The general strike demand: time for a revival?
Posted on Wednesday 30 June, 2010
Filed Under Trade Unions
I HAVE no idea what social background Rosa Prince comes from, or where she went to university. But as she is political correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, I’d hazard a guess that the answers to those questions will most likely be ‘posh’ and ‘starts with an O’ respectively.
Whatever the case, her grasp of the history of trade union struggle is clearly not all it might be. How else account for this opening paragraph?
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, will also urge employees in both the public and private sectors to take part in civil disobedience during a wave of 1930s-style all-out general strikes.
Hmmmm. Unfortunately for Ms Prince, the decade in question – the years of the Great Depression and the national government – marked the inter-war low point for both union membership and levels of industrial action.
Let us assume that she is referring to the general strike of 1926. Only four years out, love. But even that was a one-off; ‘waves of general strikes’ have sadly never occurred in this country.
Anyway, I got the same press release that she did in my email inbox this morning, trailing a speech the Crowster will give to the RMT conference in Aberdeen today. The headline reads BOB CROW CALLS FOR GENERAL STRIKE ACTION, and good upbeat class war stuff it is, too.
“This ConDem administration has thrown down the biggest challenge to the Trade Union Movement since Margaret Thatcher took on the National Union of Mineworkers. I have no hesitation in saying that it will take general and co-ordinated strike action across the public and private sectors to stop their savage assault on jobs, living standards and public services …
“We have a right wing Tory Government propped up by a Liberal Party that has binned every commitment that it gave to voters in the run up to the election in order to grab power. That’s why we say this administration has no mandate for its cuts and that’s why we argue that bulldozing through their austerity measures amounts to fiscal fascism. It was zombie capitalism that dragged us into this mess and our people should not be made to pay to clear it up.
“The Trade Unions can only fight these attacks from the front foot. We have a Government of millionaire public school boys who are determined to rule by fear – fear of losing your job, fear of losing your home and fear of losing your benefits and the public services that you rely on.
“RMT says don’t fear them, fight them. Our Trade Union has a slogan, “never on our knees”, and from Aberdeen we want those words to ring out on the Millionaires Row of Clegg and Cameron. They started this fight with the working class and we are up for it.”
Regular readers will know that I am a stickler for the correct use of political terminology, and the formulation ‘fiscal fascism’ is clearly not a felicitous one. But sod it, he is addressing a union conference, not a postgrad seminar.
As an ex-Trot, I also recognize that the ‘general strike slogan’ – as we used to call it – represents a special thaumaturgical incantation that ‘objectively poses the question of state power’. Therefore it must never be invoked lightly, lest those using the magic words turn into a frog.
That has never stopped headbangers like the Workers’ Revolutionary Party employing it on a catch-all basis, distinguishing themselves with the copyright signature chant ‘TUC! Get off your knees! Call the general strike!’ even when protesting against local government nursery closures.
For its part, the Socialist Workers’ Party did not use the demand in the miners’ strike of 1984-85, when every other bugger did. But bizarrely, the call did form the centrepiece of the SWP’s agitation in the 1992 anti-pit closure campaign, when it was clearly out of place.
In the current climate, it is easy to see appeals for a general strike appeal making a comeback. I’m sure that Bob is being 100% serious in raising the question, and would walk it like he talks it if he got the chance, so let me stress that I explicitly exclude him from the criticism that follows.
But it has to be said that an abstract proclamation of the need for a general strike, in the knowledge that it ain’t going to happen, is an obvious way for any gobshite union official to position himself as a leftie.
Or perhaps I am being too dismissive. Opinions, readers?
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22 Responses to “The general strike demand: time for a revival?”
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It’s best you do not explain to them, that way we can laugh like hell.
Yes Rosa Prince got it wrong. But do they care. No they do not. They know the majority of working, middle and upper class have never heard of the General Strike. That is how they get away with it. The only reason I know of the general strike is because my father told me. It was never uttered at school.
Under present conditions the call for a general strike is idiotic. Unions across most of the private sector are struggling to maintain a presence in workplaces, never mind trying to mobilise millions of workers to take part in a general strike.
