Marketisation is destroying education in our colleges, universities, prisons and the adult education sector. UCU is at a crossroads – how do we get the type of union we need to push back the Tories and the employers in the struggle against marketisation? How can we build and strengthen our union for the fight over pay, pensions and for a progressive post-16 education system?
In the late summer and early autumn, both Further and Higher Education members will ballot over pay. And the USS dispute may restart in earnest if the Joint Expert Panel (JEP) finds the projections of the deficit credible.
Our union has been transformed by strikes. Over 20,000 new members have joined. Branches have grown – in some cases by 50% or more.
All those who care about the future of UCU need to unite and emphasise our needs – for a democratic, fighting union that stands up for its members.
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This conference, called by many groups uniting together, is an opportunity for UCU members from across the UK to meet and debate the big questions facing us. Please join us.
Registration from 10.30. Conference starts at 11.00.
USS * Precarious workers * Resisting Redundancies * Democracy in the union * Reclaim the curriculum * Immigration / EU nationals * The money’s there, we want our share – radical accounting * How to Organise Strikes * We Are the University *
Since the announcement of the result of the European referendum, the political establishment have been in profound crisis. Many political commentators draw parallels with the mid-19th century conflict over the Corn Laws to underline the scale and depth of the divisions within the establishment. The Corn Laws crisis was the last time the Tory party was on the brink of tearing itself apart as a result of divisions and conflict about how to maintain the rule of the wealthy.
The Tory Party is riven with splits, plots and preparations for a coup against May. We have a Prime minister that only survives by bribing the ultra-reactionary DUP to give her their votes.
The media are completely obsessed with the machinations taking place around the Brexit negotiations. They would have us believe that what takes place in these negotiations is key in determining our living standards. The truth of course is, in or out of Europe, it is our ability to organise and resist that will determine if our living standards rise or fall, as it is for our fellow workers across Europe.
However, this has not been understood by many leaders of the Trade Union movement. Their pessimistic outlook about the ability of workers to halt the government and employer’s austerity driven policies has led them to a different conclusion. They believe that jobs and living standards will only be protected if the referendum result changes andthereforethat a second referendum should be called to alter the outcome.
UCU consultation on a second referendum.
The General Secretary has decided to call a consultation of UCU membership (Yep another survey!) to seek our views about whether there should be a second referendum on the final Brexit deal.
This was not submitted to this year’s Congress as a motion. In fact, there were no motions on this subject. The last time it was debated at Congress the previous year, it was heavily defeated. This manoeuvre stands as one more example of the disregarding of the sovereign policy making body of the Union, replaced instead by the GS using her own report to the NEC, on which she has a majority, as the mechanism for making national union policy.
At the NEC the GS argued that no longer can UCU afford to be silent on this issue. Apparently, her inbox is full of members wishing UCU would take a position of support for a second referendum.Even if truewhy now, rather than at Congress, has the GS decided to go to the membership on this question?
For the record it was UCU Left supporters who at the time of the referendum argued that it should be debated and for UCU to take a position. It was the GS who argued that it would be divisive, and as with the Scottish referendum on independence, UCU should not take a position.
No doubt part of what motivates the GS and her allies to launch this campaign is the belief that new members, outraged by her handling of the USS dispute then the anti-democratic way she attempted to block the resignation and censure motions at Congress, will now be won round in support of the GS and her IBL allies.
Yes, let’s have a debate on this issue but let’s us not pretend this has anything to do with political principles.
This new found democratic zeal from the GS and her supporters is transparent. It has nothing to do with democracy but all to do with political opportunism and an industrial pessimism.
Why we must oppose a second referendum
As trade unionists we fight to protect our democratic rights. If motions are passed at congress or votes cast in a ballot for action, we would rightly be outraged if this was ignored with further votes being called until the membership voted the ‘correct’ way.
Calls for a second referendum will alsounderstandably be seen by many working people in this way – a Metropolitan elite ignoring the democratic will of working people. This would be a gift to the far right in Britain.
Those who voted to leave Europe did so to register a protest against austerity – a world where a minority have become fabulously wealthy and live a life of luxury at the expense of the vast majority. Some of these also blamed immigrants for their immiseration.
If the trade union leaders attempt to orchestrate a campaign within the trade union movement to get behind a second referendum it will leave organised labour, the most progressive part of the working class, divided. This will make it much more difficult for trade unionists to defeat the far right and prevent it becoming the voice of the dispossessed and marginalised.
