Statement from Bristol New Left.
Most people work at least 40 hours a week, & period during which a person is awake and active about &) hours, That is, approximately helf the time of e man's life is spent working. What kind of activity is it? For too many of us, the work we do has no meaning, For us, the relationship to the employer is rather like that of the machine: he keeps us wel’ oiled, and we make money for him. The numer of employes is small, the numer of those employed is large, yet the few employers direct the workers, and own and keep what the workers produce. How can this situation be changed? The answer is to nationalise al the industries which are privately owned, making them instead the property of the public, of the people, who will in this way be the owners of what they produce. Nationalising an industry has nothing to do with whether an industrv is efficient or not, but only with whether the money it earns goes to those who produce the goods. An industry wil! only reward the workers if they ovm it. Nationalisation, as the Labour government has promised it, means public owmership, owmership by the »orkers of the -: . industries in which they work, That is, of all the industries. The present government promised to begin with steel. But in three vears only one maior industry has been nationalised. Contrary to election promises, and to the ideals of the working men who founded the Labour Party and who voted the government in, this government does not want to nationalise industry and take the profits of industry away from a few capitalists in order to redistribute the gainsof work among the people who do work, In order that the people of Britain do not realise that the government intends to break its promises, it talks of 'efficiency', 'growth rate', ‘the economy', but these words only obscure the fact that they do not intend to nationalise industry or redistribute the waalth of Britain. It is clear that the fact of state ownership is an empty one if the industry taken over ty the state remains the same as it was *efore. what kind of socialist rovernment is it where the men who work the reilvays have to go on strike against their bureaucratic overlorijs who are themselves meartto represent a government whose basic aim should be to put the control of an industry into the han’s of those who work in it. The men who run the railways are, in fact, capitalists Jisguise? as civil servaiits, They come from the same schools as the industrialists, and the same universities. These civil servants have no interest at a1) in giving the railways to the reilwaymen who are the rightful owners. It is no good pretendinz to nationalise an industry. If the real control of the industry does not pass into the hands of the workers, the industry is naticnalised only on paper, and the control of it sti’l belongs to the small group of privileged people in this country who effectively control. everything. Capitalism has taken over nationalisation in Britain. Unprofitable industries are nationalised in order that they mav lose money at public expense, while privste industry makes use of the services they rrovide. The railways carry goods from one factory to another, helping the owners ef the factories to make a big profit, while we, the public, ney for running the railway. Pretended or fake naticnalisation is ‘ust another means by which our money ami our rights are hanied over to soreone else, Until all the intustries, including those thet make ‘ig profits, belong to the public, the public will continue to pay while someone else makes a profit.
Apart from exploiting the work done by the men he employs, the relation-
ship between a businessman, whose first aim is to make money, and the
worker, is necessarily measured by what the worker projuces and how
quickly and cheaply he does it. The man who want®to make money must
see the men who work for him in the same way as he sees machines. However,
at leas the workers know that this is what the employer does, Worse than
that, our Labour government have endorsed the capitalist view of men as
efficient super-inachines, makers of money for someone else, The govern-
ment got in on promises of quite another kind, on votes got un’er false
pretences from the workine men of Britain - the seamen and the dockers and
the miners whose industries are now »eing made more efficient at the
expense cf the men who work in them. Wilson says that Britain must raise
itself by its own exertions. The exertions however are those of the
workers, the only things that rise are rrices and profits.
All those who work in the soecalled 'nationalised' industries deserve
the support of all the people of Britain for whatever attempts they
make, by strikes or threats, to influence ani eventually control the
industries themselves, taking power away from the civil servants rho,
like the government, are the servants of private industry and vho run
public industrv not for the working people but for the government and
private industry.
When public industries are really run by the people, the benefits of
automation can be used to reduce the hours each man works —- and he will
of course receive his share of the profits just the same. But while
industries are owned private’y, automation will he used only to reduce
the cost of labour, the anovnt paid out in wages, and thus to increase
the profits of the private owners,
The situation in Britain today is not standing still, The small
measure of effective control on the shop floor which has been won
(after years of industrial struggle) is being taken by the povernment
and the management of private industry, acting together, ‘hat control
the workers have over the conditions of labour and its rewaris the
government hope to end, and they hope to do it in two ways: first, by
"productivity! agreements which ‘ypass earlier agreements on working
conditions (the r-le book) and, second, by denying his right to strike,
making it impossible for the worker to ‘lo anything about the agreements.
