The limits of direct action
Posted on Friday 23 November, 2007
Filed Under Trade Unions
I remember being slightly shocked when, at one point during the many, many industrial defeats of the Thatcherite eighties, a union activist friend of mind told me that he and his workmates were frustrated with the usual negotiating channels.
They’d had enough sitting around the negotiating table and getting nowhere. So they were plotting to purchase balaclavas and baseball bats and administer a severe beating to a particularly unpleasant manager.
Nothing ever came of the threat. But it’s interesting that even a politically worked-out Marxist could be driven to consider thuggery as a tactic. The surprising thing is that this sort of stuff doesn’t happen rather frequently in the UK, a country where even union representation often means little in practice.
But sabotage is a feature of the current French rail dispute, according to many media reports, including this one in The Times:
Saboteurs raised the stakes in the stand-off over President Sarkozy’s reforms yesterday, staging a series of attacks on France’s high-speed rail network that further disrupted services already crippled by a week-long transport strike.
Vandalism to signal systems around Paris, Lille and other cities delayed TGV express trains for up to three hours, adding to disruption from the strike on the SNCF railways and the RATP Paris transport authority …
Much of the French press blames the far left, which denies any involvement:
Christian Mahieux, boss of the Trotskyite Sud-Rail union, which is supported by 14 per cent of railway workers, insisted that no railwaymen would have committed the sabotage. France should ask: “Who profits from the crime?”, he said.
Guilty or not guilty? I’ve got no idea. But the situation does raise some interesting questions about the limits of direct action. Any effective rail sabotage presumably has to put the travelling public at risk.
So can it ever be justified? And what about lumping the boss? Your opinions, please.
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23 Responses to “The limits of direct action”
Couldn’t you have held this one over until Southpawpunch gets better?
As I’m sure you’re aware, Dave, the Terrorism Act 2000 defines ‘terrorism’ to include any action involving serious violence against a person or serious damage to property, where that action is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and where it’s carried out for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
And the Terrorism Act 2006 makes it a criminal offence to directly or indirectly incite or encourage others to commit acts of terrorism. This includes the glorification of terrorism, where this may be understood as encouraging the emulation of terrorism.
So this isn’t really an area where the broadest possible discussion can easily take place.
So Phil, what you’re trying to say is “hold this one over until Southpawpunch gets better” and then get him, and Dave as the legal owner of this site and therefore presumably liable for all comments, arrested for “promoting terrorism”? Assuming SPP’s line on this issue (be that issue either ‘lumping the boss’ or ‘French railway infastructure sabotage’) is the one you, and I, suspect it might be.
Also: surely, under the terms of the Terrorism Act 2006, a lot of far left groups in Britain, particuarly those of the ‘Leninist’ variety, are ripe for police raids/mass arrests/etc.? Calling “one solution revolution” can reasonably be interepreted as calling for action involving serious violence against a person or serious damage to property, where that action is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and where it’s carried out for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, can it not?
Violence is a different matter, but I think it is high time that workers and their unions brought workplace disputes, in extremis, home to the personal and domestic lives of managers, directors and shareholders. I don’t think it would be justified in the case of a dispute over 4pc rather than 5pc, say, but in a dispute over principles like union recognition, bullying, intimidation of activists, I’d say it was entirely appropriate to ruin someone’s family Sunday lunch with a loud peaceful protest in their garden etc.
KMS – hmmm. Didn’t really think that one through.
Paul – that’d be harassment rather than terrorism. I’m not aware of any offence of encouraging harassment, so you should be OK.
I meant my comment (regarding SPP), incidentally, (vaguely) humourously – reading it again, it comes across as being quite the opposite; though there is a serious point behind it on ‘terrorist’ legislation, ‘lyrical’ or otherwise.
And Phil: the peaceful protest would have to take place on public land, on the pavement, outside their garden, as otherwise it’d be trespass. Would that (still?) be ‘harrassment’? Maybe. Would it be reasonable action to take? Often.
Worker trespass, harassment, sabotage, etc, are wrong, of course, and are good ways to lose in the public eye. Genuine intimidation can be best answered by peacefully protesting and taking a movie to Youtube, blogs, the media, and maybe a lawyer. Would Ghandi or Martin Luther King have won if they’d gotten violent? Of course not. Hamas IS violent; how many rights have they brought their people?
The quickest way to come across as an internet blowhard is of course to talk about the need for others to get violent or insist violence does have a place in politics, especially revolutionary politics. And as said, even talking about violence can land you in jail now.
However, the happy history put forward by grumpy above is such bollocks. Neither Gandhi nor King operated in a vacuum and neither man held to non-violence at all cost, but only as a tactic that fit the circumstances.
If there’s anything history should teach us, is that it’s been the threat of violence which got us democracy, some semblance of civil rights and all that. As Ken Macleod put it:
Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear *fucking* weapons.”
Sabotage of course comes from ‘sbot’ – clogs, which were, or so the tale goes, put on railway lines to snarl up trains by French workers in the 19th century. So a discussion is relevant in more ways than one.
On this specific case my judgement is that demonstrates the truth of my comment in the latest Briefing: that the present wave of French strikes risks opening up a division between an ultra-radical minority and the rest of the working population.
It was noteworthy that even during its height the railway strikers were not a real majority, and were divided between various union federations. This is a well-known feature of French trade unionism. As a result there were many who ignored the strike across large swathes of the country.
A conclusion one can draw is that such acts, and the generally more violent and demonstrative nature of industrial disputes when they do break out in France are a result of weakness not stength. Unions are in fact generally at a pretty low level of support and the overall days lost to strike action has been decreasing for years – ask some of the academic types who study the subject in detail (eg, at London Metropolitan University) and you’ll find the strength of the Gallic unions is much exaggerated as well. It’s these conditions that spur such acts.