There are already signs that anti-Brexit mobilisations are becoming the focus at the expense of ant-austerity/anti-racist ones. The recent NHS demonstration was significantly smaller than the anti-Brexit march a few weeks ago.
There is a second reason why there is a campaign for a second referendum. Again, it has little to do with principles but more to do with undermining Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.
Many who attended the pro remain march the other week did so because they believe that this is the best way to defend migrants and ordinary peoples’ living standards.
But if we look at who led and organised the tens-of-thousands strong protest it is clear what forces are behind it and their agenda. Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell, Vince Cable, Chukka Umuna and a vast array of other Blairite MPs who can’t get over Corbyn’s success.
In other words, warmongers, racists, anti-immigrant xenophobes who are utterly contemptuous of the working class and who are hell-bent of getting rid of Corbyn.
There is an alternative to the narrow debate about staying or leaving the EU
A small minority of people took a position in the European Referendum that opposed both the little Englander Brexit position of Farage, Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Gove et al and the Remain Coalition of Blairites, Lib Dems, David Cameron and more or less the whole of the Confederation of British Industry.
This minority included the likes of the SWP and the Communist Party of Britain (who thoroughly opportunistically supported the GS’s proposal at the NEC). This minority holds the view that the interests of the working class in Britain, as part of an international working class, is not served best by either being a part of Europe or restricting our borders to migrants.
We point to the fact that the conditions of the working class in Britain have deteriorated because of pro-European British employers driving down wages and axing our jobs. Migrant workers have not and will not get a better deal by being a part of the European Union (EU). We only have to look at the way that the EU has dealt with the biggest migration of people since the Second World War to see the cruelty and xenophobia of the EU which has led to thousands dying in the Mediterranean.
The need for a Social Europe with internationalism at is heart is something we can win.
This position has a long and honourable tradition within the Labour and Trade Union movement. One that has been supported by people like Tony Benn, and Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in the past.
If Jeremy and John had not been pressured to change their position on the European Union then this argument would have got a wide hearing amongst working people during the referendum campaign.
Pie in the sky? Well Jeremy Corbyn did win the leadership of the Labour Party and John McDonnell is the Shadow Chancellor…
Unite to tackle the roots of racism
At this critical time, when the political establishment is so divided and with a battle to defend pay and conditions and the rise of a far-right, UCU should be launching a campaign that unites the union rather than one which divides us.
Taking on the roots of racism and xenophobia means fighting poverty, unemployment, the housing crisis and low wages. It is inspiring to see alongside our GS almost all trade union leaders have signed a statement calling on members to unite against the far right. But we need campaigns and strikes to deal with the material causes that give rise to the far right. If the TU movement puts its weight behind a second referendum it will give succour to the fascists in our communities and do nothing to defeat the employers whose policies of austerity have torn our communities apart.
Those within the trade union movement who are calling for a second referendum are playing with fire. Let’s make sure that they don’t make a difficult situation a lot more dangerous for all workers – VOTE NO to a second referendum.
150 delegates representing 54 colleges and universities attended the London Region hosted UCU Transformed activist day school. It was an inspiring day. Delegates discussed and debated how to continue the process of turning UCU into a democratic fighting union, building on the 14 days of strike action in defence of the USS pension scheme.
Workshops ranged from social media, democratising the union and casualisation to equality and building solidarity. They were brim-full with interesting, imaginative and practical ideas about how to take the struggle forward.
In two open sessions delegates broke into their sectors. In the sector sessions delegates discussed how to maintain the campaign in defence of post 16 education. In the HE session it was clear that the fight to defend the USS pension scheme is far from over with new campaigns which need to be developed. Delegates in both spoke about the need to open up new struggles over pay and casualisation.
In FE there are already 21 colleges that have balloted for industrial action over pay and conditions. There are also a further 150 claims that have been submitted in 100 institutions. There is a real potential for second wave of industrial action in the colleges.
The day-school heard from, and about, a number of universities and colleges such as Liverpool University, Southbank university, Lewisham and Southwark College and Bradford College and Hull College that are facing mass redundancy battles and made a clear call for whole movement to build solidarity with these campaigns.
Democratising the union and building struggle
Amongst many delegates there was a profound anger and resentment about the way that the USS dispute was ended and sold short. This anger was directed at the leadership and especially the role played by the General Secretary. Delegates called for a more open and transparent union.
