As the UK gets overexcited about railway staff holding some half-hearted strikes over everything and nothing in particular - and some even start talking about a 'return of the militants' - you realise how short our memories are.
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It seems like life on another planet now, but exactly 20 years ago, I was involved in leading a major strike against an engineering factory closure at Laurence Scott & Electromotors Group in Manchester. Recalling those times, when there was a mass trade union movement and when strikes to defend jobs and wages were a regular occurrence, points up how ridiculous it is to compare today with the early 1980s. But it also reveals some of the divisions and weaknesses that eventually led to the movement's final defeat.
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Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher had come to power in 1979, after the debacle of public sector strikes during the 'winter of discontent' helped to turn the tide against the Labour government. Thatcher announced that the country could no longer afford to 'feather-bed' the trade union leaders and officials. Not only would the collaborative culture of 'beer and sandwiches at 10 Downing Street' end - a frontal attack to smash the militants' section of the trade unions would be launched.
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One law after another forbade any sympathy strikes or solidarity action - the way one group of militants had supported others taking action against their employer. Solidarity action mainly took the form of workers refusing to handle - 'blacking' - goods from the firm involved in the strike, and had proved a valuable weapon for the small groups of militants that headed the rank and file of trade union members.
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By 1981, employers across the country were forcing through substantial redundancies in order to improve profits and help them survive the deep recession. The general approach of the trade union officials was to oppose 'compulsory redundancies', but agree to 'voluntary redundancies', usually for those who wanted to take early retirement with a proper pay-off. For the employers, this halfway house did not go far enough. For the workers it went too far, putting more on the dole queue and leaving fewer jobs to go around.
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 | | The trade union movement was like a toy aeroplane - likely to crumple on impact |
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Some employers, heartened by the experience of the Thatcher government, decided that now was the time for reasserting the old role of boss and paid servant. Mr Snipe, named by the Daily Mirror as 'the toughest boss in Britain', raided the stock exchange and bought up the Laurence Scott & Electromotors Group in Norwich and Manchester. The Manchester factory was superfluous to his requirements - only Norwich would fit into the main Doncaster operation of his company, Mining Supplies. He announced that the Manchester factory was to close with minimum redundancy money, and that this was not negotiable.
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In Manchester, April 1981, my workmates - staid and stolid workers, many of whom had voted for Thatcher's Tories - went on strike and occupied the factory of Laurence Scott's. The skilled workers had firmly believed that their employer needed their skills and expertise to allow Laurence Scott's to continue as a viable company. Sure, there would be some redundancies, but they thought that it would be the semi-skilled and unskilled who would be first out to the dole queue.
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When the skilled workers, who represented the majority of the shop floor, were notified that their jobs were for the chop, they changed from being the most conservative-minded of the workers to the most militant. The skilled workers saw the unions as theirs. Like many other factories, Laurence Scott's was a 'closed shop', which meant that you had to be a union member to get a job there. This was probably the only reason many of the semi-skilled and unskilled were in a union at all.
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The following 12 months, during which Laurence Scott's workers occupied the factory to prevent the loss of all of their jobs, would reveal the true position of the working class in the early 1980s, and the reality of its trade unions.
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Our strike revealed that what appeared to be the massed ranks of the organised working class was in actual fact a large number of little committees of militants, who considered they were acting on the behalf of the workers. The organisation we had was like one of those toy aeroplanes made out of sticks and tissue paper - it looked good, but was likely to crumple on impact. Thatcher and the Tory Party were to fall on the unions like a tiger, ignoring the trade union leaders who were begging for mercy, and making a nonsense of the left's illusions about 'workers' solidarity'.
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| | Hard picketing shut the Doncaster factory in one week |
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When Snipe announced the factory closure, I was one of those (along with supporters of a small group that became the Revolutionary Communist Party) who argued for an occupation, to hold the factory and its contents as ransom for their jobs. The unions were unable to offer an alternative because the boss refused even to meet them. His terms, he said, were 'not for negotiation'.
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The argument and the vote was won - albeit by a tiny majority - and the workers occupied the factory. It was immediately secured and 24-hour pickets were installed. The militants began touring other engineering factories for financial support. As for the rank and file, when they were not down for a 'shift' of picketing they stayed at home, many immediately signing on the dole. At once, the shop stewards' committee took control of the occupation. Sitting in private, they made their own deliberations and took their own decisions, with little or no feedback to the shop-floor workers.
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We argued for a flying picket to go out and hit the boss where it would hurt - at his main factory in Doncaster. The stewards were wary of proposing any escalation, because they did not trust the rank and file. They believed that, if the workers were offered a voice and a vote, they would opt to end the strike and go back for their redundancy money. Some of the militants had argued before the occupation that the ordinary shop-floor worker would not fight.
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Yet as the occupation dragged on into the summer of 1981, support for trying a picket in Doncaster gathered force. The workers felt that the occupation was going nowhere fast, that the few travelling around the country collecting solidarity money were having a holiday. Our demands for an open committee to discuss tactics and strategy for the occupation bore fruit, and a call for a picket of the Doncaster factory won the day.
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By this time it was June 1981. Hard picketing shut the Doncaster factory in one week, after also picketing any company that tried to cross our picket line. The 'toughest boss in Britain' was forced to run down to London to the Engineering Union's headquarters to sue for peace. Those of our workers who still retained any illusions in their union saw it go out of its way to bring the dispute to an end, at our expense. There were stories of a top union official and Labour Party member reassuring our boss that he would sort it out. The union machine feared workers standing up for themselves as much as the boss did.