In the UK when the unions were much stronger it was ‘one out all out’ – a rare event in France. Sabotage and violence are signs of desperation, not power.
Another act of French workers is to hold the boss ‘hostage’ in an office. This is much more effective since it does not involve physical harm.
PS I meant ‘sabot’.
Useful French expression, ‘les gros sabots’ as in la Ligue a mis ses gros sabots.” (the LCR’s put its big boots in… that is it’s interfered in)
There used to be an expression in the American workers’ movement, ‘throwing in the wooden shoe’ ie sabotage that was used to describe disruption. I remember my parents had a copy of an old Wobbly songbook and that was the title of one of the songs. ‘Fraid I don’t know the words but I expect it’s on the interweb somewhere. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with disruption, as long as nobody gets hurt. Ken McCleod (who he?) is so right, our forefathers and mothers fought for these rights and bloody well died for them as well. Lest we forget.
Another act of French workers is to hold the boss ‘hostage’ in an office.
And sometimes playing an endless loop of the Internationale at them at the same time?
I wonder if the ‘manager held hostage at Northern Rock incident’ was accompanied by someone playing Conflict’s album ‘Turning rebellion into money’. Unlikely, unless some situationists were involved. Sadly.
Pardon me if I don’t get all goopy-eyed at a fundamental right to see unions use money corruptly, fail to represent worker interests, and improving peoples’ lives by making innovation hard. Oh, and violence. Most of modernity seems to agree, given current membership levels. For unions to ever move forward and become popular again, they’ll have to lose that monopoly.
Sue, you think violence is right just because it’s, well, traditional? One Chingiz Khan agreed with you, I believe.
Neither Gandhi nor King operated in a vacuum and neither man held to non-violence at all cost, but only as a tactic that fit the circumstances.
Hm, don’t you have rather better access to media, police, and courts than either MLK or Ghandi? The circumstances look like a better fit to me. When you take a swing at a manager or his garden, you’re just inviting cycles of retribution rather than representing the workers’ interest (oh, yeah, unions are about BARGAINING, not warfare, aren’t they?). The days when most police would helpfully beat up strikers for management have been over for most of a century; time you noticed.
hang on, the unions had more members when they more obstructive to management, not less…
‘… the Terrorism Act 2000 defines ‘terrorism’ to include any action involving serious violence against a person or serious damage to property, where that action is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and where it’s carried out for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.’
Looks like Blair & Co could be done under the Terrorism Act over his support for the US attack on Iraq.
Under “designed to intimidate the public”, you mean? (The Iraqi public and/or government don’t count – that would be international law.)
Grumpy betrays his politics. Why is ‘disruption’ necessarily violent? What about go slows? non-coperation? all sorts of tactics. Only the most dyed in the wool Tory or NuLabourite could consider those violent.
Only the most dyed in the wool Tory or NuLabourite could consider those violent.
It is comments like the above that show how little the fr left have learned from the last decade.
The point of New Labour was to beat the Tories, not to continue Tory rule in some other form.
But, yes, beating them involved accpeting the reality: not least that the (very vast) majority of working people wanted to preserve ballots before strike action.
Of course, if you are vanguardist then you don’t give a toss what the majority think: but then that is why all your political projects end in mass murder.
Just to be clear: I am not commenting on the issue of disruptive strikes being violent – but on the idea that “dyed in the wool” New Labour (or NuLabour as the Grand Alliance of Trots and Tories insist on) are one and the same.
Sue, I didn’t bring the notion of violence to this thread, did I? You might want try reading my actual comments. Here’s how my first comment started.
Worker trespass, harassment, sabotage, etc, are wrong, of course,
See anything about noncooperation or go-slows? Or going on strike? See anything on my list you happen to think is GOOD?
In the meantime, I couldn’t be bothered to get my last screed right. I wrote, “For unions to ever move forward and become popular again, they’ll have to lose that monopoly,” without explaining the reference.
I meant to point out first that unions have inherent workplace monopolies to organize. And they abuse them as much as any corporate monopoly. That’s why they’re corrupt and unrepresentative: because they can be. Want unions to move forward? Taking away the monopoly is what it’ll take.
LOTB,
the ballots aren’t the main issue (although constructing the rules so as to make a meaningful ballot incredibly difficult and costly is) – the big question is solidarity strikes – restore them and PFI is dead in the water – without them Trade Unionism means virtually nothing. So, you’re starter for ten, if it was possible to restore legal solidarity striking, would you do it? The clock is ticking…
I didn’t vote to give £24billion of public money to Northern Rock. Did you? I didn’t vote to allow the Customs and Revenue to lose the personal details of at least half the population. Did you, Last of the Blairites? I didn’t vote to fail to properly equip soldiers in the front line. Did you?
By the way, before everyone starts sneering ‘bloody Harry Placer’, I’d just like to point out that I never supported the British (or American)troops going into Iraq in the first place, and I think they ought to be withdrawn immediately; however, having committed young men and women to armed conflict, they should be provided with the best weapons and protective gear possible.
In a liberal democracy, direct action could be justified if we are deprived of high-standard ‘coordination goods.’
This is an argument that is open to criticism because it suggests that we should only break the law when high-flown principles are at stake (press freedom, freedom to campaign, etc) as opposed to being able to break the law over more concrete issues (poverty, unemployment, discrimination etc). I’d still make it though.
I saw a few good articles a while ago – making this case (admittedly, about autocratic regimes). But I think that the principle is transferable – and it makes a great case for left-liberalism.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/16/news/edmesquita.php
http://metta-spencer.blogspot.com/2007/09/when-does-nonviolent-resistance-work.html