Of course, passing motions to ensure that UCU’s rules allow members more control over disputes and that make the leadership more accountable are important. Late motions on pay and USS are being proposed for Congress and Sector conferences to build on the newly activated and invigorated membership of our union. But, ultimately, how much control the members have over disputes depends on the level of struggle.
One of the most exciting developments of the USS dispute was the flowering of rank and file democracy; the mass meetings on picket lines, the strike committees that took control of the dispute at university level and the teach outs. These new and inclusive forms of democracy allowed members to have a real say in the direction of the dispute and were instrumental in stopping the first attempt by the leadership to put an end to it.
Unfortunately, the second attempt vigorously championed by the General secretary succeeded in winning the majority of members in an e-consultation to accept the deal. These new structures did not run deep enough throughout the union to convince the majority that we can and must continue the strikes if we are to secure our victory.
It was struggle they gave birth to these new democratic structures and it will be struggle that will maintain and deepen them. It is interesting to think about what might have been if we had entered the USS dispute with the level of organisation that we have now.
Next steps
20,000 new members have joined UCU since the strikes in FE and HE started. The activists’ school was an important step in making sure that these new members don’t simply disappear and become inactive. The key to ensuring that the new structures and networks don’t wither and die is working out ways that we initiate new campaigns in defence of pay, pensions and casualisation. Delegates at the activists’ school made clear that these campaigns must be situated in the wider struggle against marketisation of the post 16 education sector with equality being central to all or demands.
The employers in both sectors are not in a good shape. They are isolated and despised by staff and students alike. In HE we have not been defeated. It is the employers who are licking their wounds. We are angered by the fact that the leadership let the employers off the hook and allowed them to regroup. In FE the employers increasingly look out of touch and out of ideas about how to take the sector forward.
It is not only the employers that find themselves in this position. The Tory government that are behind the market driven education polices are also despised by millions and riven with splits and acrimony. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party is positioned to assume office with a radical educational agenda.
This is why it was important that yesterday’s activist gathering started to put forward ideas on how we can continue the defence of the sectors. The setting up of a UK wide solidarity network to ensure that we are sharing our ideas and experiences as they happen and the call for a recall conference in October can help this process to develop.
Let’s see if between now and then we can build upon our successes and extend our networks to more colleges and universities. We are presented with real opportunities that have not existed for a very long time to succeed in building a real democratic fighting union.
The Key outcomes of the activist school were:
Launch of a national solidarity network to give impetus to national campaigns and solidarity to universities and colleges in struggle.
End the democratic deficit. For a democratically controlled and openly accountable JEP. For national strike committees to control national disputes.
For a campaign to force individual employers to commit to ‘no detriment’ to staff in any changes to the USS scheme on the Oxford model.
For the launch of a national pay campaign in both sectors that wins ‘catch up’ covers the threat of increased USS contributions (HE) and tackles casualisation and the gender pay gap at a national level.
The recent killings of young people on the streets of London is heart wrenching for the families and communities affected. It was two years ago that from my ninth-floor flat window in East London I watched a 17-year-old boy die from multiple knife wounds as paramedics tried, for half hour, to keep him alive. The sadness and pain felt amongst the whole of the community that followed this boy’s death ran deep and soon turned into anger and despair.
Press coverage has not shed much light as to why this recent spate of killings have taken place. It was the New Labour government under Blair that introduced the soundbite ‘Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’. In reality it was only the first part of this soundbite that was ever implemented.
A climate of fear was created leading to more young people imprisoned and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) were the means by which a generation of young people were criminalised. The New Labour government introduced over 700 new offences aimed at curbing young people’s behaviour. Stop and search increased targeting young people from BME backgrounds which meant that you were seven times more likely to be stopped and searched if you were black than if you were white.
Today, once again, we are offered up the same platitudes and fear-mongering as in the past -feral youth stalking our cities, police losing control of our streets and calls for a return to an increase in stop and search. If we are to deal with the issues of gang related crime we must deal with the source of the problem by being ‘tough on the causes of crime’.
Gang crime made in Britain
The new GCSE English language syllabus includes answering questions on 19th century non-fiction texts. To help students prepare for this question I decided to offer my students a choice of four titles of discursive essays looking at 19th century life which helped to contextualise this period of history. Two young people at my college in North London have lost their lives over the last two years to gang related violence so it was not a surprise that many of them chose the essay title, ‘Gangs why they have always existed’. The task of the essay was to research gangs of the 19th century and look at the comparisons with today.
