After 141 years has the Trades Union become as institutionalised as the capitalist system we argue to change?
The 141st annual Trades Union Congress opens in Liverpool in mid-September. One hundred and forty-one years should focus the mind as to whether we as an organised working class have really made progress? One hundred and forty-one years is tenacious and dogged, proves staying power but what is the direction and purpose? After 141 years are we as institutionalised as the capitalist system we argue to change?
The preliminary agenda for Congress is riven with contradiction. European Union directives undermine and destroy our ability to organise and create the country we want. But instead of moving to destroy the cancer the call is for more intervention and a more “social” interpretation by the EU. This misses the whole point as to why the EU was established and why its roots spring from the fascism of the 1920s/30s politic of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mosley and others. The European Union has nothing to do with social care or social democratic paternalism – it’s just about naked ruthless exploitation by Capital rampant across all national and tradition boundaries of the European continent (and beyond).
There are important signs of an emerging clarity. Clarity for industry comes from Community (ex-Iron, Steel Trades Confederation) over saving the steel industry, and from the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union for defending manufacturing industry. It comes from the mining unions for the preservation of coal, the energy industries and the future of Britain as an industrial nation. And from the rail unions fighting to save our rail network.
It is no coincidence that the first treaty, the founding act, the first directive of the EU was over the so-called rationalisation of Europe’s coal and steel industries. Coal and steel were to be centred on the Ruhr and Germany’s industrial heartland. The centralisation saw the sweeping away of all other competitors – and it was at the core of Thatcher’s war on the steel and mining communities in the 1980s and early 1990s. Her war had little to do with her ego and class hatred or Arthur Scargill and the heroism of the National Union of Mineworkers, and a lot to do with the subservience of British capital to the EU project of supposed capitalist regeneration and integration.
The EU and the real rise of fascism
The first treaty of Rome mirrored the German Thyssen – Krupps Steel and Coal Trusts in the 1920s and 30s, which achieved monopoly in Germany, then Europe and then tried to conquer the world. These were the people who bankrolled the Nazis and led the drive to war. Those who promote the pious motions concerning the British National Party, racism and fascism, should reflect on where the real drive to emasculate the working class has been coming from during the last 30 years. The drive from parliamentarian parties and politicians has seen the undermining of industry, of community, of the trade unions, of the institutions that constitute Britain. All this has been for the purpose of greater penetration and unity with the European Union, a greater huddling of the failed and bankrupt. This is the real rise of fascism in Britain and such silence from the TUC over this is ominous.
Ominous too is the silence over the looming general election and the desperation to have set in place access to further British and EU funds for so-called modernisation schemes for the unions. Modernisation to recruit migrant workers, to protect vulnerable workers, to enshrine do-gooding jobs for the boys and girls before the Tories get into power and wreck the economy – though if you work in manufacturing, finance, construction, fishing, textiles, engineering, shipbuilding, coal, energy you may already think the economy has been wrecked. Perhaps being 141 years young and having sat through Tory administrations during most of that time has conditioned our thinking to always have cap ready in hand for the return of our natural overlords? That probably explains why Labour in power, old or new, always apes the Tories.
Membership
Trade union membership continues to decline, union density slips further away. The strategy of trade union mergers has ground to a halt as the supposed solution. Big has not meant better or more beautiful but has just led to ever more publicly-aired examples of ego, sectarianism, squabbling over the assets, posturing and childishness – usually from grown men and politically correct quotas of women, black, disabled.
Every major trade union is courting the United States SEIU public sector union and its wondrous recruiting techniques. Techniques that have probably terminally split the already weak and infiltrated US trade union movement – be it from the FBI, CIA or Mafia.
Now everyone is falling over themselves to discover factors that are particular to the USA over recognition, contracts of employment and US labour law, none of which have any relevance or application to Britain. But they are a good diversion and the trips to the States will be oversubscribed. The SEIU have discovered that people join the union if you ask them to join – rocket science!
Decline in trade union membership is linked to the unions’ inability to reach out to the minds of workers in this period of fragmentation, disunity, industrial collapse and the associated sense of powerlessness and irrelevance. All are spawned from the EU and wilfully welcomed by governments in the UK for the last 30 years. Workers are not blind to the corrosiveness within their unions, the lack of purpose, coupled with a corruption of mind – from NEC member to MP – and very few days work done in between time. In many workers’ minds there is a view that our unions are not doing what they should, but that the task of cleaning out the stables seems too immense.
Unison, which was Britain’s largest union, slipping to second place, looks likely to regain its crown from Unite, which has seen dramatic and deadly job losses in its industrial and finance sectors throughout the year. Unite’s honour was redeemed by the oil refinery workers such as at Lindsay who have heroically fought for the right to work. Unison takes its “million voices for change” campaign to the TUC. Cynics might wonder why a union that claims over 1.3 million members cant sign up its own million voices, let alone from the wider population? Posturing, positioning or posing – it is the TUC and playing to Congress is the order of the day.
Romantic calls
Likewise the Prison Officers Association (POA) returns to its theme of scrapping Britain’s draconian anti-union laws as it is almost impossible to have a legal ballot or strike in Britain. The POA romantically calls for national street parties blossoming into a series of general strikes.
Sadly they will be crushed in the rush from an army of trade union lawyers who will leap forth with tales of injunctions and incarceration of general secretaries. A wry smile might flicker to think of capitalism’s jailers and wardens detaining their own national executive – it just proves there are only two classes in Britain!
The Musicians Union decries abuse of performing artists’ creations on BNP websites and the use of music as a form of torture. Equity leads the fight for burlesque dancers’ rights not to be enshrined as sex encounter or sex establishment workers. The Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists continues its battle for “working feet” and would have bonfires made from high heels.
Everyone of note will be queuing up to speak at the solidarity rum evening with Cuba and Venezuela comrades, all very proper. Perhaps the Cuban comrades should tell their British comrades that a bigger help, rather than everyone swanning off to Havana for May Day and other junkets, would be to do what they have done in Cuba, here and soon?
Take responsibility
Couldn’t we indeed follow the Cuban lead: rejuvenate the nation? Rebuild our industries? Recreate sovereignty and independence? Re-establish the NHS as a national treasure? Obliterate illiteracy and innumeracy? Destroy the drug culture? Resolve the housing nightmare? Reduce unemployment by ensuring useful work for all? By creating jobs attack the root of crime and reduce the highest prison population in Europe? Join the Communist Party?
The list is endless. It starts by taking responsibility for a revolution that is not really about drinking rum and basking in sunny weather, though Liverpool in September may leave a lot to be desired.