A typical 'productivity' deal is that agreed between the ETU and NFEA
(the contracting employers). This Jeal has given the employers the
right to pay electricians according to 'zgrades' where, in the absence
of ‘formal qualifications' the grading is arbitrarily up tb the employer,
What this has meant is that, first, thousands of electricians have been
downgraded losing as much as £3 10s a week on wages that had previously
been bargained for. Second, the employers have been able to ipnore the
old agreement under which one electrician worked wth ® adult mate,
and the mates have been downgraded to labourers. This loss in control
over conditions of work has as its hedfellow the big cut in wages,
Whet can the electricians io about this? Nothing at all official’y. The ETU executive have signed the agreement. The decision to do this was arrived at »y the union executive without any vote whatever heing taken on the matter by members of the union or their deleretes. The union executive which signs such an agreement cannot officially endorse any strike action sgainst it. Any protest the electricians make against an 'agreement' which has cost most of them wages and many their jobs hes got to be unofficial, And that, under the terms of the agreement and the Prices and Incomes Act, is illegal. The coffin into which the ETU executive has nailed the future of the electricians is a 'nepotieting body' known as the Joint Industrial Board. Its function can only by. the grossest perversion of the truth be called negotiation. The creation of the Joint Industrial Board has meant for the electricians in one fell swoop a speed ur, redundancy, conditional overtime, the loss of the right to strike and, fina‘ly, official recornition by the board an’? the union for the bosses' lack= list of militant workers, This deal, a disaster for the electricians, is - pood example of the kind of deal (and its results) which has been and is being proposed for many workers in Britain. It has manv names - decasualisation for the dockers; the ‘transport revolution’ or the miracle of the containers for transport workers; the ‘efficient utilisation of labour' at the oilworks, Fawley; manning deals on the railways, All these names are blinds to cover a gene:al attempt by private inilustry anithe govern~ ment to extract more work from fewer men under conditions in which the worker has no say at all about what he does, Productivity agreements, the Prices and Incomes Policy, incomes restraint, the vetting of wage claims, restrictions on trade union negotiating rights and practices, and the open threats of legislation and prison against unofficial strikers, all forn part of the Labour govermment's service to capitalism, to private industry. Why? Private industry needs money. In order to survive, its rrofits must be large enough to make it worthwhile for those who are already rich to stay in it ani get richer. Otherwise they won't bother. The ait which the government is o’ fering to the capitalist is a rise in. the profits. of private industry. Therefore wages must be kept low, more work must be got out of the same number (or fewer) men in a given time, and, finally, where fewer men can be made to serve, serve thev must ‘while the rest are made ‘redundant’, Why should a Labour government, a government in theory committed to socialism, agree to this? The reason is that, in. a capitalist economy, as Britain's is, NO government can act in any other way, «nless that government attacks the system itself. Even this attack -cild be crippled by the fact that the British rovernment itself is part of a capitalist political system. while we live under a canitalist system our action is always defensive. Those who run and own the legal and financial prison in which we live wil? never weary in their onslaurchts upon the little we have, and, unless they go, and the whole system of capital ist power with them, we have very little chance of more,
What is te be done?
1) Retect entirely the a
he proluctivity deals and rationalisatio
offered by the management of private or ‘nationalised! athe
2) Put an end t¢ Pri F
of the Fo mi ii rices and Incomes Act, weich is loaded in favour
3) Fipht for the recognition of the i
, right to strike and of -
tiation hetween workers and management at all levels. seen 4
Demand:
1) The complet i F
in fetta € nationalisation of the economy, an? the end of capitalism
2) Full workers! control over all ind i isati
niustries and organisations so
netionalised, and over the British economy, '
Fight for these policies in the political organisations of the Lahour
movement. Work for democratic unions controlled by the lay members,
If you have any comments on the above, contact the Bristol New Left,
secretary: G, Edwards, Basement Flat, 3 Windsor Terrace, Bristol *,