They researched articles from newspapers from the 19th century about gang related crimes. They were all taken back about how similar not only the crimes were but also the way the press reported them. The same press hysteria and demonisation of the young.
Gangs have always been a part of modern industrial society. The industrial revolution of this period saw a transformation in the way people lived their lives. Forced from the countryside to live in sprawling industrial centres in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool people lived and worked in appalling conditions. Wars and poverty across Europe also led to waves of migrant workers seeking a better life only to find poverty, squalor and racism.
It was in this context that gangs rose in all of the major cities in Britain. In Manchester a gang known as the Scuttlers were notorious for mass street brawls and running protection rackets around the music halls. In Liverpool a gang called the High Rip Gang were notorious for violent muggings in the dockland areas of Liverpool. The Peaky Blinders, dramatized by the BBC series of the same name, operated in the industrialised areas of Bordesley and Small Heath, when the city was one of the world’s most important manufacturing hubs and earned their name through the practice of sewing razor blades into the peaks of their flat caps. The Forty Elephants were an all-female crime gang who were based in the Elephant and Castle area of London specialising in shoplifting and smash and grab raids led by a woman called Diamond Annie.
The common themes that all these gangs shared were that they attracted the young, they were poor and they sprang out of the most terrible human suffering.
For many of my students these themes were not historical ones but ones that existed today. They describe in their essays the fear that young people feel about the future and the pressure on them to achieve at any cost. The ‘get rich quick or die trying’ ethos of the 19th century is all pervasive in today’s consumer society.
But they live in a society which cannot provide meaningful employment for them or any employment at all. Where education is increasingly narrowed down to a set of functional skills and ‘employability’ and they are vilified in the press as feral. In short, a society that likes to blame the people who are least responsible for the wars, poverty and general lack of opportunities rather than dealing with the systemic consequences of an unplanned and deregulated society.
It is not surprising that in this situation, a small minority of young people faced with their path being blocked to a better life look instead to desperate ways of achieving a more secure future for themselves.
Getting to the root of the problem
The need to have power is often attributed, by many commentators, as the main driver as to why young people join gangs and carry out violent crimes. This misunderstands the motivation behind such acts. It is not power that motivates working class people to carry out horrific acts against each other, it is the lack of power.
Being prepared to die for a post code is not a sign of young people being all powerful – it is a reflection of the lack of power they have over their own lives. A powerlessness which leads to an attempt to rest some control over the direction of their lives.
Of course, gang life doesn’t give young people control. It leads to imprisonment and for too many deaths at the hands of another young person who too is desperately seeking to establish some measure of meaning to their lives.
The era of austerity has made the conditions of the young working class even more intolerable. The Equality and Human Rights Commission reported that those under 34 had suffered the biggest drop in income and employment since 2010. Young people under 34 have found their pay hit hardest and that are the group that finding it most difficult to find decent housing, employment and are more likely to experience poverty.
With the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the raising of university fees young working-class people are more in debt than ever before.
A Guardian investigation into the impact of the global economic crisis on millennials statedthat;
‘It is likely to be the first time in industrialised history, save periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have fallen so far when compared to the rest of society.’
In 2015 the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Research found that 83,000 young people had been accommodated by local authorities and homeless services in 2014. A shocking 8% of 16-24-year olds said that they had experienced homelessness and in London homelessness had risen by 40%. This is before government plans to scrap housing benefit for the 18-21-year olds had been implemented.
There has also been a significant deterioration of young people’s mental health. 150,000 young people attended accident and emergency departments last year. It is estimated that one in 12 young people are thought to have injured themselves.
Land transport accidents are the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 5 and 19 with suicide being the second leading cause of death for males. Suicide and accidental poisoning is the leading cause of death for people between the age of 20 and 34.
Many of these deaths are preventable but we don’t hear the same howls of outrage and calls for tough action as we do when young people die on our streets from a knife attack.
It is by dealing with these underlining issues that we can begin to deal with the gang related problems our young people get lured into. The government needs to create apprenticeships that lead to real, well paid and secure jobs. The career, advice and community and youth centres that have been closed down need to be reopened with well trained staff and resources to operate effectively.
The drug trade needs to be legalised to undermine the control of organised crime and to take away the stigmatisation of addiction so that those looking for some kind of respite from the pain of poverty can do so in controlled and safe conditions.
