A new trade unionism in the making

NEW TRADE UNIONISM IN THE MAKIN

HILARY WAINWRIGHT DAVE ELLIOTT

The Lucas workers' Plan for alternative

socially useful production

was widely popularised within the

labour movement. In a new book to be

published at the end of October* Hilary

Wainwright and Dave Elliott examine the

Lucas experience and draw lessons for the development of the trade unions. We reprint

below an abridged version of the final chapter of the book, A new trade unionism in * The Lucas Plan: a new trade unionism in the making by Hilary Wainwright and Dave Elliott. Allison & Busby, £2.95, 28 October 1982. The Combine Committee and the limits of trade unionism The Combine Committee was in an ideal position for developing and fighting for a workers' plan. It had the benefit of a close connection with the shop-floor and office trade-union committee in each factory — a feature essential to the process of drawing up and fighting for popular plans, for without being based on the needs and attempts at control around which workingclass people are organising, planning will just be the work of a new group of experts making judgements about other people's needs. Without the backing of the factory organisations of collective bargaining there is no hope of overcoming the tremendous resistance which, as we know from the Lucas experience, such plans will undoubtedly meet.

The drawing up of the ideal structures of democratic planning must take account of the power of the existing state and the private corporations. To a considerable extent the institutions of popular planning will be developed in the course of resisting the decisions emanating from these centres of unaccountable power. Democratically drawn up alternative proposals are ways of strengthening such resistance. For these reasons, the drawing up of positive proposals and plans based on social need cannot be separate from the defensive institutions of collective bargaining (as they might be when popular planning and selfmanagement have been achieved).

However, there is a strong case for some additional level of organisation beyond but connected with existing trade-union organisations. This is especially true at a time when trade unions have been forced back to their most defensive positions. For example, delegates to the Lucas Combine Committee found that the day-to-day requirements of collective bargaining under the last year of the Labour government and the first years of Tory rule were of a very defensive kind. The confidence simply did not exist to put forward positive and radical policies of the kind they had developed in the Corporate Plan. However, the Combine believe that work should continue to develop the approach of the alternative Corporate Plan and to extend the network of organizations involved in similar initiatives, in preparation for more favourable conditions. Otherwise they and others would be unable to turn the opportunity of a radical Labour government, or at least an economic expansion, to their advantage and the cycle of disillusionment and demoralisation, leading to another Tory victory, would once more be set in motion. This work will involve a conscious allocation of time and trade union personnel to prepare discussions on issues of longer-term strategy: and to formulate the

basis for positive bargaining positions on questions such as technology, government funding and corporate investment plans, well in advance of the issues coming up in collective bargaining. This will involve the creation of some new structure, even if only extensions of existing trade-union organisations.

There are several arguments for this additional level of trade-union activity. First, the content of discussion and ideas in those organisations whose main function is collective bargaining is necessarily determined by the immediate tactical concerns of the negotiations at hand: on its own this is too narrow a framework to encourage ideas to develop about the future of the industry, the social needs which the industry could meet, and alternative products and technologies to press on management and government. Such a discussion needs stimulus and co-ordination outside of the procedures and agendas of collective bargaining. In the case of Lucas such a stimulus was provided by the Combine Committee when it sent out a questionnaire and thereby introduced a new dimension to the agendas of the factory trade-union committees. The discusthe making?

sions at factory level stimulated by the questionnaire were in general more open-ended, more conducive to innovation and experimentation than the routine discussions connected with day-to-day negotiations.

A second reason for some additional level of organisation concerns the fact that organisations whose main purpose is collective bargaining — including collective bargaining over proposals flowing from more broadly based workers" plans — need to parallel the power structures of the employers. By contrast the objective of developing alternative plans based on meeting

if workers' plans were simply focussed on

one enterprise it would be harder to transcend the firm's economic boundaries,

premises and priorities

the social needs of producers and users requires a form of association which cuts across different employers, and across the different but interdependent sectors of the economy. If workers" plans were produced only on an enterprise basis there would be a danger of including proposals that if implemented would simply put other workers out of work. There would also be a danger of implying that the producers alone had the right to determine what was socially needed. There would also be other, more strategic problems, concerning relations with the company, if workers" plans were simply focussed on one enterprise: it would be harder to transcend the firm's economic boundaries, premises and priorities. For this reason negotiations on "planning agreements" with individual firms could degenerate into exercises in collaboration with management — as many trade unionists fear.

