BRITAIN'S LARGEST trade union, the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) is currently opposed to Labour Party Black Sections. But this position has been reached as a result of sentiments expressed on the subject by the general executive committee without any debate at rank and file level. In a long article published in the union journal, the Record, the new deputy general secretary Bill Morris spelt out the executive's opinion on Black Sections by attacking the movement as being 'narrow', 'divisive' and 'sterile'.
But the TGWU's present views on the subjects [sic] has some inherent contradictions. For instance, despite being a supporter of the campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, which has championed the 'Right of Reply', the TGWU have refused to print Black Section's response to the Bill Morris salvo. Furthermore, at the TUC in 1984 all the large unions, including the TGWU, backed a NALGO motion in support of black caucuses, which encouraged all affiliates to set up appropriate structures (like black members groups) to adequately represent black workers. In the same year, the TGWU delegation to the London Labour Party regional conference also voted in favour of Black Sections. And subsequently, at the national party conference the Agricultural Workers and Dyers and Bleachers trade groups supported us. The TGWU executive has since imposed its will on the huge block vote wielded by delegates.
A resolution in favour of Black Sections was on the agenda of last year's TGWU biennial delegate conference (BDC). Yet the leadership did not see fit to get it debated. This decision could not even be defended by Bill Morris who admitted that the union's position on Black Sections lacked 'moral legitimacy' until it had gone before a BDC.
The Black Sections campaign, on 17 June, took the fight for self-organisation to the unions special rules revision conference in Aberdeen. This was backed by a motion from a Birmingham branch of the TGWU supporting our demand. This gave the union an opportunity to come clean. The emergency resolution supported the setting up of black caucuses in the TGWU and Black Sections in the Labour Party.
We argue that the establishment of black caucuses within the TGWU's constitution is a logical extension of the union's support at the TUC for 'black members groups'. Black self-organisation allows a group of the oppressed to come together and formulate demands on how the general principles and organisation of the struggle for socialism within the union shall be applied in the black community. At present women and youth are allowed specific representation within the unions, the Labour Party, the national executive committee and the annual conference. Blacks are not.
The concept of black self-organisation is not new. It has long been accepted in political parties abroad. The New Zealand Labour Party has a Maori section and the US Democratic Party has a black caucus.
The NALGO black workers conference in Leeds last month proves that large unions are finally waking up to the need to help their members defeat racism. Indeed, TUC general secretary Norman Willis told a special black workers conference that unions should not see 'unofficial black members groups' as a threat to their constitution. He warned that if black workers felt unions did not care about their problems they would turn to other organisations.
Bill Morris's recent reverse when he failed to get on the TUC's general council, despite the backing of TGWU general secretary Ron Todd, proves that if you are black you cannot build a base without black workers who are the lowest paid and least represented and you must fight for a mechanism called black self-organisation which gives them a voice and a means of articulating their grievances.
If the TUC is committed to the development of positive policies to promote equal opportunity in employment regardless of workers' sex, marital status, creed, colour, race or ethnic origins and if, as the TGWU leadership has suggested, a commitment to racial equality is part and parcel of good trade unionism, then the labour movement should be at the forefront of the fight for our modest demand. It should be giving a full and fair hearing to the Black Sections movement instead of trying to muzzle the debate. Our experience is that when Black workers are allowed to decide for themselves as in NUPE, they support Black Sections.