Russian workers breathe life into unions - Bob Arnot interviews Kirill Buketov*
Bob Arnot: The last twelve months in Russia have appeared to be particularly turbulent, even by Russian standards. The economic decline deepens but simultaneously the development of a deeply criminalised “wild west” capitalism has continued. For the Russian trade union and labour movement has the year seen significant change? Perhaps we could begin by considering the situation in the old official trade union federation, the FNPR (Federation of Independent Trade Unions).
Kirill Buketov: The changes in the FNPR have been more incremental than dramatic but they are beginning to cumulate and make a real difference. Firstly, you must remember that in the past the trade unions and management were in some respects staffed by an interchangeable personnel. A career in the trade unions, management and the party was the usual route for careerists of various kinds. However, one of the consequences of the reform process has been the separation of these functions. Those trade union leaders (either at the centre or at the enterprise level) who were “self interested” now saw that money, power, etc., resided elsewhere and began to abandon the trade unions. Furthermore, the older Stalinist cadre is subject to time — either death or retirement has begun to bring changes and the result is that there is a replacement of the cadre.
In what way does this manifest itself practically?
Within FNPR structures this is bringing about changes that at first sight may seem trivial but which are symbolically important and have underpinned much more significant practical change. For example, the old nomenklatura privileges relating to access to cars and drivers that were enjoyed by trade union leaders have been withdrawn and even the hierarchical structure of canteen facilities has been removed. This is symbolically important as it signifies the end of the old confluence between the nomenklatura and the trade unions.
More significantly the new cadre has implemented changes in youth policy and is attempting positively to recruit young workers into the trade unions. From my own point of view the changes in the trade union newspaper are also of significance. The editorial team of the newspaper is drawn from younger elements within the movement, often with a profoundly anti-Stalinist past. Furthermore, in the past the newspaper was simply distributed free to enterprise union committees and then freely to the membership. Now, however, the paper has to be paid for, but the number of copies produced grows constantly, both subscriptions and general distribution, because workers recognise both its independence and its usefulness.
Has this begun to have any real impact on the nature of trade union activity and interventions?
The policy orientation has been changing constantly but since the well-supported day of action on 5 November 1996 real change has begun to occur. Before this event the level of involvement reflected the Soviet tradition of a perfunctory turnout and participation. Now, however, involvement is much more active as the economic and social situation has deteriorated so markedly for ordinary workers throughout the country. This has led to heightened demands and trade unions, as they are increasingly seen to be genuinely independent, are the vehicle through which these are expressed.
Did this process accelerate between the November 1996 and March 1997 days of action?
Certainly! By the time of the next big day of action on 27 March 1997 the main slogan had become explicitly political and was unambiguously anti-government. The state was extremely perturbed by the growth of popular discontent and the mobilisations throughout the early part of the year in many regions and many sectors of the economy. Yeltsin’s response was to revamp the government, with the addition of Chubais (the Minister who had been responsible for the privatisation campaign under the Gaidar government) and Nemtsov (the regional governor who had introduced apparently successful reforms in Nizhny Novgorod). Their brief was to change the social and economic situation. As a consequence pensioners were at last paid the billions of roubles owed to them in pension arrears. This was completed by 1 July 1997.
Furthermore, a new programme has been introduced to pay wage arrears, which has been the prime reason for strikes and popular unrest. Priority has been given to the payment of the military services, for the obvious reason. Next, payments will be made to defence sector enterprises with the eventual aim being the removal of wage arrears by 1 January 1998.
Given the enormous budgetary problems the regime faces, as a result of enormous expenditures and the failure to collect tax, it raises the question of how the state can deal with these problems.
The government has attempted a variety of strategies. First, it tried to get money from Gazprom, Lukoil and the other major industrial groupings, headed by the ex-nomenklatura and the new capitalists, that have been the major beneficiaries of the reform process. The industrial groupings have been made to pay their tax debts. The second instrument utilised by government has been the attempt to strengthen tax policy. This has applied mainly to firms but also to individuals. It is not easy to get people to pay their taxes because people are reluctant to pay for the Chechen war and can see clearly that there is no democratic control over the state budget. For example, during the election campaign the state budget was effectively utilised as Yeltsin’s campaign fund! The third instrument utilised has been the sequestration of funds from the public sector and this has resulted in reduced budgets for TV, education, etc. This is really no option at all and alarms the trade unions because it is an attempt to solve the problems at the expense of another group of workers and the trade-off is unsustainable. The fourth instrument utilised has been further privatisations. For example, the state has sold off shares in Svazinvest and intends to sell off Norilsk nickel. These privatisations are little more than the transfer of assets to the powerful industrial groupings close to the ruling circles under the pretext of raising funds to pay the wage arrears. Workers in the short term may receive their back pay but in the longer term the money to pay it has been stolen from them! Furthermore, even in the short term there is no democratic control over the funds raised. The communications workers’ trade union has proposed that if the state sells assets, then no one controls money, but what they wanted was 30% of the revenue to be controlled by them and dedicated to the social sphere.