Clearly association with workers, and where necessary users, beyond the individual company and industry is needed. The Lucas stewards have tried to create such contacts with workers engaged on products related to those they proposed. In doing so they did not seek to replace or undermine more sectorally-based trade-union structures. Rather they sought to create associations of a very different kind. For example, arising out of their proposals in the medical field they, along with CAITS, called a workshop of workers and users connected with the health service. However, such contacts and discussion could not be sustained without political support, particularly as they directly concerned government expenditure. Planning for social need: some examples

Although in the early 1980s the confidence among the majority

of trade-union members has been insufficient for them to become involved in drawing up positive proposals for their industry or services, an increasing number of trade-union activists are responsive to the idea. Evidence for this is in the growing interest in the discussions and local initiatives stimulated by four trades councils - Coventry, Liverpool, Newcastle and North Tyneside — around the idea of popular planning for social need. These discussions followed the trades councils" inquiry into the industrial policies of the last Labour government. The inquiry arose out of an anger and disillusionment with the way that Labour's industrial policies, promised in 1973 as a new radical departure from old-style nationalization, were transformed to allay the fears of the City, the Treasury and the IMF. The trades councils concluded that these "vested interests are too powerful to be overcome by politicians alone. We must create a movement in the workplaces and the localities around policies based on planning for social need, which can exert power for itself. Our inquiry concludes that it is only this grass-roots power which, with the support of a genuinely socialist government, can socialise and democratise production'.

Since the publication of the inquiry, several other trades councils, notably Sheffield, Burnley and Nottingham, have become directly involved in exchanging ideas and experiences that give more specific meaning to the idea of a movement in the workplaces and localities around planning for social need. Several of the combine committees involved in the Joint Forum have also joined these discussions. Together, the combine committees and trades councils have produced the declaration on *Popular Planning for Social Need - an alternative to monetarism from shop stewards' committees and trades councils'. This declaration summarises the basis on which trades councils and combine committees, with the help of trade-union and community resource centres, have begun to investigate the strategies of the multi-national corporations, the failings of the public services and nationalised industries and the needs which alternative policies must show can be met.

there is a growing network of Local Energy Groups around the country concerned to find local job-creating alternatives to centralised

energy provision

This concern with elaborating detailed alternative policies to be fought for through collective bargaining and extraparliamentary campaigns is also apparent within the Left groupings of several unions. In the Post Office Engineering Union, for instance, the Broad Left has already made a thorough

telecommunications

the

investigation of

an international level. Through workshops of activists across the telecommunications industry they too are developing policies to meet their members' needs. Moreover, by developing co-ordination between trade-union committees across competing multinationals, they are able to counter those arguments of managements which seek to identify workers' interests with the competitive success of the company.

The disarmament movement and the campaign against nuclear power have also stimulated and strengthened discussion among trade unionists for alternative plans. CND and END are beginning to work with trade unionists in the arms industry on plans for conversion. Activists in the anti-nuclear power movement have worked with members of many different unions affected by government energy policy, to develop a trade-union-based campaign for non-nuclear energy policies. This campaign has gained considerable support within the unions; at least ten major unions all oppose the nuclear programme. The campaign has also had a considerable popular impact creating a very strong lobby for the development of alternative energy sources and conservation. The new approach to energy policy that is gradually emerging — albeit against fierce

International September/Eltober 19N2 17

British Features opposition - moves the emphasis away from a concern just with conventional energy supply technologies (for example. centralised electricity-producing power plants) to interest in local energy provisions (for example, solar energy and combined heat and power), and beyond that to a concern with the question of energy demand management, and energy conserva tion. Transport planning, waste recycling, urban planning, etc. — all very much the concern of local authorities — are increasingly been seen as relating directly to energy policy, which explains why public service unions like NUPE and NALGO are becoming much more interested in energy issues. This local government-level concern also offers more opportunity for involvement and initiatives by community groups, in relation, for instance, to local energy-conservation projects and community energy planning in general. There is a growing network of "Local Energy Groups" around the country concerned to find local job-creating alternatives to centralised energy provision. Several Labour local authorities have also developed energy plans for their areas which emphasise local control and job creation. Given the existing alternative plans produced by power engineering workers, it seems that the basis for democratic planning linking users and producers is being created within the energy sector.