The historic funding cuts made by governments must be reversed to enable Further Education colleges to meet the long-term needs of our communities.
No young person should feel the need to take their own lives, kill another or look for solace in drugs. Society has the means to create the conditions that our young people can feel safe and secure and never know what it is like to hanker after something that numbs them from despair and powerlessness. The problem is with those who assume power over us and whose priorities lie elsewhere, and who are fearful of allowing young people the opportunities and conditions to be able to fully develop their own creative potential and ambitions.
On Tuesday 13 March, UCU members in their thousands voted, emailed, tweeted, lobbied and protested against the outcome of the UCU and UUK negotiation. Members argued that to accept this offer would be ‘#Capitulation’.
There were many reasons why members were opposed. But the central reason was the massive 19% cut in the value of the Defined Benefit pension and the risk that CPI would cut it more. It expanded Defined Contribution down to £42K, drawing in members on Grade 8/Senior Lecturer grades. It was a three-year deal which was bound to unravel.
Members were incensed at the scale of the cut and the thought we would have to fight to protect our pensions in three years’ time all over again.
This ‘deal’ came out of a negotiation conducted within the terms of the ‘November Technical Provisions’, i.e. within a massive deficit cost envelope. This is fundamentally why the offer was unacceptable.
We have to argue that the deficit is not real. It is a projected deficit based on assuming the scheme was wound up.
We should argue that USS should instead be valued on an ongoing basis, i.e. as a going concern. If the USS Board need the Government to guarantee the future of the scheme, then USS and UUK should join UCU in calling for a government guarantee.
We demand the status quo, i.e. #NoChange to our USS Pension.
And we’ll take whatever strike action is needed to win it.
(initial signatories)
Lesley McGorrigan, University of Leeds, NEC member
Sean Wallis, University College London, NEC member
Joseph Choonara , King’s College London , Teaching Fellow
Prof Malcolm Povey, University of Leeds, Professor of Food Physics, UCU Committee Member
Nigel Bubb, University of Leeds, Lecturer
Laura Miles, UCU retired member
Christina Paine , London Metroplitan University , NEC HE casualised rep
Nita Sanghera, SCCB/Bournville College , NEC Black Members Representative
John Croft, Brunel University London, Reader in Music
Jo McNeill, University of Liverpool, President, University of Liverpool UCU
Liam Wrigley, University of Liverpool, Graduate Teaching Assistant
At congress this year the General Secretary launched a commission to look into what would make effective industrial action. The commission has invited members from every level of the union to contribute to this debate. Below are two papers that put forward two different perspectives as a contribution to this debate.
First is one from Anya Cook on behalf on Newcastle College Ucu and the other is a a response form UCU colleagues from Lewisham and Southwark College, that have recently joined the Newcastle College Group and Sean Vernell NEC and elected commissioner for London and east.
UCULeft’s Autumn Conference – “Preparing to Win: Post-16 Education for All” will take place on Saturday 18th November 2017.
Venue: SOAS, Paul Webley Wing, Senate House, North Block, Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX – see map
With the Conservative Government increasingly looking unable to govern the country, the Labour Party is waiting to form the next government. Labour’s radical manifesto contains many post-16 education polices developed by UCU. This conference will look at developing education policy in anticipation of a future Labour government.
The conference will look at a wide range of areas covered by post-16 education to discuss and design policy that will ensure a progressive Further and Higher Education sector is developed that allows access for all.
The conference will look at apprenticeships, more relevant and inspiring curriculum and the role of adult education in Further Education. The conference will discuss how we can undo the marketisation of Higher Education.
One of the main themes of the conference this year will be the issues of the public sector pay cap and how we can build a movement to get the cap lifted.
Full timetable with list of speakers, panel guests and workshops will be available soon.
The Labour manifesto commitment to phase out tuition fees would throw into reverse the years of marketisation in education and re-open access to education for many disadvantaged students.
This single policy, if implemented, would make a massive difference to the lives of ordinary families and is in line with national UCU policy.
We believe that UCU members need to fight to see the implementation of the end of tuition fees, that means that we need to encourage staff and students to ‘vote for education’ on 8 June.
UCU branches must work with NUS and other campus unions to encourage voter registration before the 22 May deadline as UCU has argued nationally.
The London Region of UCU has called a ‘vote for education’ day of action on 24 May. This is a great initiative and it could and should be replicated by as many regions, colleges and universities as possible.
The election on 8 June will shape post 16 education for years to come.