So you are arguing that under the pressure of popular discontent the ruling group is being forced to confront the issue of wage arrears, but has the discontent forced any other changes?
Another change worth identifying is the degree to which the trade unions have refused to be incorporated into the structures of the Yeltsin government. For example, in the Kuzbass under popular pressure Yeltsin replaced his criminal friend Mikhail Kisluk (very unpopular and thought to be responsible for the collapse of the coal industry) with Aman Tulayev, a relatively popular, leftist politician, supported by the trade unions. It was also proposed that the chairman of the Kuzbass trade union federation should become the deputy governor of the region. In the past, as part of the nomenklatura, this would have been quite normal but the trade union chairman refused, reflecting the trade union’s desire for independence and their reluctance to be incorporated or blamed for the absurdities of the Yeltsin government. Similarly, Mikhail Shmakov, the Chairman of the FNPR, was proposed for the post of Minister of Labour but refused.
Whatever its past and for all its present problems, the FNPR is the only trade union force and only it can mobilise millions of workers to take to the streets in protest. No political party can achieve this. The extravagant claims of the so-called independent trade unions need to be assessed. For example, much was made of Sotsprof which did play an important role in smaller enterprises and firms. In some instances it was the only way of organising where the FNPR was unreformed and for workers it was the only form of self-defence and organisation. Workers who tried to change their trade union committees and were unsuccessful turned to Sotsprof.
However, under pressure from the rank and file at enterprise level, FNPR unions have begun to change. For example, there is more democracy at enterprise level than ever before and this is particularly true outside of Moscow and Moscow region. Many of the wide range of strikes and actions that have occurred in recent times have been led by new radical and militant trade union committees. For example, in the Vladivostok area at the Bolshokamin ship building yard, 500 workers led by a woman chair of the trade union committee broke police lines and blockaded the Trans-Siberian railroad. It is possible that she will get 10 years in jail but a campaign has already begun and it is unlikely. Many new leaders are emerging in the course of struggle.
At the enterprise level many leadership changes have occurred: Stalinist bureaucrats jumped ship pretty quick, therefore the new people who filled their spaces had had nothing to do with old-style nomenklatura or management. These are generally a younger generation and this is the case also at the upper levels of the FNPR. At the middle levels there are still old bureaucrats, particularly at the regional levels and the centre, but they will eventually be voted out or they will see this is not their old organisation.
What about the “free trade unions”?
The free trade unions officially supported the mass action of 27 March 1997 which shows the shift in their attitude towards the FNPR. Originally they distrusted its old bureaucracy but now they are unable to do this. Sotsprof leaders are criticised by their own membership particularly for their financial support to Yeltsin’s election fund. This was a result of illegal money laundering to support the Yeltsin campaign. Large sums of money were given to Sotsprof who in turn sent 4 milliard roubles to Yeltsin’s campaign fund, keeping perhaps 10%! Khramov, the leader of Sotsprof even boasted about his role in this prostitution of the union and it is little surprise that the membership have become disillusioned and as a result many officials from the free trade unions have gone into the FNPR.
From the outside the situation in the trade unions appears somewhat complex. Can you briefly outline the structures that now exist?
Broadly speaking there are three federations. The FNPR (Federation of Independent Trade Unions) which as we have been discussing is undergoing some qualitative changes. Second, the KTR (Confederation of Labour of Russia) which is comprised mainly of transport workers (in particular seamen and rail workers). Finally, there is the VKT (All-Russian Confederation of Labour) which was created by Sotsprof and the NPG (Independent Miners Union). Note that because of Sotsprof’s problems some Sotsprof structures belong directly to the VKT.