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| | Having tasted blood, the workers took a while to be defeated |
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In July 1981, we were called to a union meeting in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, home of the Halle orchestra and choir. The union official present certainly did a lot of singing to us, but not in a sweet voice. He demanded that we obey the union executive and go back to work. Manchester's leading left-wing engineering union official also advised us to go back.
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The workers voted overwhelmingly against the union officials' demands. The union officials then illegally declared us 'unofficial'. Even though union branches continued to pay us strike pay, in the eyes of other union members we were unofficial and could be ignored without any feelings of guilt.
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Having tasted blood, the workers took quite a while to be defeated. Even when the bailiffs smashed their way into the factory and retook it with the aid of the police, even after their own unions had made them 'unofficial', they went back to picketing the Doncaster works with several feet of snow on the ground. The struggle ended only when the boss flew in helicopters to pick up goods from the Laurence Scott factory, and then used his hirelings, surrounded by an army of police (the chief constable had told us he would provide two police officers for every picket) to empty the factory, destroying all hope of our victory.
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The local committees of the shipbuilding and engineering unions had promised at their Manchester Confederation meeting that they would call a general strike in Manchester if the boss tried to empty the factory. In the event, one union district secretary came down during his lunch break and watched the factory empty. When his hour was up, he went back to his office in order to look after his engineering worker membership. It was February 1982.
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Two memories in particular stay with me, as a reminder of how different things were then. Early in the dispute, we had to win an argument for occupying the factory with a fragmented and uncertain shop floor. With the boss adamant that there would be no concessions, and the union leaders clearly unwilling to take him on, more than a few workers lacked conviction in our cause. At the key meeting in the factory, I argued that we should emphasise shop-floor solidarity by calling for an open vote that all could see: those voting against the occupation would have to move out of our ranks into one of the nearby factory bays, showing that they were not prepared to make a stand with their mates. A secret ballot, by contrast, would allow each worker's individual worries, about mortgages, debts and so on, to dominate their decision, while a show of hands would be less clear. The 'baying' method would show everybody where we all stood.
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| | Democracy meant going along with the majority vote |
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The vote for occupation was won. When the white-collar unions complained about the baying method, I made a point of explaining clearly why we had done it. The next time we had a vote, this method was used again without complaint. That was three days later, when the boss demanded that we go back to work straightaway or lose redundancy payment. The vote for continuing the strike was a little larger this time.
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I also remember, during the occupation, waiting for the Sheriff to appear with a 'hand over the factory' notice. I was arguing that we should barricade ourselves in the factory and refuse to negotiate with the Sheriff. One of the machine shop workers with a son in Tameside Police Force, who had previously called me a tinpot troublemaker, argued that once the Sheriff showed up we should vacate the factory in a lawful manner. But when a shop steward said 'Everybody inside while we barricade up', my opponent took his chair inside with him without a murmur. Union discipline was well established among the skilled workers. Democracy meant going along with the majority vote.
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Remembering it all now, it seems clear that long before the defeat of the miners' strike in 1984-85, we were aware of the unfavourable condition of the working-class movement. In 1981 we had gone around miners' welfares, asking for solidarity from the workers seen as the 'crack troops' of the trade union movement, the men whom even Maggie was supposed to be scared of. We found miners' union branch meetings made up of maybe a dozen militants at pits where thousands worked.
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Even at its best, the trade union movement of those days was little more than a hollow shell run by bureaucrats. By the time the miners' strike began, we were asking them, how can you win when 80 percent of miners are at home watching the struggle on the telly? It was obvious by then that the old working-class movement was on a hiding to nothing. But we had already seen the seeds of that defeat during our own dispute at Laurence Scott's.
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Yet what an exciting time it all was. Personally, I wish they were right about that 'revival'.
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Timeline: Laurence Scott's and the world, 1981-82
1981
April: Occupation at Laurence Scott's begins; First Columbia Space Shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral; Young blacks riot in Brixton
May: France has first socialist president; IRA member Bobby Sands MP dies after hunger strike of 66 days; Bob Marley dies; Assassins wound Pope in St Peter's, who is taken to hospital with two bullets in his abdomen
June: Picket of Doncaster factory of Mining Supplies; Israeli planes destroy Iraqi nuclear plant; Margaret Thatcher proposes new measures to meet wave of inner-city riots; President Ronald Reagan, on state visit to Britain calls on world to 'leave Marxism-Leninism on ash heap of history'
July: Free Trade Hall meeting where strikers reject trade union officials demands; Royal Wedding, a right Charlie & Princess Di; Bailiffs retake Laurence Scott factory, occupiers thrown out
August: Air Controllers in USA sacked by Reagan and led away in chains for taking strike action
October: President Sadat of Egypt assassinated by army officer
November: Return of 'unofficial' picket at Mining Supplies in Doncaster, first in heavy rain, then in heavy snow
December: Picket at Doncaster collapses; Solidarnosc strikes crushed by Stalinist regime in Poland, Lech Walesa arrested, 300 injured in clash with police; AIDS identified for first time
1982
January: North West Confederation of Engineering & Shipbuilding Unions meets in Manchester and pledges to call all union members out on strike if Mining Supplies attempts to empty Laurence Scott
February: Laurence Scott factory in Manchester emptied. North West District Secretary of AUEW calls at factory during his lunch break to wish us well, then leaves; Strikers accept defeat of strike and walk away
Read on:
The Great Rail Debate, by Jennie Bristow
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