British jobs for British workers: not the same thing as saying ‘Enoch was right’
Posted on Monday 2 February, 2009
Filed Under Trade Unions
PERHAPS the single most ugly page in post-war industrial relations history is the story of how some sections of the working class reacted to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968.
London dockers, Smithfield meat porters, builders and workforces at several small factories warmly responded to the Tory MP’s deliberate attempt to incite racial hatred against black people in this country, showing their enthusiasm with a wave of unofficial stoppages.
Comparisons have been drawn by some parts of the left between this episode and the events of the last few days, which have seen a dispute against the use of foreign labour at Lindsey oil refinery spark a wave of wildcat strikes across the construction industry.
I’ve been trying to think the issue through this morning, and have concluded that the cases are simply not analogous. Let me give some of the reasons.
First, the Powell walkouts were an expression of political support for the incendiary rhetoric this man directed against the Race Relations Bill, including his argument that Britons were becoming ‘strangers in their own country’, and his prediction of widespread bloodshed unless the government turned to voluntary repatriation.
The underlying issue in the current wildcats is a genuine industrial grievance. The reality is that tensions have been building in British workplaces over the last quarter of a century of management triumphalism. Things always were going to blow at some point; the issue that provides the detonator is thus completely incidental.
Second, there is the scale and geographical spread of the stoppages. The Powell strikes were overwhelmingly based in East London and involved relatively small layers. Various books in my library give different figures for how many dockers joined in, but the estimates range from a low of 200 to a high of 1,000. The Smithfield participants were just a few dozen. By contrast, the 2009 strikewave extends nationwide, and has already won the backing of greater numbers.
Third, while the principal slogan – ‘British jobs for British workers’ – is clearly misguided, wrong-headed and of infelicitous provenance, today’s context is thankfully very different to the one in which the National Front launched the catchphrase in the 1970s. The category of ‘British workers’ now firmly includes British workers of black or Asian origin. That makes it qualitatively different from ‘Don’t knock Enoch’ or ‘Back Britain, not black Britain’.
This is not to say that it is a demand the left would have chosen, or even that its overtly nationalist implications are not divisive. Of course it represents a propaganda godsend for the British National Party. And yes – to borrow the phrase Greg Dyke used in relation to the BBC – the photographs of the picket line look hideously white.
But the call does not seem to me to be consciously racist in motivation. As the old joke goes, I wouldn’t start from here. But to use that as an excuse for indifference or inaction would be a tactical error.
Oh, and here’s one further thing to bear in mind; just nine years after London dockers marched in praise of Powell, they were marching in solidarity with low-paid Asian women at the Grunwick film processing plant.
But it is up to the left to ensure that the new militancy draws the right political conclusions. What is more, we should be fully aware of what will happen if we fail.
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18 Responses to “British jobs for British workers: not the same thing as saying ‘Enoch was right’”
I bet if Cameron had said “British jobs for British workers” you wouldn’t be half as tolerant, Dave.
Obo
I may be a Labour Party member, but as regular readers will tell you, I do criticise the Labour leadership when they deserve. Which – in my book – is rather too often. I did in fact have a go at the speech when GB made it.
Uhuh.
I wonder if you’ll use this excuse for any Tory who says something you disagree with: “today’s context is thankfully very different to the one in which the National Front launched the catchphrase in the 1970s.”
“Of course we recognise that people, British people, are worried about jobs being taken by workers from other countries. And yes, those workers from other countries are foreigners. But the point is that I am working from the moment I wake up in the morning to ensure that hard working British families are protected from the global downturn which started in America and which is all the fault of greedy bankers who until just last week were my best friends.
Going on strike and protesting about foreign workers, well, I say to you that that’s not the right thing to do and it’s not defensible. What we’ve set up is a process to deal with the questions that people have been asking about what has happened in this particular instance, and to whitewash any little problems.
When I talked about British Jobs for British Workers, I was not just stealing a policy from the BNP, or trying to get a favourable headline, I was taking about giving people in Britain the skills, so that they have the ability to get jobs which were at present going to people from abroad and actually encouraging people to take up the courses and the education and learning that is necessary for British workers to be far more skilled for the future. This education and training is on top of all my investment in schools and the ever rising and improving examination results, where now every school leaver has 147 GCSE’s at A* or better. Luckily I have abolished Boom and Bust so that Britain is uniquely well placed to attract a lot of immigrants keen to get the benefits of living here. And the tax credits as well.”
Matthew Taylor @ the RSA has an interesting piece on how we should reject authoritarian hierarchism. http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/thersa/foreign-workers-miserable-children-and-the-state-were-in/
I really wish we could knock this one on the head. Most of Britain is overwhelmingly white. Outside of the main urban areas, the population is overwhelmingly white, and even in the non-London urban areas the ratio is pretty heavily skewed.
There’s nothing at all sinister about the fact that most of the picketers are white; they are probably a perfectly representative cross-section of the local population. Dyke’s quote is hideously London-centric.
I’m still hanging fire on passing judgement on the actual strikes, but for the quip to be racist “British” would have to be synonymous with white. The Powellite protesters (whom H.P. Sauce supported) definitely were, and represented a lingering gasp of an already-declining industrial base after the post-War immigration.
Do we know, on the other hand, if these strikers are not staffed by the sons and daughters of the same immigrants, or even later East African Asians?