The free trade unions really need to strengthen their organisational basis and create a joint federation to match the FNPR. This would have the beneficial effect that two or more powerful confederations might push each other into stronger organisational forms and more radical positions but the problem is that the government can play one off against the other.
Some western commentators have argued that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) is a progressive force and that they represent and articulate the interests of Russian workers. To me this seems bizarre in the extreme. Would you comment on this?
The KPRF’s words are very radical but they have to be judged on their deeds. The KPRF fraction is the largest in the Duma and initially there were hopes that they would exert pressure to change legislation and social policy. But this fraction will never support any law or proposal in order to help ordinary people. They have even failed to support basic trade union proposals. For example, the Duma has to set the minimum wage and to set it at a level below the poverty level is absurd. But when the issue was discussed even the liberals were more supportive than the KPRF! There are many similar examples from their actions in the Duma.
Furthermore, at demonstrations and actions the KPRF happily march under banners of Stalin and with anti-semitic slogans. The speeches of their representatives are always full of chauvinist and nationalist demagogy. This after all is the party that has never recognised its responsibilities for the crimes of the past and actually boasts about its CPSU antecedents and tradition. In the past the FNPR has been criticised and blamed for being part of state structures but this is even more true of the KPRF at the present. Many regional governors have come from the Zyuganov party but they have done nothing to help people survive. They are responsible for the past and they share responsibility for the present with the Yeltsin regime.
What Zyuganov has tried to do is hi-jack workers’ protests for his own party purposes. For example, the general council of trade unions organised a day of action for 27 March 1997 and one week after the decision was made on the date, Zyuganov’s newspapers tried to claim they had organised the protest action! On the day itself FNPR insisted that if KPRF wanted to take part in the day of protest then it must call on all its members to go to the demonstrations in trade union and not KPRF groups. But as the majority of KPRF active members are pensioners they are not in trade unions, so columns of KPRF pensioners joined the demonstrations! Even then ordinary trade union members were appalled at their slogans and the portraits of Stalin that they carried. Clearly there is a real difference between the workers’ movement and Zyuganov’s nationalistic, anti-semitic, Stalinists.
What do you see as the next phase in the campaign against the government’s disastrous economic and social policies?
The next day of action will be similar to a general strike and will probably take place in the autumn. Meanwhile, in addition to general day-to-day campaigning, a special campaign on non-payment is underway. Its main task is to lay bare the responsibility for non-payments. The government argue that it is the fault of corrupt enterprise management but clearly it is deeper than this and is the responsibility of the government. The broader idea is to attract the attention of the international community, hence the participation of the ILO and ICFTU.
Superficial observers, particularly westerners passing through Moscow, could argue that even though non-payments remain a problem, the government policy of seeking monetary stability has worked. Economic activity seems to have increased, the availability of goods has improved, unemployment is very low and the superficial signs of prosperity seem to be expanding. Furthermore, there will undoubtedly be a propaganda campaign oriented towards the west connected to Moscow’s 850th anniversary. Yet this picture is clearly misleading — would you comment on this?
There are a number of elements to this. First, on a simple level the statistical system has more or less collapsed and the statistics are massively removed from reality. Second, Moscow’s relative prosperity is clearly a result of its privileged position. For example, the majority of the foreign investment that comes into Russia goes to Moscow and even that which goes to the regions has an impact in Moscow. Third, there is the question of the mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov. Luzhkov is a real populist politician and is extremely popular in Moscow because he pays attention to social questions and social problems in Moscow. For example, he opposes social reforms suggested by the Chubais and Nemtsov government. What they want to do is over the next 2-3 years make Russian citizens 100% responsible for their own electricity, housing and gas costs. They argue that the communal provision of utilities encourages wastefulness and overconsumption but of course the real reason is the privatisation of communal costs and the removal of these costs from the state budget. Luzhkov, however, opposes this and has proposed a special Moscow programme which will continue subsidies for the population. Luzhkov is a pragmatic populist who attempts through words and deeds to minimise the possibilities of popular discontent, keeping Moscow stable and allowing those who are benefiting from the reform process to enjoy their prosperity. The combination of social subsidies and the celebrations arranged for the 850th anniversary could be likened to the “bread and circuses” of Roman emperors! Meanwhile in the regions the situation is much different and real hardship, extreme poverty, high levels of unemployment, disease and even malnutrition, provide a stark contrast with the apparent affluence of Moscow.
