In Britain, the trade union Movement has long struggled against a malaise that can only be described as a ‘collaborationist tendency’. This tendency is most obvious in the Movement’s failure to deal with Britain’s oppressive anti-trade union laws.
Despite the sharpening economic and political crisis within our society, collusion has now reached a point where the Trades Union Congress and many union leaderships, not seen as fighting heart and soul for workers’ rights, are increasingly considered irrelevant by the British people.
The oppressive nature of Britain’s anti-union laws depends on this collusion. Therefore, any serious discussion about challenging the legislation must also examine forms of serious resistance to it.
An analysis that places itself within the boundaries of these laws and does not consider a strategy for confronting them is futile.
Let’s start by looking at our own past. Contrast the British trade union Movement’s reactions today with the way organised workers confronted anti-union laws and anti-union employers in the 1970s and 80s.
Study the great campaign against the Tories’ Industrial Relations Act in 1971; the miners’ strike of 1972, followed by the dockers’ strike, the imprisonment and then the triumphant release, through workers’ direct action, of the Pentonville Five, and the building workers’ strike of the same period. In 1974 came another miners’ strike – which led to the defeat of a Tory Government.
The determination of workers that created conditions for opposing the 1971 Industrial Relations Act fuelled, in turn, the outburst of subsequent action. And, since we’re discussing the law, remember that in the summer of 1972, it was mass unofficial action which forced the State to free the Pentonville Five.
The miners’ strike earlier that year had been a turning point, sparking support from thousands of other workers. This terrified not only the Tory Government of the day but scared the living daylights out of right-wing leaders within the Labour Party, the TUC and a number of trade unions.
In 1972, just as today, leading figures in our Movement were warning: ‘Don’t break the law!’. It’s an old theme, used many times against workers in the past such as in the 1921 miners’ strike, the General Strike of 1926 and other major disputes.
I certainly heard that warning in the miners’ strike of 1972, when I was deeply involved in mass picketing, especially at Birmingham’s Saltley Gates, a historic battle which proved what workers’ solidarity could do.
It is often forgotten (perhaps no longer widely known) that national leaders of major trade unions, including the engineers’ AUEW and the transport workers’ TGWU, refused to sanction their members’ taking secondary action in support of the NUM at Saltley.
However, AUEW and TGWU members in the West Midlands – having listened to the miners’ plea for solidarity - did with the backing of regional leaderships take action. So did workers in other unions, and by supporting the NUM at Saltley achieved a victory that rocked the entire British Establishment.
Two years later, the 1974 miners’ strike led to the downfall of Edward Heath’s Tory Government, a victory for working people that should have seen Britain’s Labour Movement focussing firmly on Socialist aims.
That didn’t happen. Instead we had the Social Contract, in which a Labour Government held down workers’ wages, with five years of unprincipled compromise by the TUC and union leaderships paving the way for the Tories’ return in 1979.
This betrayal didn’t come out of the blue. Even amidst the industrial victories of the early 70s there had been a shadow of things to come. In the aftermath of the historic building workers’ strike of 1972, our Movement had failed to prevent the jailing of the Shrewsbury Three on trumped-up charges of ‘conspiracy’.
Then, during the years of the Labour Government, the Grunwick workers, battling for basic rights and recognition in 1977/78, were also abandoned by their own union and by the TUC.
Shrewsbury and Grunwick taught many of us (and should have taught us all) two lessons. First, through their courage and class commitment, the workers in both struggles provided an example that inspires us still. Second, their fate offered clear evidence that workers in struggle can only be protected by a trade union fightback.
By abandoning the Shrewsbury Three and the Grunwick workers, elements within the British trade union movement were, alongside their collusion over the Social Contract, laying further track for Margaret Thatcher’s advance.
The struggles of the 70s alarmed the Tories to such an extent that well before they won the 1979 General Election they had planned a programme of draconian anti-union laws – specifically aimed at preventing another Saltley or any similar action taking place on a national scale.
Yet even after the Tories returned to power in 1979, events continued to prove that oppressive legislation – backed by the courts - isn’t enough on its own to keep workers down. Oppression depends to a very great extent on submission.
As anti-union legislation became more oppressive through the 80s and into the 90s, the TUC and trade union leaders increasingly refrained from giving, or refused to give, effective assistance to workers in struggle. Instead of spear-heading resistance to these vicious laws, the TUC argued that the only course of action was to wait and work for the election of a Labour Government which, it claimed, would repeal the legislation.
Of course, New Labour did nothing of the sort – and since 1997 the trade union Movement has continued to submit to even further legal measures brought in by the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown axis. Over the past decade, the TUC not only opposed calls from the NUM and Bakers’ Union to defy anti-union laws, but has actually advised unions on compliance.
Nevertheless, fairly recent history reveals that for trade unionists there is an alternative to this collusion.
FIGHTING BACK
In 1981, the NUM’s (then) Right-wing national leadership was forced to support unofficial strike action against pit closures – without a ballot – because our ferocious coalfield campaigning was too strong to resist. Faced with wildfire strike action, the Thatcher Government – taken unawares – had to make what the press labelled a ‘U-turn’ and, for the time being, stop its pit closure programme.
The key industrial disputes over the years since occurred because trade unionists were prepared to fight for basic rights against employers who had the full backing of the State and the courts. Had these disputes, in turn, had full and effective backing from the TUC and the trade union Movement, Britain today would be a better place in which to live.
Among these struggles, all of which are important, were the miners’ strike of 1984/85 and the two epic battles for trade union rights and recognition by Britain’s printworkers: in 1983 at Warrington against would-be newspaper magnate Eddie Shah, and, from January, 1986, the year-long fight against Rupert Murdoch at Wapping.
In the historic miners’ strike of 1984/85, one of the greatest clashes ever seen between workers and the State occurred at British Steel’s coke plant at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, in the Summer of 1984.
The police (together with members of the armed forces in police uniform) used paramilitary tactics; armed with shields, batons, dogs and horses, they fought to prevent a repetition of Saltley in 1972. Some 10,000 pickets faced 8,200 paramilitary-style police under orders that Orgreave should be open to produce and transport coke, no matter what the cost.
Yet in spite of this organised State force, the miners’ pickets, supported by trades councils and rank-and-file members of other unions, forced Orgreave’s management to suspend operations on 18 June, 1984 – just as they had done in Birmingham on 6 February, 1972, prior to finally closing Saltley four days later, on 10 February.
However (unlike the Tories), the Labour and trade union Movement including sadly elements within the NUM Area leaderships had not taken to heart the true lessons of Saltley.
Although Orgreave was closed by pickets on 18 June, those pickets were called off by NUM Area leaders the following day, thus allowing British Steel to recommence operations.
That this could happen was due to the NUM’s federal structure – ours was not and is not one Union but a federation of autonomous organisations - which helps to explain other events during that strike.
Afterwards, critics within and outside the Labour Movement argued that the battle of Orgreave highlighted the ‘failure’ of mass picketing. They were completely wrong.
What occurred at Orgreave was a failure to mass picket – calling people off after an initial breakthrough, instead of intensifying pressure until the plant’s operations were brought to a conclusive halt.
Responsibility for this also rests with leaderships in the wider trade union Movement which held back their own members from coming to the assistance of the miners as workers in Birmingham had done in February, 1972.
Lack of support from others can lead to a paralysing fear of isolation in the hearts of those in struggle, and can have profound consequences for any dispute.
