War increases the necessity of working-class organization, for with the rapid rise in the cost of living and the power oft he Government real wages fall and working conditions worsen. This ist he time chosen by the trade union bureaucrats to make a judas bargain with the employers. A truce to the struggle for wages and the sacrifice of every trade union gain of the last 80 years. The trade union leaders are seeking to make the unions a sort of British Nazi Labour Front, but they have nothing to learn from Herr Ley.
But we cannot explain the decline of militant unionism simply by attacking the leaders. There have been many successful attacks on Right-wing leaders and their replacement by Lefts and Communists. Shortly afterwards, the Lefts and Communists have been bitterly attacked by their previous supporters for being even more reactionary than their predecessors. We must examine the ideas and structure of trade unionism. The leadership is but the natural fruit of the movement — “men do not gather figs of thorns, or grapes of thistles.” Syndicalism alone gives a constructive criticism of Trade unionism.
CRAFT OR INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM?
Most of the early unions of the British workers were trade or craft unions; that is, they organised men according to the tools they used. If a man used certain woodworking tools, he joined a carpenter’s union, slightly different tools would put him into another organisation. The unhappy result is that men in one factory, under one roof, and working together to produce one commodity, fine themselves “organised” in a score of unions because they use different tools (the engineering industry has over 50 unions). Constant quarrels over poaching of members and demarcation arise. Even inter-union strikes have taken place.
This method of organisation may have been justified in the Middle Ages, when a craftsman often produced a whole commodity by his own tools and labour, but it is obviously outdated in the twentieth century, when dozens of trades, each subdivided and assisted or guided by technicians, clerks, storemen, and others combine in the production of even the simplest commodities.
Equally unfortunate are the younger unions — the general workers, such as the Transport and General Workers’ Union. These unions seek to organise everyone without regard to any sort of working or other relationship. All go into a higgledy-piggledy mass, so that a metal worker on the same job as a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, will find himself in the same union as tram conductors and farm workers; or a docker will be in the Municipal Workers’ Union.
Syndicalism declares for industrial, not craft unionism. All workers in one factory, all producing the same commodity, should be in one union; all crafts, the unskilled and the semi-skilled, the clerks, the technicians, the women, and the youth. While the trade unions cry “100 per cent. trades unionism”, the craft unions exclude from membership 50 per cent. of the population — the women-folk — and divide the “organised” workers among a thousand unions while about twenty-five industrial unions would be sufficient. ONE INDUSTRY ONE UNION.
DOSS HOUSE ORGANISING
Syndicalism organises the union branch at the place of employment. Most unions (the miners are an exception) form their branches near their members homes. If a man works in Poplar and sleeps in Willesden, he joins a Willesden branch of his union. The unions are organised like dosshouses — they ask no where you work, but where you sleep.
Now the workers’ problems arise at his place of employment; there he can discuss with his mates the questions of factory safety or sanitation, piece-work scales, wages, or the tyranny of some petty overseer. But in his trade union branch he may not meet any workmate. In the engineering union he may meet fellow members working in various industries, chemical, power, shipbuilding, or transport; in many other unions it is even more varied. To sustain the greatest interest and militancy take the union branch to the job.
COFFIN CLUBS
The failure of the trade unions as fighting organisations is partly due to their friendly society character. They pay out sick, superannuation, unemployment, and death benefits, tasks now undertaken by the State. They have become not militant working class bodies, but coffin clubs. In the craft unions most of the contributions (often 2s. a week) and most of the energy of the organisation go to this end. Now the paying of friendly society benefits entails the accumulation of large funds. The existence of such funds means Investment-Capital. Investment in property, investment in capitalist enterprises which exploit their workers for profits, investment in WAR LOAN. These funds give the unions an interest in the welfare of capitalism which paralyses their activities as fighting bodies. The officials and the more timid members who hope to draw benefits fear a strike which might imperil the funds. Cut out the coffin club and a union can be run on a membership contribution of 3d. or 4d. a week.