The Tories HE Bill forced through the Commons in the final pre-election days shows what Theresa May’s vision of education is all about, privatisation.
We now have the chance to get something better. Let’s fight for it.
Support the London Region UCU Day of Action
London Region UCU has called a day of action “Vote for Education” to mobilise the anti-Tory vote amongst staff and students next Wednesday 24 May.
The day has 3 parts:
Organise activity at your college or university to encourage staff and students to “Vote for Education”. You can download the manifesto to distribute here
Bring staff and students down to Old Palace Yard for 5.30pm to rally around the London Region “Vote for Education” banner, bring your branch UCU banners along. Link to map
Come to the 1,000 strong TES election hustings with Justine Greening, Angela Rayner and John Pugh at theEmmanuel CentreWestminster (10 mins walk from Old Palace Yard) from 6.30pm to 8pm, register your free place Here
Join us in our call to:
. Scrap HE and FE tuition fees
• Reverse the HE Bill
• Bring back the Education Maintenance Allowance for FE Students
• Reverse the historic neglect of FE and increase funding
A lobby of parliament, and an online ‘we love unions’ campaign, never got close to the level of resistance that was necessary to defeat this offensive, the most draconian trade-union law since the 1980s or to defend jobs, conditions, equality and services.
The Tory law limits our ability to organise, most importantly introducing new ballot thresholds that will make organising lawful national action very difficult for many big public sector unions.
This attack comes at a time when British workers’ wages have been frozen for the longest period in over 70 years. On every barometer, working people’s lives in the workplace have significantly deteriorated since the economic crash in 2008. As Marx explained, ‘the tyranny of the market leads to the tyranny in the factory’. In the drive to outdo their competitors, employers increase the pressure on their workers to work harder and faster for less. Spiralling workloads, bullying managers, longer hours and insecure contracts are the norm for millions of workers in Britain today. With this worsening of conditions, workers’ physical and mental health has also deteriorated.
With this being the everyday experience of millions in the ‘modern’ workplace environment the need for a well-organised, militant trade unionism has never been greater.
With the lowest level of strike days “lost” since records began, trade unions in Britain look increasing irrelevant – at least, on the surface. The response of the leaders of the trade unions has been to retreat from taking any national action, and unions are increasingly leaving the national battlefield. Our leaders are encouraging local disputes to clock up ‘wins’ as an alternative to national action, and in an attempt to make unions relevant.
There are still over six million workers in trade unions, however, which are approximately a quarter of the total workforce, and there are hundreds of thousands of union reps. At a local level (as in the Durham TAs), trade unionists are continuing to engage in courageous action to defend jobs and services.
What is frustrating about the inability of our leaders to take up the fight in defence of working people’s conditions is that the employers are not confident and cohesive – they are divided, cautious and detached. The vote to leave the European Union has sent employers into a tail spin of rage and confusion. Their continued indulgence in yachts, luxury cars and multiple homes, which has meant that even Theresa May has had meekly to attempt to curb boardroom pay, has led workers to despise and thoroughly distrust the employing class.
In this context rather than going on the offensive and leading a national fight against the employers the trade union leaders are retreating into local disputes. If British trade unionism is to be successful at recruiting the next generation of workers then it will need a strategy that goes beyond fighting localised battles. We need a national strategy that matches the government and employers’ national offensive against working people.
The re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party undoubtedly gives the unions an increased and positive profile. But we cannot wait until 2020 before we start to develop and implement a national strategy to rebuild union strength.
We need national action more than ever. From Trump to May to the potential of a Nazis President in France we need more than ever a trade union movement that can launch national strike action. We need a trade unionism that is equally aggressive at fighting racism as it is in defending workers’ collective rights and conditions of service; one that is as engaged in addressing gender inequality or precarious contracts as it is committed to pay increases and defending national pay rates.
Circumstances can change very quickly. As quickly as old established political dynasties can evaporate, new movements, based upon the self-activity of working people, can appear. This article argues that we need to make a shift to taking regional initiatives whilst at the same time maintaining the pressure on our leaders to lead a national fight against the increasing attacks on working people.
I’m all right Jack…
For most union leaderships at the moment the emphasis is building up local union strength by encouraging local battles. The argument that is usually put forward is that the union is not in a position to sustain national action due to members’ lack of enthusiasm for strike action, or structural weakness in the sector, or lack of organisational strength, or the aggressive use of the law by the employers. The consequence of this, the argument continues, is that we need to rebuild local union organisation by encouraging branches to take action over issues about which members have immediate concern. It is in this manner, they argue, that we will be able to rebuild the sectional workplace strength that can deliver and sustain national action.
