Ramparts of Resistance: Why Workers Lost Their Power and How to Get it Back, recently published by Pluto Press. She is currently working on an update of her 1998 pamphlet, What’s Happening?? The Truth About Work…And the Myth of “Partnership.”