In these varied ways, networks are being created which feed into collective bargaining and campaigning but which have an independent momentum that enables them to see ahead of these day-to-day problems.

The shop stewards and trades council delegates involved in these networks are strongly motivated. They are not prepared to leave economic policy-making and implementing to Labour politicians. It is this strong commitment to investigation and policy-making as a necessary part of trade unionism which keeps the networks going; for they have little support from the national trade-union body concerned with economic policy, the TUC. Rather than encourage and provide resources for these attempts to develop policies based firmly on working people's needs and skills, the TUC has made their development more difficult. The four trades councils who produced the report on 'State Intervention in Industry" were at one point told that they could not meet with cach other without permission from the TUC. Matters of government policy were not their concern, was the message. However, the TUC did not follow up the restriction beyond trying to discourage other trades councils from becoming involved. Nevertheless, the TUC has threatened this work in another way, by attempting to block the creation of two new trade-union research and resource centres in London and Birmingham — though the Birmingham centre has nevertheless gone ahead. As we have seen, such resource centres are a vital back-up to the policy discussions of trades councils, combine committees and others and the established strucindustry, an

tures are not meeting the needs of their members as far as positive policies are concerned. Trades councils, combine committees, resource centres and other local and workplace-based organisations, however, cannot themselves sustain and implement these policies whether or not they gain official tradeunion support. They need political support, both locally and nationally.

Political support

When talking about political support we cannot treat the state as a single homogeneous block, rather we must distinguish between the elected assemblies - that is Parliament and, at a local level, councils — and the permanent apparatus of the civil service, the Army and the judiciary. Action by socialist representatives in the former could be used to undermine the power of the latter in favour of the new institutions of popular power. These extra-parliamentary institutions in the workplace and in the locality in many ways prefigure a new kind of political system, but they will need the support of a government elected within the present system to achieve the transition to the new system.

The importance of political support from within the elected

18 Зерес

British For

Photo: JOHN STURROCK

Hilary Wainwright: "a socialist government would co-ordinate the funding for the implementation of workers plans" institutions of the present political system rests on two features of government in Britain — and parliamentary democracies in other modern capitalist societies. First, the government's role in the economy: the government controls either directly or indirectly much of the finance which at present enables capitalist industry to flourish but which could be used to support a move towards workers* self-management. Secondly, the government has a legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of people, over and above any particular economic institution or interest. And it can provide legitimacy for democratic organisations outside Parliament. A supportive government then is a potentially powerful ally for workers in industry with proposals for organising their workplace to meet social needs. This is why the initial support of ministers of the Department of Industry

a supportive government is a potentially powerful ally for workers in industry with proposals for organising their workplace to

meet social needs

was so important in helping the Lucas Plan get off the ground Without this support the Combine delegates would have found it very difficult to gain support for the Plan from their fellow stewards and trade union members. The reverse of this dependence of the Lucas workers' Plan on government support for its implementation is that the hostility which the Combine later faced from the Labour government when the Plan was ready nearly destroyed the Combine Committee, and with it the alternative Plan:

The Labour politicians who treated the stewards from Lucas Aerospace and elsewhere with such indifference had little or no political commitment to the socialist aspiration of workers' self-management and social ownership. But even a party leadership which enters government with such a commitment will be under extremely powerful pressures to thwart and divert the wishes of workers struggling for control over production. For, in spite of a government's control over considerable funds, its legislative powers and its control over the exchange rate and other aspects of foreign trade, it is nevertheless finally dependent on those who control the production of wealth. When this control is securely in the hands of the management of multi-national corporations, even a well-intentioned socialist government can on its own do little against their will. It

can only act against the major corporations and financial institutions if workers in those corporations, the real producers of wealth, have built up an internal challenge to management's control. What is needed, then, is an alliance between a socialist government and those workplaceand locality-based organisations which could create this counter power to the extraelected

parliamentary strength of capital. In the shorter run this applies to socialist-controlled local and county councils. In Sheffield, Greater London and the West Midlands, Left Labour councillors have taken the initiative to create such alliances. In doing so they are pushing against the grain of local government's corporate management in very unfavourable national political circumstances. It is too early to assess their success or otherwise. The role of a socialist government