EC Law requires jobs to be put out for tender. The American firm hiring these people (using an Italian subsidiary) are claiming that they are receiving exactly the same wages as a British worker, but the union begs to differ. The question it seems to me is do we want a situation where local labour is unable to compete and this country becomes a bandustan? Without work, men will not acquire teh skills and experience necessary to remain part of the workforce. The Government is claiming it is nothing to do with lower wages and worse conditions, but that the British men did not have the necessary skills. Why not train them then, otherwise they will always be at a disadvantage. It’s not surprising that the workers phrase it in those terms, they are not sophisticated, conscious revolutionary socialist, they are just ordinary blokes trying to keep a roof over their headds, or as Sarah Palin said ‘Joe Sixpacks’. Gets me, it really illustrates the truth of Marx’s analysis. What is the working class/proletarian? It is the person who only has their labour-power to sell, and if no-one wants to buy it, you’re bloody fucked!
From “Shiraz Socialist”:
Credit where it’s due: the comrades of the Socialist Party appear to have played a blinder in giving the present strike wave a clear set of left-wing and anti-racist demands. This information comes from ‘A Very Public Sociologist’ in our comments box, #18 below Jack Haslam’s article “Distinguish between..” , but is so important that we decided to give it headline status:
Update on the spreading strikes by construction engineers in the refinery and power industry
Report by phone from Alistair Tice (Yorkshire Socialist Party) on the mass picket at the Lindsey total refinery North Lincolnshire. Monday 2 February 2009
“The strike committee accepted the main demands of Keith Gibson and John Mckewan to put to the mass meeting today.
Keith is a Socialist Party member and on the strike committee and John is a Socialist Party supporter and victimised worker from the refinery.
The strike committee added an extra demand, calling for John to be reinstated into his job.
The demands were
* No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
* All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.
* Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.
* Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers – fight for a future for young people.
* All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
* Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers – including interpreters – and access to Trade Union advice – to promote active integrated Trade Union Members.
* Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.
The mass meeting overwhelmingly voted for the demands put to them by the strike committee.
Prior to the meeting Keith and John (and their wives who had came to support the strikers) had seen some BNP members in the car park and told them that they were not welcome, with that the BNP cleared off.
Socialist Party members gave out over 700 leaflets putting our position (which was now the position of the strike committee) and the leaflet was welcomed. One worker (before he read the leaflet) thought that were giving out BNP leaflets and protested that he was not a racist and didn’t support the BNP and was relieved when it was explained to him that they were Socialist Party leaflets and supported workers unity.
Keith is part of the negotiating committee that is now in discussions with the management at the refinery. The strike is continuing and looks as if it is spreading throughout the country at the time of writing with Sellafield and Heysham nuclear plants out. Workers at other plants, according to the BBC, have also decided to stay out, these include Grangemouth and Longannon in Scotland. Warrington and Staythope in Newark are also out as well.
The strikes are spreading from fiddlers ferry in Warrington to the Drax power station in Yorkshire.”
We at ‘Shiraz’ don’t often agree with the Socialist Party (though-contrary to blogosphere mythology- Jim is the only AWL member of our team), but on this we are happy to concede: you’ve done bloody good, comrades!
I do not think the EU had any intention of whole gangs to move from one country to another taking jobs. I was once asked to take twenty workers from here to France to finish off a contract, but those twenty would have been part of 250 finishers on a large hospital. In the end nobody left these shores because the contract was extended and we were not needed. Something tells me this contract and the other contracts are about cheap Labour, because if you take a gang from Italy pay them traveling expenses plus wages plus other cost it has to be cheaper to hire people who are local, unless of course a deal has been done with the Italian government
The strike committee added an extra demand, calling for John to be reinstated into his job.
The demands were
* No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
* All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.
* Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.
* Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers – fight for a future for young people.
* All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
* Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers – including interpreters – and access to Trade Union advice – to promote active integrated Trade Union Members.
* Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.
The mass meeting overwhelmingly voted for the demands put to them by the strike committee.
Well, I’ve got a very high opinion of ordinary people – because by and large they’re frigging ace…but it looks like I still underestimated them in the post below.
I owe the strikers an apology.
In the unlikely event any of them read this – Sorry.
)
@Rob Knight,
Yes, i also find this obsession with workers language on the dispute somewhat bizaare: its like the old heresy hunters of medieval times, looking for evidence, signs of deviance, etc. Some of the people on the picket line have said well dodgy things, well, outside of middle class left world, such comments while totally wrong and unpleasant are sadly more frequent than we would like. In other words, a few idiots and few BNP followers doesn’t make a whole strike suspect.
even when it may look like the worker is being racist, there may be more too it.
‘from PR website
‘Earlier on BBC 1 news interviewed a striker who said something along the lines of ” these portuguese, Eyeties (sic) you can’t work with them”. The same interview was just shown on Newsnight where the full sentence was shown,”you can’t work with them, we’re segregated, they are coming in in full companies….”. So the BBC 1 news cut the interview to make him look like he was making a racist comment, when he wasn’t (leaving aside the language he was using).’
“So the BBC 1 news cut the interview to make him look like he was making a racist comment, when he wasn’t”
Yes, I saw both the BBC1 News and Newsnight. The editing of the news clip completely changed the meaning of what was said.
Not a great effort from the BBC, particularly given that the news is watched by lots more people.
‘Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available’
or, to put it another way
British Jobs For British Workers
Not if you unionise immigrant workers
E10 Rifle
Unionised immigrant workers still wouldn’t be local though, would they? That’s the problem with that demand.
Why haven’t the views of the Italian & Portuguese workers been taken into account?
Has anyone attempted to ask them about their pay and conditions, directly?
“Unionised immigrant workers still wouldn’t be local though, would they? That’s the problem with that demand.”
Yes they would. I define local as “living in the area”. The eastern Europeans living in the flat below me in east London are as local as I am, someone who grew up in the area.
Fair and equal labour laws – as opposed to the unfair and unequal ones exposed by this dispute – would have ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ people working AND living alongside each other, rather than one group of them being stuck on a prison ship in the freezing sea.