It is important to stress that many union activists across the movement have been doing this for many years. This is precisely what has enabled them to build relatively strong workplace organisation. It has been the inability of the trade union leaders to generalise this experience across the whole of the areas they organise that has led them to be unable to build and sustained national strike action.
However, this approach is not a new one. It is based upon the way the British trade unions were built in the 1950/60s which was accurately portrayed, albeit mockingly, in the 1950s Peter Sellers’ film I’m All Right Jack.
This was a period in which the economic boom of the 1950s-1960s allowed workers to organise pay and conditions of service on a sectional level. Workers in new industries, such as the enlarged car plants, successfully organised wage increases through local industrial action, and often only through the threat of action. Stewards organised networks of activists that cut across industry to keep each other informed about the situation in each of their particular plants. Faced with a booming economy and full order books, employers were unwilling to face down their workers’ demands out of fear of lagging behind their competitors. When one group of workers won their dispute, the next would pop up to leapfrog on the back of that success; then another group would follow suit creating what the press called ‘wage spiral’.
The workers on the shop floor would often joke, with some irony, that to win your dispute it was necessary to get out of the door before your officials arrived!
The Wilson government in 1968 launched an enquiry called the Donavan Report which looked into the rise of the ‘wild cat’ strike, and at the ‘politically motivated men’ that were behind the rise of such successful action. The Commission recommended legal constraints on unions, in order to back up governmental wage controls. This led to new union legislation. Titled In Place of Strife, the proposed anti-union law was introduced by Barbara Castle. Magnificent unofficial strike action, involving some 600,000 workers, was organised by the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions. It defeated the proposed Bill.
Twenty years of ‘do it yourself reformism’, based on sectional strength, had developed well-organised networks of workers across industries. These networks were able to deliver unofficial national action. The victory at Saltley gates coking plant in 1972 demonstrated the strength of these networks to inflict serious defeats on the employers at a national level.
In an excellent interview with the NUM leader in the New Left Review in 1975, Scargill describes how he spoke at a Birmingham District Committee of the AEUW (the engineering union) calling on engineers across the city to down tools and march on the coking plant to shut it down. On the third day they did. Fifteen thousand workers walked out unofficially, and joined miners at the picket lines, and brushed the police aside to shut the plant.
It was in this period, and as a consequence of the strength of the unofficial networks and regional structures, that national barging was conceded by employers’ organisations and the Government, and welcomed by the trade union leaders. National bargaining was brought in to head off rank and file activists from developing effective collective bargaining at a workplace level. Today, when no such rank and file networks exist, the employers try to move away from national bargaining, and attempt to push through deals at a local level where our side is weaker. That is why we need to campaign hard to defend what is left of national bargaining in every industry, and not to allow our trade union leaders to walk away from this arena of battle.
Unlike the 1950 and 1960s, though, we are not in an economic boom. The employers are more cautious about their industries’ futures, and workers are not confident to walk out unofficially in any industry. What prevents us from taking unofficial action is not the fear of unemployment (unemployment levels are low) but the lack of organisation that can provide us with the confidence that the action necessary to win will be possible.
This is why, in this situation, it makes a big difference to workers’ confidence to fight if their leaderships are also seen to express their anger, and to provide a credible national strategy for action that has a chance of winning
Finding a way out of the bramble bush
The 1950-60s section-by-section approach to rebuilding union strength, whilst important, cannot be the model we looked to rebuild our strength today.
We all understand the difficulties of achieving the kind of big votes for action that will now be legally necessary. Given the cynicism many members feel as a result of the lacklustre attempts of our leaderships to oppose the government and employers, this is hardly surprising. The likelihood of getting national action off the ground through an official ballot, when the law demands a fifty percent turnout for action to be lawful, is small at the moment.
That does not mean that activists should no longer continue to try to get official national action off the ground. Many unions’ campaigns to get the vote out in such national ballots in the past have been incredibly passive and unimaginative. In those circumstances, members do not have any sense that the leadership of their union has the stomach for a fight. Why participate in a ballot in those circumstances?
Nevertheless, if we are to restore the possibility of national action, and be able to mount some pressure in support of national negotiations, or to defend the continuation of national bargaining and existing national agreements, then we need a national strategy to rebuild this capacity.