Comments on the possible contribution of government to such an alliance are bound to be speculative, for we are attempting to map out some of the political implications of popular planning at a time when the future of the Labour Party and the process by which a socialist government might be achieved are by no means clear. However, while over-deterministic prescriptions are of little relevance, the question of what types of political structures might be necessary cannot be avoided by rhetoric about "decentralisation'. We need to begin to think in detail about new forms of political organisation. The possible role of a socialist government can be summarised under several categories. First it could play a catalytic role in bringing about direct association between the people, or the organisations representing them, connected with all spheres where existing market and planning mechanisms have failed to meet people's needs. The purpose of such direct associations would be to resolve conflicting needs, to arrive as far as possible at a common policy or several different but consistent policies and build the strength to implement these policies. For example in relation to the Lucas Plan the government ideally could have encouraged such direct contact between the different groups of workers and users who might have had an interest in, say the road-rail bus: local authority representatives and purchasers, bus workers and transport users" committees as users, and Lucas Aerospace, British Leyland and Dunlop workers as producers.

Given British industry's close integration into the international economy, such direct association would need to he organised on an international level: between, for instance,

workers in tractor companies or agricultural machinery producers in Britain and the agricultural departments of radical governments in the Third World, so that machinery could be produced with a design and a price to meet the needs of those countries by workers who would otherwise be made redundant in Britain.

This

catalytic

role in the process of developing

democratic organisations which could draw up and negotiate over alternative plans should not be limited to a socialist government. Indeed, the achievement of such a socialist government could play a vital role in strengthening and coordinating the process. Much of this co-ordination and association would take place at a local and regional level, but there would be a need for Parliament, specifically concerned with deciding on the problems and conflicts arising from planning and self-management at a local and regional level that needed national and international resolution. Such an assembly would be based on representatives from workers" planning committees in the regions and within different economic sectors. The Polish movement, Solidarity, proposed an assembly along similar lines to be subordinate to their national parliament in terms of general cconomic principles,

but to be responsible

ordinating a system of self-management and democratic planning.

The role of a socialist government would not only be to provide resources and encouragement for the direct association through which plans could be drawn up, it would also delegate powers and legitimacy to the workers' committee formed in this process, where they were representative and democratically formed. These powers would be to monitor the implementation a socialist government would back workers

bargaining over proposals based on these

plans, with financial and other sanctions

on the companies

of policies decided nationally, regionally, or sectorally. In some ways this is like a radical extension of the powers at present delegated to shop stewards in health-and safety legislation. Trade-union representatives have the power, backed by legislation, to monitor the implementation of the Health and Safety at Work legislation. On a far wider scale the same could apply to industrial policy. We saw in the Lucas case how, even when agreement was reached in negotiations over a product proposed by the unions, that is the heat pump, management was able to inhibit progress or impose their own ideas. A civil service inspectorate could never adequately monitor such an agreement. It would require people with an intimate knowledge of the production process or the service involved. Workers" committees would need some power to carry out this monitoring, even when the company had been taken into some form of public ownership. This would be a step towards subjecting managers to election by workers and representatives of the local community.

A further role of a socialist government would be to coordinate the funding for the implementation of workers' plans. One of the first steps such a government would take towards socialisation of the means of production would be the imposition of exchange controls, the nationalisation of the banks and legislation for trade-union control over pension funds. In addition a socialist government would back workers bargaining over proposals based on these plans, with financial and other sanctions on the companies concerned. Where this met with determined resistance, a socialist government would need to be prepared to socialise the company and/or industry, under workers" control. In several industries, depending on their strategic position and the strength of workers' organisation, this socialisation would take place in the first months of the government. This socialisation would be very different from

International September/Ocsober 1982 19

British Features the kind of nationalisation with which we are so depressingly familiar, because the workers would, in the process of extending collective bargaining, have developed a clear idea of how the resources of the company would be used and organised and would be prepared for self-management.