However there is scope for action by many unions in defence of public services.
But a one day protest strike would not be enough to make a lasting impact on policy – although such a protest is probably all that can be delivered at present.
Ideally it should be part of a campaign for an alternative economic strategy for full employment and democratic public services. There needs to be a credible alternative to present policy that is capable of gaining the support of millions of workers and unions across the public and private sector.
But that alternative does not exist. On the one hand most union leaders believe the best that can be achieved is to manage the cuts in ways that minimise the pain. On the other hand the Trot groups are advancing a set of demands that have little or no resonance beyond their own tiny memberships.
The unions are too weak and divided at present to force a substantial change in policy. The large majority of workers and union members will keep their jobs. Many will opt to accumulate more debt in order to maintain their core living standards. This means there will be little appetite for high-risk and sustained confrontations with employers and government.
What would make a real impact would be large-scale, violent and sustained urban unrest. A possibility – but unlikely. Many of the political-ideological conditions that helped to cultivate the unrest of the early 1980s are weak or missing.
But it is worth keeping our collective fingers crossed….
What would make more sense for the public sector unions is to call days-of-action with demonstrations in our major cities. It’s a good time of year for it. I think a the call for a general strike to bring down the government is far to early and would not have the support.
As for those ‘headbangers like the Workers’ Revolutionary Party’, they did use to have good May Days.
“Meanwhile the first weak attempts at the preparation of great mass actions have discovered a serious drawback in this connection: the total separation and independence of the two organisations of the labour movement, the social democracy and the trade unions.” ~ Rosa Luxemburg – The Mass Strike (1906)
No change there then…can’t see the Miliband circus twins, Ed Balls and Lady Abbot leading from the front and shouting “Avante comrades…Avenge 1926!”. More likely to be calling in the “heroic” paras on the Today programme.
Les Abbey. A General Strike would probably be ruled illegal as it would not be a trade dispute. The union leaders would probably be sued by individual companies.
Comrades!
Let us march with the featherbedded trade union bosses in their heroic and selfless struggle for … er … ! And, er, solidarity with Gaza and Cuba and …”
Here is a rather fine piece of writing you might have missed:
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3452/
And innumerable Bulgarians have told me how “… tear down this wall …” was whispered from mouth to ear.
What use would a general strike be at this moment in time? Other than to give the papers a narrative to explain away the coming economic storm. “The Tories would have saved us if the unions hadn’t have sabotaged Britain, probably in the pay of the Soviet…. er… Muslims.”
LabMike,
The far left don’t need to look at the outcomes or overall strategy of a campaign – look at all the Right to Work demos and marches etc that nobody has heard of outside the pages of SW.
In fact, an impotent general strike would suit the far left best – then they can attract loads of ‘workers in struggle’ to their meetings to explain exactly why the general strike isn’t working. Probably thanks to the TU bureaucrats and that.
One of the revolutionary left’s comedy candidates who got 90 something votes in the general election has taken to calling for this at every opportunity. He’s such a nice guy that I feel really sorry for him and want to suggest that he has a lie down till his grip on reality returns.
@Daveinlittleengland – did you consider the possibility than when Ms.Prince referred to waves of general strikes, she had a more international perspective in mind?
The reference to “zombie capitalism” suggests he has being paying some attention, at least in titular fashion, to the far left’s analysis, speaking of which, a suggestion that there is a time for every purpose under Heaven. Perhaps a time of generalised attacks by the employing class is a good time not to lower the bar on slogans of resistance.
Skidders
I suspect you overestimate Cde Prince’s level of class consciousness.
“But it has to be said that an abstract proclamation of the need for a general strike”
From one stickler for correct terminology to another, why abstract?
Ok, low chance of success, no general strike for decades. On that principle England’s participation in the World cup was abstract.