We’ve already discussed the role of the KPRF but are there any other parties that might provide a focus for anti-government activity?
No present political party stands on a platform that is pro-worker. All the mainstream parties have their origins in the former ruling group and Zhironovsky, Lebed and Chubais in their own ways have sought to incorporate the workers and use their power for their own ends. None of them represent workers’ interests. Each represents particular factions of the old ruling group and nomenklatura in the new circumstances. They all broadly have the same ultimate aim, the creation of some form of capitalism, even though their particular routes for the transition may be marginally different.
With regard to current left parties, it is very difficult to talk of a left that really exists. The grouplets are very small, unrepresentative and not connected to the wider labour movement. You can only call them parties if you believe that ten people with a party name constitute a party!
As a consequence trade unions can and must play a political role. They are the only social force that can represent and defend workers’ interests. In the longer term a workers’ party based on the trade unions is the only possibility for Russian workers to intervene and determine their future.
* Kirill Buketov is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the trade union newspaper Solidarnost and produces a trade union radio programme on Russian radio. Bob Arnot is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Critique. The interview was conducted in Moscow, July/August 1997.
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How should socialist parties organise?
How should socialists organise? That is one of the vexed questions on the left. Arthur Scargill recently expounded the views of the leadership of the recently formed Socialist Labour Party. Here we present his views and reply to them.
Agree, or leave!
Bitter experience has taught me that no political party of the Left can succeed on the basis of a federal structure — as an ‘umbrella’ for separate organisations or parties, each with its own agenda, each wanting to build its own grouping, based upon its policies or strategies, within the SLP.
I believe that Socialist Labour must be one organisation, with the central aim of abolishing capitalism and establishing a Socialist system of society.
The issue of ‘federalism’ was hammered out before the formation of our new Party, at meetings spanning a three-month period, because it was recognised as representing a fundamental principle that must be decided upon prior to actually forming the SLP.
No Left party can build the fight for, let alone achieve the aim of, Socialism if there are fundamental disagreements of principle over its Constitution and policies.
That is a lesson I’ve learned in a political career spanning 45 years. I know from first-hand experience the dangers that federalism presents. If we are to build on our achievements thus far and grow into a mass political party, we must tackle these dangers head-on; unless we do, they will interfere with the development of Socialist Labour, whose impact thus far has been remarkable.
Over the past few months, Constituency Socialist Labour Parties and individual members have been bombarded with correspondence from bodies naming themselves the ‘Revolutionary Platform’, ‘Campaign for a Democratic SLP’, etc., together with ‘open letters’ from people who describe themselves as SLP members even though they are not members of the Party.
Conferences and meetings have been convened by these bodies. Their over-riding aim is to challenge Socialist Labour’s Constitution and demand that the SLP becomes a ‘federal’ party, allowing other political parties and organisations to join. The groupings and individuals involved seem to be more interested in building a fight within our Party than in developing a campaigning political organisation whose central aim is to fight the ruling class.
It’s important to remember that when a person joins the SLP and signs an application form, she or he undertakes to accept and abide by the Constitution and rules of the Party. Those who join also agree to accept the programme, principles and policies of the Party.
Those who are involved in campaigns against the SLP Constitution and policies formulated by our members are not only wasting time and energy needed to build a mass political party, but are diverting attention away from the specific issues upon which the SLP should be campaigning.
Our fight — in direct action and electioneering — is against capitalism, not against each other. Anyone who cannot accept the Constitution and policies of our Party should not be a member. Those involved in convening conferences and meetings, or circulating correspondence to CSLPs and members attacking our Constitution and policies, are acting against the Constitution, and must realise that their actions will have to be dealt with accordingly.
Arthur Scargill (Abbreviated from the SLP paper, Socialist News)
Democracy is better
The Socialist Labour Party did not break with the Labour Party at the end of a struggle, still less at the end of a struggle that had rallied serious working class forces. It was created in response to a call by Arthur Scargill that was arbitrary and ill-timed. Its timing probably owed more to Scargill’s subjective impulse to get out of Blair’s Labour Party than to any reasoned policy or worked-out strategy.
The fight is still going on in the Labour Party, and in the unions, about the Labour Party. Arthur Scargill should have stayed in that fight until it was over. His account of himself, that he could not stay once Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution — public ownership as a goal of the Labour Party — was removed is, to speak plainly, bizarre.