The joint worker/government plans might well propose the

breaking up the existing company structures. One principle of popular planning will be to identify the structures most appropriate to popular control, according to the kind of product or service concerned. The shape and structure of most major conglomerates — bringing together for instance newspapers and hotels and shipping lines under the same board - make nonsense for everyone concerned except the shareholder.

Finally, the government's role in supporting the new institutions of popular planning and self-management will be to set the overall framework of economic policy, including levels of taxation, exchange rates and the basis of international trading relations. Control of international trade would not necessarily or even primarily be import controls; rather the government's priority would be to identify trading arrangements with sympathetic governments which would be of mutual benefit. for coGovernment measures of this sort would face considerable resistance from those with a vested interest in existing economic arrangements. But the extent and success of the resistance will depend on two conditions which can be influenced now, long before there is a real chance of such a government. First will be the political popularity of the government; in electoral terms, the strength of its parliamentary majority. Second will be the popularity and strength of the union committees, community groups and local authorities who could counter the resistance. Both these depend on a political party, no doubt emerging in part out of the Labour Party — though not in its present form - which bases itself on encouraging people to develop and fight for detailed proposals for the future of industry and the public services. So that for instance in the case of the car industry the party would not stand simply for nationalisation of the car industry; it would stand for proposals (for example) to get rid of planned obsolescence in car manufacture, to produce low-price, non-polluting city cars, to establish an extensive system for care and maintenance of long-lasting cars and to improve public transport. The emphasis would not be so much on nationalisation for its own sake but on the industrial and social changes which workers in the industry have suggested and, especially important, have prepared for and gained popular support for, before public ownership is carried through. In these circumstances public ownership is seen clearly as the means of eliminating particular vested interests blocking popular demands.

This is a reversal of the traditional Labour view of state intervention, in which legislation for

public ownership was

understood as the first step towards socialism. Aneurin Bevan expressed this traditional approach clearly when he stated that *the conversion of industry to public ownership is only the first step towards socialism' and went on to say that the advance to full socialism depends on the extent to which workers in the nationalised sector are made aware of a changed relationship between themselves and management' [our emphasis]. The argument in this chapter would imply a very different relationship between ownership and workers' power. Put it this way: the extent to which public ownership is an advance towards full socialism depends on the extent to which workers create a changed relationship between themselves and management in the course of achieving public ownership.

The failure of the traditional Labourist formula was a pressure that led the Lucas stewards to initiate a new approach. In doing so they, along with others, have illustrated, not only a new trade unionism but also a new politics, a polities not only for people but also of and by the people — not to be confused with another "new' politics, the politics of the SDP, which proclaims itself as a politics for people, and which is a new form of the old elitist approach, in flimsy populist disguise.

20 Septemher/Ocloher 1982 International

Interviews

A STAR IS TORN

afford to have any more children after paying

says forget your troubles — here's true love

and romance.

the doctor's bills. I would have been very difRobyn Archer

ferent if I hadn't gone to University because I

SC: You worked for a

suppose that University did radicalise me. We

time as a singer in Sydney

were in the middle of the Vietnam war then

nightclubs after leaving University -..

Robyn Archer is at present

of

and there were tens of thousands

RA: Yes, but I was never

Australian troops there. It wasn't only that we performing in her successful one

quite mainline entertainment. I tended

were in there and losing forces but that we woman show A Star is Torn at

to choose odd standards from way

than

were so much closer to Vietnam

back and to whip out the eukelele. But I Wyndham's Theatre in London's

America. It was then that my radicalisation

found that while I was starting to carn

became focussed and articulated. Feminism West End. She is well known in her

more money and get regular bookings — to

didn't come until a few years after that, in "70 native Australia and in London as

break into the Sydney scene - that the more

and "71. I wasn't terribly active but I was insuccessful I became the less I liked it. Evena brilliant performer of feminist

volved as a singer — when I left University

tually a motor bike accident scaled it, I was on

cabaret and a fine singer of

and I was invited by the Returned Soldiers and

crutches for 4 months. I decided to give up