British strikes for British workers

Updated 2 February 2009

A few thoughts on the refinery workers' strikes:

Twas amusing this weekend to hear Gordon Brown telling us that wildcat striking, and solidarity striking, is naughty and unhelpful - and hilarious to know that the hopeless twat is very likely to be hamstrung by solidarity striking in this instance.

Hope it hurts, Gordon.

I've been giving this notion of unofficial strikes some thought in the last couple of days, and enjoying it:

If these refinery strikes are taking place independently of unions and union organisation - and the fact they took place so quickly and effectively suggests that they are (where was the balloting, the notices of action, and appeals to strike committees?) - well, it strikes me that the great Gordon could be stuck for a palatable response.

Palatable to the masses, that is.

It all hangs on the independence - or otherwise - of those refinery workers, and their impressive industrial action, from formal union structures.

The thing is - I think Gordon will struggle to punish people who strike independently of formal union organisation. He'll certainly struggle to keep them in line as effectively as he would unions that proposed illegal actions like solidarity striking.

That goes for Labour affiliated unions in particular. Those who know the union movement know only too well that Labour-affiliated unions aren't inclined to stand up to Gordon for real. Apart from anything else, they've probably forgotten how. 

Labour-affiliated unions are as terrified as they ever were of fragging their 'special relationship' with Labour: that relationship with Labour is still the route to government for many highly-placed union bureaucrats - persons who hope to run for political office one day, and/or are prepared to prostrate themselves, and utterly compromise the union membership, to keep the PLP's ear. Have a chat sometime to Fremantle careworkers about the trouble they've had getting permission to strike from union chiefs recently.

Without a doubt, too, this hopeless romance with Labour is the main reason why big unions show such a passion for flattening popular grassroots union activists who have the sort of charisma that might stir the grassroots into the likes of wildcat or solidarity strike action.

The grassroots desperately wants that kind of action - and the cynics among us can't help wondering how long refinery workers waited for unions to organise it.

Could have been anything up to ten years, I guess - about as long as public sector workers have been waiting for Labour affiliated unions to stand up to this privatising Labour government - a government that has cheerfully thrown low paid careworkers and cleaners, etc, to private sector wolves, and refused to honour the pro-worker pacts of the Warwick agreement, and steadfastly refused to repeal anti union laws, and so on, and on, and on. Ten years of total garbage, people, and little to suggest that things will improve in a hurry. Labour hasn't left itself with a lot of grassroots fans.    

Certainly, any union activist in a Labour affiliated union who proposes giving Labour the boot gets a favourable hearing from absolutely everybody - absolutely everybody except, of course, union chiefs. Take Unison - my personal favorite. Socialist party activists Glenn Kelly, Onay Kasab, Suzanne Muna and Brian Debus face expulsion from Unison as we speak for proposing that Unison breaks with Labour - and for proving very capable of exciting the grassroots to that view. Leftwing Unison activists Yunus Bakhsh and Tony Staunton have already been expelled for a similar reason.

Unison, of course, would never admit the political beliefs of the abovementioned were behind its recent stepping-up of expulsions and witchhunting of anti Labour lefties - officially, the activists in the firing line are or were up on charges to do with awesomely silly crap like photocopying pamphlets on union paper, and briefly using union computers for non union business, etc.

All are deemed to have broken this or that halfwitted union rule. That's how they get you in a big Labour-affiliated union if you publicly reveal that you don't care for Labour. There are literally thousands of union rules. As a member and/or activist, you surely accidentally break at least ten every day. Which doesn't matter a bugger until you reveal yourself a threat to a union's relationship with Labour. Those rules are there to get you if you need to be got. 

Outside of the rules, though, things could be challenging for union bureaucrats and Labour. That's the bit that has my ear. It'll be a little more difficult for Gordon to discipline people who organise outside union structures and beyond the immediate reach of a union's Labour party sycophants. Shooting such strikers would be gooey on telly. Will he stop at telling them solidarity striking is wrong?  

And solidarity striking (Labour spin seems to have recast this as 'sympathy striking' this week) is still illegal. Very. Thatcher authored those draconian anti union laws, and this Labour government has refused to repeal them - despite election promises, and the desperation of the union grassroots.

So. Do we have a group of workers who don't give a stuff for anti union laws? Are they operating independently of the union bureaucrats who'd either make them give a stuff, or start expulsion proceedings against them for photocopying strike pamphlets on a union ream, or using union computers to upload protest details to facebook? Has the recession delivered a bunch of people who have lost patience with unions - especially Labour-affiliates? 

It'll be bloody hard times for Gordon if it has. The big money - and power - is in threatening big unions with court action if they, or their members, break union laws. 

Independent action could catch on, as well. Times are not good - and the grassroots has been desperate for a long time already.

Increasingly exposed to the private sector's vicious employment practices, low paid staff have had no choice but to consider strike action in the last ten years. 

I think here of the Fremantle careworkers, or people like Chris Riley, the JJB Sports warehouse worker who I talked to for this story. He was trying to live on about £180 a week. It was hardly surprising to find that he couldn't. He and his careworkers had tried, and tried, to negotiate a slightly better rate with management (literally another £10 or £20 a week) and had got nowhere. Striking was their only option. And let's be fair - what other options were there? Riley told me he was desperate enough to risk getting the sack - which, as union organiser, he duly got.

Tony Blair was a vociferous opponent of the Thatcher anti union legislation - right up to the moment when he became prime minister. The great Gordon Brown - self-appointed representative of suffering workers and self-described soulmate of those already suffering the fallout of his recession - has been equally, um, disappointing.

So. Gordon can stand in front of these refinery guys all he likes and point out that wildcat and solidarity striking is unhelpful.

Hopefully, they'll tell him to stick that pointer up his arse.

Be hard to ignore that.