The call for a general strike is typical Crow hyperbole and posturing, but at least it correctly raises the issue of strike action against the coming cuts, so I can’t get too worked up about it. Crow’s call for withdrawel from the EU and his attempt to blame the crisis of European capitaliism on the EU, is – on the other hand – positively reactionary and harmful to the class struggle. The ignorance of this semi-Stalinist buffoon was amply demonstarted by his claim (at the RMT conference yesterday) that the Common Market/EC/EU was designed “to stop the threat of socialism and communism spreading…they were worried by the social benefits people had in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union at that time.” Nothing to do with World War 2, then, Bob?
And the idea that there’s be no cuts if Brtitain simply pulled out of the EU is simply…an insult to the intelligence and well as a mockery of any sort of scientific understanding of how international capital operates. To call Crow a Little Englander is an insult to real Little Englanders who at least have an internally coherent vision of a siege economy and an isolationist future. Crow’s anti-EU posturing is just incoherent nonsense.
Crow certainly shows a refreshing attitude when compared to other union leaders, such as say Tony Woodley, the great capitulator.
The structure of the EU is not compatable with the Euro and economic integration and this incompatability is a problem that the EU needs to overcome, and the jury is out whether a capitalist system can deliver it. So the current problems in the EU should definately open our eyes to it’s problems. So pro-EU posturing is every bit incoherent nonsense as anti-EU posturing.
And Crow is NOT a little Englander, this is dihonest propaganda, he says himself ‘I have more in common with a worker in Asia than I do with a boss in England’.
Dean: so why did Crow waste his members’ money on the “No2EU” campaign, that balmed all workers’ economic ills on Europe? Why did he use his speech at this week’s RMT conference to attck freedom of movement *by workers* within Europe as “freedom for the bosses”? Presumably, then, he supports tighter immigration controls?
As I said, the man’s an incoherent poseur and – on Europe at least – an out and out reactionary. And that’s putting it politely.
There is little doubt that Crow, right or wrong, scares the middle classes. Love to see him as an MP.
Jim, there is little doubt that freedom of movement of labour inside the EU has forced down the pay of skilled and semi-skilled British workers. Crow can’t be faulted for pointing that out. That is why you can get cheaper electricians and plumbers. Governments have been happy to use this to fuel the boom we have been living through. Was there an alternative? Sure government set minimum rates for various skills would have reduced the downward pressure on pay.
Problem we had gives Crow every right to talk about it giving “freedom for bosses.”
Jim Denham,
Why do you insist on being dishonest? If you have criticisms of No2EU and Bob Crow do us the courtesy of making those criticisms honestly. No one has blamed the EU for ‘all workers’ economic ills’. On Europe he is not an out and out reactionary. He opposes what he sees as a neo liberal project. You need to explain why you are in favour of the EU constitution.
To paraphrase the No2EU,
“A united Europe, bringing together in real solidarity all the resources and human talent in the different countries and cultures encompassed in the 490 million-strong European Union (EU), would be an enormous step forward in the struggle for a new world. But can the EU unite Europe, not in an artificial or imposed ‘unity from above’, but in a genuine coming together of the European peoples? The answer to this question, is no.”
I have to say I think they are probably correct about that.
And the EU treaty does impose immigration controls, so by being for it YOU also favour immigration controls.
we have the foot-soldiers to fight a general strike,they cannot affort union fees and many work for parasitic agencies on a day to day regime. lower the fees or why not let us join for free ?
we can fight if given the chance before the bnp snatches any more of us .
Jimmy must have gone to an awful school.
In Barrow-in-Furness the General Strike was a living memory in the sixties and we even had school visits by 60-somethings who were 20-something militants at the time of the General Strike.
Bill Corr. Actually it was a good school considering we were just factory fodder. The teachers after all were doing what they were told to do. It is probably better being given the history from your parents as they lived through the General Strike. My father also did his compulsary bit in the Slave Camps in Norfolk.
in 1926 when the working classes rebelled against the goverment poor wages bad working conditions social housing to name a few the last time anyone rebelled was due to thatcthers dreaded poll tax which saw thousands of people take to the streets the time is a comming when the working classes together will call another strike the weak link in this goverment is the liberals most of them have been supporters of the left the way forward with the unions is selected strikes that wil do most damage to this goverment