Clause 4 was a symbol worth defending — and we defended it — but no one who knows Labour’s history can think the Labour government would now be other than it is, had Blair kept Clause 4 in the Party’s lumber room. Or that Clause 4, as such, affected the policy of any of the previous eight Labour governments.
Because it was not born out of a serious struggle, the SLP is a rag tag and bobtail affair. As well as serious people, it has attracted an impressive collection of oddballs. The SLP is a Tower of Babel.
What is of interest to non-SLPers is the issue raised in the statement of Arthur Scargill, excerpts of which are printed here.
Proclaiming that he wants to regroup the left, Scargill proposes to create in the SLP a “party” of a Stalinist type. That is not desirable, and it is probably not possible, except on a minuscule scale.
The SLP’s policy and constitution is, he says, fixed. There can be no organised attempt by SLP members to change this. It is immutable. They can take it or leave it.
Scargill makes much of his ‘experience’. His experience in the YCL, CP and Labour Party should have taught him that the only way to organise a healthy working class organisation is to do it democratically.
Who says, who can presume on the right to say, that party policy and party rules can’t be revised? The leadership? To make it stick, they have to try — rather feebly, it seems — to run an iron dictatorship.
Such a regime will stifle and destroy any potential the SLP might have. It will certainly stop the SLP playing the role of organiser of a regrouped Labour left.
The idea that discussion and ‘faction’ necessarily destroy effectiveness in the class struggle is a hoary bureaucratic myth of Stalinists and, in their sphere, Blairites.
Haven’t Scargill and his friends ever thought of the experience of Bolshevism in this regard? That party was so democratic that the ultra-left Bukharinites could in the middle of 1918, as civil war was breaking out, publish a daily factional paper. The Bolsheviks, Comrade Scargill, nonetheless managed to fight the class enemy.
If it is ever to prosper, the left must have done with one-faction — the “leadership” faction — organisations, and build instead consistently democratic structures. Arthur Scargill has nothing to offer here. But then what can one expect?
The SLP believes — or pretends to believe — in the old Communist Party of Great Britain dogma that there can be a peaceful socialist revolution in Britain.
It is a sad testimonial to the human capacity for confusion, to find the leader of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, which was defeated by state violence, much of it extra-legal violence, telling British workers now that they can hope to overthrow wage slavery and its bourgeois beneficiaries by exclusively legal and peaceful means!
Arthur Scargill, who had the courage to lead workers to take on the power of the bourgeois state, seemingly hasn’t the sense to learn the most obvious lesson from his own bitter experience.
But then why should anyone expect him to have learned the lesson of the experience of generations of Stalinist and kitsch-Trotskyist would-be socialist parties, namely that socialists must, if we are to succeed, organise ourselves democratically?
If Arthur Scargill can’t learn from the Bolsheviks, and their 1917 revolution, the need to smash the state, why should he be able to learn from them the closely linked lesson that democracy is irreplaceable, in our parties now and in the socialist society we fight for?
Jack Cleary
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How Che Guevara should not be commemorated - By Helen Rate
In October 1967 the Bolivian army captured and killed the Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Guevara was a central leader of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. They killed Guevara because they feared him. He tried to undo US capitalism’s domination of Latin America by starting a continent-wide guerrilla struggle in Bolivia. Guevara and his tiny rag-tag band of idealistic young men probably didn’t have a hope in hell of organising a continental revolution. To the US and Latin American ruling classes, however, he represented their worst nightmare. The bullets which tore the life out of the wounded Guevara, quietened that nightmare.
Thirty years on Guevara is once again in vogue. Young people can be seen slouching around Camden Town with Che’s image emblazoned on their khaki T-shirted chests. After his death the left, and people far from the left, transformed Guevara into an icon. He came to represent the eternal “youthful rebel” and even for some the twentieth century Communist Jesus Christ. Although it is easy to satirise the inspiration Guevara gave to youth of the Sixties — Wolfie Smith and his Tooting Popular Front is an endearing, if simplistic, depiction of “Guevarism” — Guevara did truly capture the aspirations and hopes of that generation. Socialists should take a serious look at his ideas. Unfortunately the left — Socialist Worker is the worst example — don’t seem to be up to the job.
In the 26 July issue of Socialist Worker Sam Inman concocts a shallow and opportunistic potted biography of the “great man” by stringing together a series of points, to produce an article, that misses the main points.
