The Dockers Need a Programme

Cont'd.) But there is a more serious reason for questioning it: that it is likely to be defeated. If you begin a battle by stating that your objective is to defend the existing situation, you are inviting defeat. If you are to win a militant majority for your fight, it is necessary to explain not only what you are fighting against, but also what you are fighting for. In other words, your resistance must be inspired by a firm view of what ought to be, as well as of what must not be. The fate of the miners and the railwaymen must be ever present in the minds of the dockers, and of those who express policy on their behalf. If the dockers are not to be the victims of a huge rationalisation drive which decimates their rights, which reduces their will to stand up and order their lives with humanity, which divides docker from docker in a scramble for a share in a declining labour market, and which places the industry at the mercy of private interests (as the railways to the roads, and the mines to oil and natural gas), then a very clear responsibility lies with all sections of the workers' organisations in dockland. Those who choose to work within the machinery of the T. & G.W.U. and its lively branch network, must have in mind always the need for a vigilant defence of the workers’ positions based on a clear vision of the needed alternative. If they can conduct a serious campaign within the union for that alternative, this will be a major contribution to the whole future of the docker, and will raise his contribution to the whole labour movement debate - now starting - about the need for alternative, socialist-inspired policies to those of this disastrous Labour administration, If the Blue Union can likewise turn its attention to the adoption of positive workers' policies, and away from its present over-defensive and narrow concerns, it too can still contribute mightily to the future strategy of the dockers, If the port workers' committee, without in any way abandoning its independence or its vigilance on defensive questions, can move on from opposition to Devlin to the adoption of an alternative programme, then it too will be greatly helping to supply the missing factor. The N.U.R. docks branch has a unique contribution to make to the creation of a workers' policy, for its members have been the first dockworkers to face the threats of redundancy and insecurity which follow from the use of public boards to rationalise industry in the private profit-making interest. They should approach, and be approached by, the other sections, to assist in the building of maximum unity, Above all, workers must avoid being put in positions where the employers can set them against one another, by playing on their sectional, rather than their common, interests. "Voice" views on what the alternative workers' programme should be are well known. We believe that public ownership is the basis of it, but that it is essential for workers' control to be established in that set-up, and equally important that the existing workers' controls (established by dockers' militancy and solidarity) should be defended and advanced now, and in the day-to-day trade union actions, We claim no exclusive rights, however, in the formulation of alternative policies. We shall be happy to stop writing of a "Humberside Voice" programme, and to report increasingly in the future on the emergence of a united dockers' programme,