But we cannot rely on this alone. Where possible we need to encourage unions to put in local claims over pay and conditions, over local patterns of gender discrimination, and over abusive contracts of employment. Where possible, these need to be organised as part of a region-wide campaign where the union puts its national resources into supporting the action to be taken.
In the Higher Education Sector, for example, where the HE and Research Bill is being rushed through Parliament, and is designed to end the existence of public universities, and where the UCU’s national leadership has just thrown away the possibility of a national fight on pay, gender discrimination and casualisation, we need university branches to group together at a local level to pursue pay, gender pay equality, and anti-causuliastion campaigns. Five or six of the better organised university branches need to coordinate their local actions, and to offer a lead to other university branches in their regions.
For such a strategy to work, to have the ability to give confidence to the less well-organised sections, then the national union would need to coordinate solidarity from other branches, and other regions, and with other unions.
What such a strategy doesn’t mean is different universities taking individual action over local issues, which are seen as separate local disputes that have nothing to do with each other. If this version of localised action takes place there is no guarantee, even where university branches are successful in achieving their local aims, that the ‘win’ translates into raising the level of confidence of the less well-organised branches.
Learning from our history
We cannot base a strategy for rebuilding union strength through twenty years of isolated local disputes. The I’m All Right Jack approach cannot be the model for rebuilding union strength in this period.
History does not simply progress through gradual incremental change. There are breaks – great leaps forward. We need to factor this into our understanding of how organised labour can revive its ability to successfully bring about real change that so many working people desire.
Indeed it’s not only a question of identifying the appropriate industrial strategy. Rebuilding trade union confidence and strength is also about recognising the pivotal political issues of the moment that impact on trade union organisation. For us, today, that is unquestionably the rise of racism, the re-emergence of reactionary populism in politics, and the real threat of fascism.
Axel Persson, a French rail worker, speaking at the Unite the Resistance Conference in November described the challenges that his members face. He spoke about the attempt by the Socialist government in France to introduce new labour laws attacking collective bargaining. He also described the context in which they were fighting; the continual and frightening rise of the Nazi Front Nationale led by Marie Le Pen. This is not the first time that the French working class has faced such a threat.
We have historical precedent. In 1934, the French fascists attempted a coup d’etat. A mass demonstration was called by a number of fascist leagues in Paris – the most notable was the 60,000-strong manifestation by Action Français. The workers’ movement had not been particularly active before this point. The movement united and confronted the fascist demonstrators backed up by thousands of workers taking strike action. The movement stopped French fascism in its tracks.
The political radicalisation that developed around this fight against fascism raised the confidence and organisation of organised labour in France. In 1936, this radicalisation led to the victory of a left-wing Popular Front government, and a general strike involving millions of workers. These strikes ensured that the left-wing Government immediately introduced significant reforms which included a shortening of the working day, and regular paid holidays.
French workers in 1936 enjoying their paid holidays (by Henri Cartier-Bresson for Communist Party magazine Regards)
Hope: does history repeat itself?
No, … not at all but it can act as a guide.
The rebuilding of trade union organisation that can deliver real change will take a mixture of local and national action – both, not one or the other; it will involve the union responding as vigorously to the political threats to members as it does to the economic threats to their conditions of service.
The situation can be transformed overnight by workers taking action over issues that we least aspect. In 2010, the anger and revulsion felt amongst education workers, when witnessing their sons and daughters being attacked by the police whilst demonstrating against university fees, could have resulted in a series of large-scale walk-outs. Thankfully, and despite the terrible injuries inflected on some, and only by luck, none of our students were killed. Had one of them been killed, walkouts across the country in every university, college, and in many other workplaces, could have transformed union organisation.
The Brexit campaign shows that some workers can direct their anger against migrants and refugees if there is no alternative explanation for economic decline. The issue for the trade union movement should not be concern at a lack of anger, rage or radicalism amongst working people or young people. The central issue for the trade union movement is passivity. The more inactive union members are in campaigning to defend their living standards, the more their confidence will be sapped. It is this passivity that allows right-wing demagogues to offer false hopes as a way out of our current political impoverishment.
We live in an era where all the old political certainties have dissolved. It is not a given that what replaces the old political order will be progressive. To ensure that it does takes conscious intervention in the world we live in based on the values of solidarity and collectivity with a coherent alternative to competition and marketisation.