In 1954 Guevara — then a middle-class rebel without a cause — was in Guatemala during a CIA-organised coup which overthrew the reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz. The government had redistributed land and expropriated the holdings of the US-owned United Fruit company. According to Inman “the main lesson of the coup [for Guevara] was the failure of the Arbenz government to distribute arms to the people.”
Guevara did criticise Arbenz on this point, but it was a small point compared to the much bigger lesson Guevara learnt. This: if any Latin American government, hostile to American imperialist interests, wanted to stay in power, they would need to completely smash the old state machine and to replace it with a new centralised state apparatus; the state would then be able to mobilise a defence against imperialist powers and any internal friends of imperialism. This is what happened in the Cuban revolution.
Inman’s assessment of post-revolutionary Cuban society is woeful — she does not even say whether Socialist Worker is in favour of Cuban workers overthrowing Castro’s regime. Are they?
When Castro’s government — in which Guevara was in charge of economic planning — nationalised Cuba’s economy and expropriated US sugar plantations and processing plants, relations with the US became increasingly hostile. The Cubans then moved closer to the USSR. Inman says “Guevara began to see that unless the Cuban Revolution was internationalised it would be stifled by its growing dependence on the USSR.” However, Inman doesn’t draw out what Cuba’s “dependence”, what it’s “Sovietisation”, would mean and what Guevara really thought of it.
The Cuban’s model of political “democracy” became very Soviet: in other words there was no democracy. At best the government conducted consultation exercises where decisions were conveyer-belted from the top (a political elite) to the bottom (the masses).
By the mid-’60s the regime was a hardened Stalinist formation. Does the word “Stalinism” not form part of Inman’s lexicon?
There is no doubt Guevara believed in equality — he refused privileges for himself and objected to the privileges of the Soviet bureaucracy. He had some principles. However he never questioned the lack of political democracy in Cuba.
Inman’s silence on these “deficiencies” of the Cuban revolution and Guevara is astounding. Who is she frightened of offending?
Guevara wanted to spread the fight against the US. Inman’s comments on Che’s internationalism are that his general principle of internationalism is right (we would agree) but his “method” was wrong. But everything implied by Che’s use of the “method”, the guerrilla tactic was also wrong! The key weakness in Guevara’s politics was that he did not see the proletariat as the agent of revolutionary change. Inman does not make this explicit in her article. She only says that workers and socialists were “mistrusted” by Guevara.
A rounded assessment of Guevara’s ideas must include a discussion about the importance of working-class struggle in Latin America both during and after Che’s life — from the tin mines of Bolivia to the formation of the Brazilian Workers’ Party — and how workers’ organisation will be the key to change in Latin America. Guevara did not understand this and Inman does not, apparently, see the significance of these issues.
But socialists do need a realistic assessment of guerrilla warfare as a tactic, as a method. It might be an effective form of struggle in some parts of Latin America, whatever the political content of the fight. Against a military dictatorship there may be a need for military operations including clandestine, “terrorist” operations.
Though Guevara’s method may be right in certain circumstances, the arguments Guevara used to justify his method were certainly not compatible with working-class politics.
Inman’s pitching for the Camden Town Guevarists of ’97 ends with opportunistic glorification: “But if the US could murder Guevara, they could not kill the influence of revolutionary ideas.” Yes, but there are all sorts of “revolutionary ideas”. Marxists should want to know the class genealogy of “revolutionary ideas”. Mao Tse Tung (with whom incidentally Guevara had a certain affinity) was a revolutionary; do we therefore endorse this Stalinist totalitarian’s ideas?
The SWP are habitually vague on this point for their own catchpenny opportunistic reasons. In the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s they used the slogan, “one solution, revolution”. This helped them to appear to be the most fanatic ANC supporters whilst being formally opposed to the ANC and South African Communist Party’s concept of a two-stage revolution in South Africa.
Inman should have saved herself the trouble of bodging up this bit of opportunistic fluff and simply addressed her readers thus: “you’ve got the T-shirt and you think Che equals cool... why not join the Socialist Workers’ Party?”
The mood of the times in which Che lived was formed by the real possibility of fighting back against the ruling class and its system of exploitation. One sad fact about the resurrection of Che as a demi-god is that this mood does not exist today. In recent months the SWP has suggested that a mass, confident movement for change can be built quite quickly (building on the expectations British workers have in Blair for instance). Perhaps in the SWP’s falsely described political they don’t need to say what they really think about symbolic rebels such as Che Guevara...
