Coming Battles for Workers' Rights

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Coming Battles for Workers' Rights

Once more as the Labour Party Conference and the TUC Congress begin to appear on the horizon, the talk is again of the trade unions clashing with Tony Blair in a battle for workers' rights.

The TUC is putting forward that it wants stronger laws requiring statutory trade union recognition and workers' councils with some power, giving workers a bigger say in how companies are run.

The show-down between the Prime Minister and the unions over the involvement of private capital in public services was postponed at last year's TUC Congress when the terrorist attacks of September 11 intervened. But before this year's TUC Congress, the government is undertaking a review of employment law, which is said to be intended to defuse tension with the unions. Nevertheless, senior sources in the TUC are warning that the Prime Minister can expect "strong words" from delegates at Blackpool. Others are predicting that the issue will come to a head over the issues that the TUC is putting forward on labour legislation, rather than over the issue of public services.

Once again, a source of disquiet and contention which is set to erupt is that of the links between the unions and the Labour Party. For example, there is the anger over the Labour Party's ties with "centre-right" leaders, such as Silvio Berlusconi, and the stand of the government to giving only "fairness not favours" to the trade unions when it comes to the rights of organised labour and the interests of the working class.

What must be recognised is that the parameters of the debate are being set so as to confuse the issues and to divert the workers from fighting for their interests. The present Labour Party is an instrument which is being used to block the workers taking the road of their emancipation. It has little claim to being a party of labour other than its name and the historical links with the trade unions, which are today in a state of acute crisis. The trade unions, on the other hand, are in need of renewal so that workers can lay claim to them as instruments which fight for their day to day interests against the onslaught of the anti-social offensive and against the exploitation of capital. The Labour Party, which is now an enemy of the workers coming to power, has never been a direct instrument of their liberation. But it has gone through a history from its origins in the Labour Representation Committee, which was formed to represent the workers' trade unions in parliament. Once it was transformed into a political party, it inexorably took on the characteristics of a parliamentary political party integrated into the system which has been perfected to keep sovereignty away from the people. Its leaders were social chauvinists, and its tactics were of social democracy and class compromise. After the second world war, it took up the banner of the social welfare state which the Conservatives were loath to take up, in a form of state monopoly capitalism and as an alternative to the workers going for socialism. New Labour, with its so-called Third Way, has taken up the neo-liberal Thatcherite programme, but in a form which is supposedly between the two extremes of "conservatism of both the left and right".

While the Labour Party upheld social democracy, which it no longer does, it was possible to speak of the two wings of the labour movement, referring to the trade unions as the economic wing and the Labour Party as the political wing. This was an indication that class compromise pervaded what is called the labour movement, which presupposes these two wings. The trade union chieftains at that time strove to bring about a tripartite alliance of big business, big government and big labour, so that they too would benefit from the superprofits of imperialism, while the burden of the crisis was shifted onto the backs of the workers. But even those days are gone, and the interests of the workers these days are to be served by fighting against conciliation with social democracy, which, amongst other forms, strives to unite the left with the centre in political terms. The reading Tony Blair gives of the Labour Party's history, that its values have remained constant, though adapted to changing circumstances, is frankly absurd.

The political tasks of the workers in the opening years of the 21st century include embarking on the crucial and essential work of building a Workers' Opposition. The workers in this task have to rally round their pro-social fighting programme all the sections of the people. It is, in a sense, the task which workers faced as the 19th century turned into the 20th century, and capitalism turned into imperialism, but taken to a higher level and on a new historical basis. This is a political task, while the workers must fight that their trade unions wage the defensive struggle against all attacks on wages and conditions.

For much of its maturity as a party which claimed the allegiance of the mass of the workers, the Labour Party was neither a trade union, fighting the defensive struggles of the workers on the basis of class struggle, nor a revolutionary party, an instrument for the revolutionary transformation of society. In its moribund phase as a party of labour, it makes no sense for the workers to fight to reclaim New Labour for the labour movement, nor to "expose" it as a party managing the capitalist system better than the Conservatives can. Under Tony Blair, New Labour has been in power for over five years as the preferred party of the bourgeoisie, as the party pledged to implement the neo-liberal agenda of globalisation. It was over a year ago that it was elected for the second time, immediately escalating the anti-social offensive and pledged in effect to deliver social programmes to private capital. In other words, all the workers have to do is sum up what has been happening before their eyes. They will then be able to draw the warranted conclusion that building a Workers' Opposition to fight for the programme of the working class, including in parliament, through worker politician candidates, and planting the alternative, is a key political tasks. At the same time, to build a modern communist party, with all its links and ramifications within society, with a character that is both mass and revolutionary, is necessary as the instrument for the emancipation of the working class together with the masses of the people.

Rather than the workers fighting for a "say" in the corporate strategy of making businesses successful in the global market place, and looking upon this as the decisive battle, the "line in the sand" which it must cross, the workers must fight for their rights as individuals and collectives, and strike out on the line of march to a society in which the rights of all are recognised and guaranteed by virtue of the humanity of every single person, without qualification.