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Industrial production in Scotland is now accelerating at a faster rate than the UK, according to Scottish Office figures published in June. This can only mean that on the factory floor the bosses are pursuing a productivity offensive. The STUC and big Scottish unions like EIS have given a green light to Phase 3 of the Social Contract. With the demise of the Devolution Bill, these events have switched the immediate centre of Scottish working class politics from Westminster back to the factory floor.
In May, there were strikes against productivity drives (power workers, United Glass, Hayward Taylor), against public spending cuts (Strathelyde janitors), against the oil monopolies (Bristows and Sullom Voe), and for equal pay (Laird Portch). Apart from the simple fact of an increase in disputes, this rise of strike struggles takes on a pattern. These strikes are tending to be lengthy (Hayward Taylor 9 weeks, Laird Portch 6 weeks). They are often unofficial or carried out in the face of intense foot-
dragging from the union machines (Laird Portch especially, but also Clyde Port Authority engineers and United Glass).
This is a similar phenomenon to disputes in England at Port Talbot and Heathrow. With continued support of the union leaderships for the Social Contract, the worker in the shop floor is rebelling, albeit in a confused and limited way, against the immediate problems which confront him or her. That most of these strikes have been partially successful is a tribute to the militancy of the workers under adverse conditions. That they have only been partial successes following many weeks on the picket line is a direct result of the limited demands, isolation and lack of material support imposed by the union bureaucracy. The union bureaucrats support the Social Contract and the Labour Government, and will not allow spontaneous worker's struggles to jeapordise the negotiations around Phase 3. Handmaidens in this betrayal are the Communist Party and all those who say ongoing struggles against
Pha e 2 must be subordinated to a 'negotiate rett. n to free collective bargaining "after the present round of wage restraint".
Success in the present strike wave depnds on realising that the Social Contract is a road-block to achieving even limited ends. Therefore every strike must be placed in the context of a general offensive against wage restraint. Thus each isolated strike has the chance to reach out for support to the rest of the working class as part of this general fight-back.
Fortunately, many of the recent strikers have grasped this point. The workers at Laird Portch knew they were fighting the Social Contract as well as Coats-Paton and the NUTGW.
This realisation has to be extended into a broad class struggle united front against the Social Contract: a latter-day Minority Movement. The conference of the Scottish Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement, which meets in Stirling at the end of June, represents the coming together of a modest section of the Labour Movement who recognise this need. A new Minority Movement cannot be proclaimed. It will emerge out of the kind of workers struggles we are now witnessing. But it will not just happen sponteneously. For this reason, Scottish Socialist will be supporting the CDLM conference.