The class struggle in Britain

For 5 months electricians have been demonstrating and picketing in order to build resistance to the new Building Engineering Services National Agreement (BESNA) conditions, involving a deskilling and reduction of pay by 35%. Yet in spite of their effort the sparks are more and more frustrated that the struggle isn’t developing, knowing that the present level of action is no-where near enough to defend their current pay and conditions.

After the trade union marches and strikes against the Coalition’s pension cuts the unions went straight back into the serious business of working with government officials in order to implement the latest austerity measures. So individually, behind the scenes, relying on their usual tactics of division and secret talks, the unions are again working with the government against the interests of the working class.

Unions predict that maybe two or three million workers will be on strike on 30 November, from education, health, local government, the civil service, and more. The main issue of the strike – the future of public sector pensions – is a very real one because we are all being asked to work longer and pay more for less to retire on.

leaflet pdf file

There is no doubting the level of the attack on electricians’ jobs, pay and conditions involved in ending the Joint Industry Board agreement, which will lead to cuts of up to 35% and many jobs reclassified as semi-skilled or unskilled. Go to any of their weekly protests outside various construction sites, or read their discussion forums, and you’ll hear just how disastrous it would be for workers already doing long hours of overtime in order to be able to afford house, car and necessities.

Despite the government claiming that it had made major concessions on pensions, aimed at averting the ‘irresponsible’ public sector strike on 30 November, the day of action will go ahead and around three million workers from education, the health service, local government and elsewhere will be on strike that day.

Resistance against the present social order is spreading, from the huge social revolts in Tunisia and Egypt to the movement of the ‘indignant’ in Spain, to the general strikes and street assemblies in Greece, the demonstrations around housing and poverty in Israel, and the ‘Occupy’ movements across the USA, now echoed on a smaller scale in the UK. Awareness that this is a global movement is becoming sharper and more widespread.

The world economic crisis has hit the construction industry very hard. The Office of National Statistics Bulletin for the 2^nd quarter 2011 says that the total volume of new orders for building contracts is at their lowest level since 1980. Faced with this slow-down, one of the major UK Construction companies, Balfour Beatty Engineering, issued 90 day notices of termination to some 890 employees on the 14^th September. 7 other major electrical contractors also announced their intention to withdraw from the national industry agreement, proposing to split electricians from one grade – where they’re paid £16.25 per hour – into 3 grades ranging from £10.50 to £14 per hour. For those downgraded to £10.50 this will amount to a 35% pay cut. There was an immediate reaction from the workforce, with co-ordinated unofficial action taking place at several major construction sites across the UK.

The operation that Ed Miliband had to tackle a deviated septum in his nose has not altered the nasal quality of his speech. The content of his speeches has not changed much either since he was elected Labour leader last year. Then we said (WR 338) that his lack of political baggage allowed him to “be all things to all people, and gives him a great deal of room for manoeuvre if the political and economic situation gets more difficult.”

The trade unions and the Left are preparing to make the 30 November strike over pensions something big. TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said that it would be “the biggest trade union mobilisation for a generation” as more than a dozen major unions prepared to ballot their members. Workers are angry and the unions are doing something. The trouble is the effect of the unions’ actions is to divide workers and undermine their attempts to fight.

In preparation for the recent public sector strikes three ‘Generalise the strike assemblies’were held in London. They weren’t the only assemblies held throughout the UK at the time; similar events were held in Birmingham, Leeds, Norwich, Bristol and Sheffield. The ICC were only able to attend the second two in London. And what interesting experiences they were.

In a few days at the end of June a range of High Street names showed what effect the continuing crisis is having. Thorntons is closing 120 and maybe up to 180 shops. Carpetright is closing 94 stores. Jane Norman is shutting 33 shops. TJHughes is looking at going into administration. Habitat is going into administration and closing most of its shops. Clinton Cards is to be restructured. Lloyds TSB is cutting another 15,000 jobs, making more than 40,000 since 2009. Inflation is running at 4.5% (5.2% on the higher RPI measure), there’s a public sector pay freeze, the state pension age is rising. Council workers in Southampton, Shropshire and Neath Port Talbot have faced the ‘choice’ of pay cuts or job losses.

Whichever way you look at 26 March, it was dominated by the unions and their supporters, in the banners, in the speeches, in the way that so much anger and frustration was transformed into a passive stroll. The SWP think it's possible to “Kick out Cameron’s crumbling coalition” (14/5/11) but 30 June is still dominated by unions and, as things stand, based on the proposals of Left and unions, will have no more effect that 26 March.