For me the most moving illustration of what Che Guevara stood for came during his doomed Bolivian expedition. Inspired by Guevara’s daring and in disgust at government propaganda against him, Bolivian tin miners, trade unionists and students staged protests against the military dictatorship — the first since the military coup of 1964. In this way Guevara was a catalyst for change.
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Fight for free trade unions!
The Free Trade Unions Campaign [FTUC] was launched in Liverpool on 19 July. This was an event of immense importance for the future of the trade union movement in Britain.
For the first time, an open, democratic rank and file-based campaign has been set up to fight for the removal of the Tory anti-union legislation and the restoration of an unfettered legal right to strike, take solidarity action and picket effectively. In other words, it is rooted in the idea that now is the right time to begin the fight to restore free, effective trade unionism and to begin to re-assert the basic principles of working class solidarity.
The key idea here is this: the FTUC is to be a broad-based body rooted in the working class struggles that are taking place today.
Every serious trade union struggle in the period ahead will pose the issue of trade union rights.
The conference heard from representatives of all the key disputes taking place at the moment — Liverpool dockers, Hillingdon hospital, Critchley labels, Magnet kitchens, Project Aerospace, London post and British Airways. As well as delegations from these strikes, some 220 people attended from 30 organisations in all, including 16 different unions, 10 trades councils, some local branches of the Socialist Campaign Group Supporters’ Network, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, and a few Labour Party wards.
This was unashamedly a rank and file conference. It was not a ceremonial affair studded with labour movement big wigs talking loud but prepared to do little or nothing. It was a gathering of working class fighters with one clear and audacious aim: to build up a campaign that can free our unions.
Nobody at the conference was under the illusion that our task is going to be an easy one. There are many obstacles in our way: the born-again Thatcherites of the New Labour administration who preside over the Tory anti-union laws that have become the Labour government’s anti-union laws, and the official leaders of the unions like Morris and Edmonds who refuse to fight or even to plead for their abolition.
Recognising these obstacles, the conference adopted a strategy document that spells out a multi-pronged approach:
The anti-union laws are certain to become an explosive issue.
We have recently seen British Airways’ threat to sack cabin crew for striking, even after a legal postal ballot, expose the anti-union laws for the naked class legislation they are. It helped strengthen public support for the strikers and their union. It has increased support for the idea of a legally enshrined right to strike.
New battles are coming on the rail, in the tube and in the post office. Management may try to resort to the anti-union laws in order to block effective action. The issue of the laws will be posed sharply. Blair will back his big business friends, like train operator Richard Branson, using the laws against the rail union, RMT.
The Free Trade Unions Campaign is a campaign that fits in with the necessary logic of the class struggle. It is not a question of a “bright idea” or a leftist fad or fetish. It is a question of the basic need of the working class for effective action in its own self-defence.
It is for that reason that we can hope to increase the campaign’s support rapidly in the coming months.
We will adopt the old watchword “If the leaders won’t lead, then the rank and file must”. We will fight to win the major unions to action over the anti-union laws, and over particular, limited questions like the right to recognition and the right to strike. At the same time, we are organising independently of the national union leaderships.
There is no reason why we should not hope to win the affiliation of several of the major national trade unions to the campaign. As the campaign develops, it will mesh in more and more with the issue of working class representation, which lies at the heart of the conflicts between the unions and New Labour’s “modernisers”.
Immediately, the FTUC is focussing on:
The FTUC’s first national steering committee will be held on Saturday 18 October.
The FTUC will provide a rational framework for tying together the activities of the left across the labour movement.
For that reason, supporters of Workers’ Liberty will be pressing all other organisations on the left to get properly involved in this initiative. The common basis for collaboration is a commitment to free our class from the shackles of the anti-union laws. Surely all serious socialists and trade union activists can agree to common work towards that goal?
The Liverpool conference passed the following motion, which was moved in the name of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty:
“A vigorous, unapologetic campaign for free trade unions can hope in a relatively short time by way of agitation, education and organisation on this question to rouse and rally large sections of the labour movement around the demand for British trade unions as free as unions are in France or Germany.
“Every serious industrial dispute in the coming period will pose this question sharply. Therefore the first conference for free trade unions calls on the left to unite and build a broad, united, democratically run campaign for Free Trade Unions.”
Speaking at the conference:
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