It may be said that high contributions mean big strike funds and are a financial guarantee of militant action; but only a small proportion of the funds are paid out in strike benefit. In any case most strikes in the last thirteen years have been (and all strikes now are) unofficial and no money is paid out of union funds. But the absence of a war chest does not necessarily mean no strike. Some of the most bitter and desperate strikes have been fought on empty cash boxes. At the end of April 1926 most of the miners unions entered the struggle with about one week’s strike pay in hand; yet they continued the fight for over nine months.
Let us never forget that the comparatively wealthy unions of Germany succumbed to Fascism without a struggle, while the impoverished unions of Spain for nearly three years fought they whole world of capitalism. The possession of property does not make one a fighter, but often brings the fear of losing that property. A human failing Hitler has thoroughly exploited.
CLIMBING THE SOCIAL LADDER
One reason for the existence of the “Labour leader” type is the high rate of salaries paid by the workers to their leaders; salaries supplemented by taking on extra jobs, speaking, or writing for the capitalist press. Their income puts them in another class. They eat different food, live in better houses, attend Ascot and royal garden parties, their wives are introduced to titled women, and generally they live in a new world. Any sympathy they had for the workers dies. Their hopes are not for an equalitarian society, but for higher salaries.
Listen to a frank member of the species: in an article “I am not paid enough” in the “Daily Express” of June 6th, 1939, Mr. W. J. Brown, General Secretary of the Civil Service Clerical Association writes: “Among the relatively underpaid classes in Britain are the Trade Union leaders. I earn £1,000 a year. Sir Walter Citrine, the secretary of the T.U.C. also gets £1,000 a year. Mr. Ernest Bevin gets £1,250 a year. Mr. Marchbank, of the N.U.R. gets £1,000 a year.”
Just to show us what he is aiming at he quotes the salaries attached to a few “comparative” jobs. Green of the American Federation of Labour and his rival Lewis of the C.I.O. gets about £5,000 a year each. Next the Civil Service bureaucrats: £3,500 for Sir Warren Fisher, but for Sir Horace Wilson (the Government Labour adviser) “a beggarly £3,000 a year.” On to the company directors: Lord Stamp, £20,000; Lord Ashfield (L.P.T.B.), £12, 500; an Lord Gowan of Imperial Chemicals is reputed to get “some £70,000 a year.” Says W. J. Brown, “Is there any hope that the anomalies will be ironed out? Very little. Trade Union memberships behave sometimes as if they had no hearts.”
Organisers and secretaries should be paid the district rate of wage of their members, and there should be only the minimum of paid organisers. After all in the trade unions some of the most necessary work is done without pay by shop-stewards and others on the job. Organising, recruiting and struggling for better conditions. If those who envy Lord Ashfield leave us we have lost nothing, we still have the stalwarts who believe.
TRADE UNIONS AND THE STATE
A truly working class organisation can never collaborate with the State as do the trade unions. When the unions were first formed the State persecuted them, now it has won them over and incorporated them in the machinery of the State. Trade unions administer State health insurance and their representatives sit on Government committees from Labour Exchange committees which chop unemployment benefits to Royal Commissions for suppressing colonial workers. The trade union bosses even appear on the Honours List. The Versailles Treaty, which made the present war inevitable, bears the signature of a Labour representative, G. N. Barnes of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. Even the conscientious objector finds himself confronted by a tribunal with its trade union representative. How ironical a jest that a labour leader should be an arbiter of conscience!
The State is nothing but the executive committee of the ruling class and no-one can save the workers and serve the employers. Yet a trade union leader, Ernest Bevin, acts as Minister of Labour to the capitalist government. Under his rule the fruits of fifty years of struggle have rapidly vanished. The Essential Works Order and like measures conscript the workers, prevent them from leaving their jobs for more lucrative employment or transfer them violently from their homes and fine and gaol them for “absenteeism”.
Still fatheads are found who murmur, “It’s just as well to have a few of our own men in the Government.”
Syndicalism has no friends in the Government!