Why are nearly a million workers – from education, the civil service, local councils – preparing to go on strike on June 30th? They are more and more fed up with the never-ending attacks on their living standards being organised by the government, whether in the form of cuts in healthcare, rising tuition fees, growing unemployment, wage freezes or – a major issue in the June 30 strike – an assault on pensions, so that teachers for example will pay more towards their pension, retire later, and get a smaller pension at the end of it.

In WR 341 we described the wave of struggles popularly known as ‘The Great Labour Unrest’ that hit Britain and Ireland 100 years ago. We showed that these struggles – which at their high points reached near-insurrectionary levels – were in fact a spectacular expression of the mass strike analysed so clearly by Rosa Luxemburg, and formed an integral part of an international wave of class struggle that culminated in the 1917 Russian revolution. In this article we look at the impact of the mass strikes on the British and Irish working class, and the attempts of militant workers and revolutionaries to draw the lessons of these historic struggles.

100 years ago this August the British ruling class was forced to dispatch troops and warships to Liverpool to crush a near-insurrectionary general strike. The Lord Mayor of the city warned the government that “a revolution was in progress.” These extraordinary events were one of the high points of a whole series of struggles in Britain and Ireland before the First World War popularly known as ‘the Great Labour Unrest’.

In November and December 2010 protests against aspects of cuts in education showed that the imposition of austerity measures is meeting resistance in Britain. What we are publishing here are extracts from a longer internal report for the rest of the ICC, adapted for our public press. It is a contribution to the wide-ranging discussion that recent events have provoked. We intend to publish a separate text on the ICC's intervention in the movement in the near future.

As any reader of the Daily Mail will know there was “at least one” member of the ICC in at least one meeting of the Education Activist Network in London. But contrary to hysterical media articles, the present student movement against cuts and increased fees is not the creation of either the ICC or the EAN. Nor even of the EAN’s rival National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. On the contrary, among the most positive signs of militancy has been the ability of the movement to escape the control of the NUS or any other organisation set up in advance to drive in a particular direction

A whole series of demonstrations up and down the country, strikes by university, Further Education, sixth form and secondary school students, occupations in a long list of universities, numerous meetings to discuss the way forward... the student and pupil revolt against the rise in tuition fees and the abolition of EMA payments is still on the march. Students and those supporting them have come to the demonstrations in high spirits, making their own banners and their own slogans, some of them joining protests for the first time, many of them finding new ways of organising the protests.

On 20 November we took part in the Edinburgh Class Struggle Day School. The initiative for this meeting came from the Edinburgh University Anarchist Society.

The leaflet below was given out at the large meeting held at King's College on Monday 15th November, under the auspices of the left wing of the unions (Education Activists Network). We would welcome comments, criticisms, and above all, offers to distribute it or improve and update it in this period leading up to next week's Day of Action. A comrade from the ICC's section in Toulouse, which has been very active in the movement for struggle committees and assemblies,  was able to speak at the meeting; and despite a frontal attack on the French union strategies, was widely applauded. We will try to piece together more elements about this meeting.

On the 17th August the Unite union representing airport workers reached an agreement with the British airport operator, BAA, for a measly 2% increase on basic pay and allowances with the added guaranteed lump sum of £500. Let’s be clear what this manoeuvre means: the same union, UNITE, which ‘represents’ both airport workers and cabin crew staff who have been engaged in a year long running dispute have delivered … for the bosses of BAA and British Airways.

The last of the series of five-day strikes by BA cabin crew came to an end on 9^th June. There are reports of further ballots and strikes through the summer. BA workers are not alone. In February Lufthansa pilots went on strike and in early June Air India workers staged a wildcat strike.

Injunctions have been used to prevent or delay strike action by BA cabin crew - twice, and against rail signal workers in April, making use of strict criteria for balloting union members and informing them and the employers about the result.

In the lead-up to the General Election all serious factions of the bourgeoisie have openly put forward the need to introduce the most savage cuts, most of them aimed at the public sector.

Following the suspension of strike action by the Communication Workers Union, many will cry ‘sell-out' and ‘betrayal' by the union bureaucrats. This article argues that both the methods it used while the struggle was on, and the decision to call a halt to the action, were examples of the union doing its job: sabotaging the class struggle from the inside.