demands of women workers, it actively promoted racist policies, it failed to organise youth.
The price paid for this backwardness, even in the most immediate terms, let alone the crime it represented against the Oppressed, and the historical consejuences for the labour movement, was normous. Taking simply the electoral consequences, for example, it condemned the labour movement to 16 years of Tory government between 1951 and 1974 - Labour defeated the Tories in the vote among at every general election from 1945 to 1974 but the Tories appealed over the heads of the male working class to women to win the elections of The significance of the present development is that the labour movement can no longer allow itself such luxaries. What is involved in the attempt, and necessity, of nonse to begin lo organise in the 'periphery' is a reversal of be entire historic trend of British trade Some implications of the necessity of he unions to start to organise among the periphery, where the overwhelming maority of workers are women many black, are beginning to penetrate
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the trade union movement. Some were spelt out by Bill Morris in Tribune on 23 January discussing the 'link up' campaign: First, the trade unions will have to come to terms with their own history; their own failure to represent the very people who are now being pushed into the secondarv labour force. Most temporary and part-time workers are women ... chila care nas in the past been at best a marginal issue for trade unions, as have many of the other central concerns of women workers. That was never right, but now it could be disastrous.' Edmonds also spelt out some of the implications in terms of his proposed strategy for the unions: "We have got to put strategy that does something for all working people... A system of legal minimum rights, cluding pay and hours guaranteed, untair dismissal guarantees on day one for any service, any length of hours.
'We have got to campaign for such changes, which above all will help the unorganised. This will put the trade union movement on the side of the oppressed and disadvantaged, which is a side of the argument we haven't actually been on for some time. It also puts us on the side of which is good because we have tended to be on the side ot men...
Edmonds actually doesn't have a strategy to deal with this situation. But the pressure on him, remarks, shows the new situation clearly.
is also beginning to show in new policies being adopted by the unions.
The first step, one decisive for the future of the labour movement, is support for the policy of a national minicy by the TUCand Labour Party at minimum Adopica as official their 1986 conferences, it has, however, not been pushed by the Labour Party.
The NUPE membership, the union which led the fight to get the minimum wage policy, has reaffirmed it is not going to give up the fight for it. NUPE'S 1987 conference adopted a policy of demanding a national minimum wage be set at two thirds of average national earnings This would mean a minimum of £120 a week — as opposed to the £80 a week which has been mooted by the TUC and Labour Party.
Equally significantly, the NUPE conference rejected tying the introduction of a minimum wage to wage restrictions on higher paid workers — by voting to oppose any wage restraint measures under a Labour government. Maintaining both positions is vital to have any ability to unite the working class. If a minimum wage is tied to support for wage controls higher paid workers will simply vote Tory alu support the new realists. The policy of the minimum wage is decisive itself because it attects the entire low paid section of the working class — the entire periphery.
The second development is the shift in the unions position on women. With a tremendous delay the huge increase in the number of women in work - U. three million since 1950, is working its way consistently through the unions. At its 1987 conference NUPE became the first major union to elect a majority of women to its executive. GMBATU has introduced a system of reserving one quarter of its executive places for women Without developing systematic policies in support of women workers it is quite impossible to organise in the "periphery.
The third development has bee L the extension of struggle, •an political development, into new sectors. The period immediately prior to Thatcher's election saw an unprecedented wave of struggle by public sector and health workers -the winter of discontent. Following this 1982 saw the longest ever strike in the National Health Service. A year later, 1983 saw the first national strike in the water and sewage industry. This year has seen the first CyCl national telecommunications.
Most significant of all however, has been the struggles waged in the last two years by the teachers and civil servants the first serious campaigns of industrial action ever waged by these groups. Furthermore the political fund ballots saw not merely every union vote to retain its fund but service unions, the IRSF and CPSA, voting to establish political funds. NALGO will be voting on the establishment of a political fund at this year's conference. Another important campaign among white collar workers is that to unify the two TUC atfiliated teaching unions - the NUT and NAS/UWT.
In short, while severe setbacks have been suffered in traditional sections of the working class, industrial action, and unionisin has been spreading far more. widely than previously.
The concentration of much of this struggle in the public service sector is perfectly logical. The development of the dual economy creates a highly productive, highly paid, manufacturing sector which is serviced by a low paid service sector. A large part of the most vital of these services are in the public sector. While the government can privatise individual industries such as telecommunications, gas or steel, it cannot, in the present relation of forces, dismantle the health service — the largest single employer in the country, the education system, the civil service, or, despite its best efforts, local government. Even the process of privatisation in sectors such as health and local government, while viciously anti-working class and anti-union, is still limited in its scope.
Combine this inability of the government to dismantle large parts of the public sector with its constant attempts to undermine spending on it and you have a recipe for prolonged conflict in the public sector — not simply in the traditional industries, which have been subject to vicious rationalisation, but also in the public service sector.
The trends we have seen over the last years in the public sector are therefore not an aberration. How rapidly there will be an upturn of struggle in the "core' private sector almost certainly depends on overall developments in the international economy an upturn of output and growth would be the biggest stimulus to a revival of struggle in the private sector.
What the trends of the last eight years represent is clear. The development of the dual economy, under the impact of the recession, is not just dealing severe blows to the trade union movement. It is also transforming its character. A greatly In creased weight of women and the public sector is accompanying the development of strong right wing trends in sections of private industry - and in shortly to be privatised industry. Such trends have been seen in other countries — notably in Japan, which has the most developed 'dual economy' of all, and where for years the trade union movement has beendominated by a division between right wing private sector industrial unions and more militant public sector ones.
The net effect of the Thatcher years on the trade unions must therefore be understood in a complex way. The defeats which have been suffered are very real. The trade union movement is weakened and on the defensive almost But at the same time the impact of Thatcherism, and of the dual economy, has politicised unions. It has spread trade union action into sections of the working class that have never experienced it before. It has pulled thousands of women workers into struggle - - and forced even hardened traditional unions, and their leaderships, out of sheer necessity to reorient their unions' activities to winning women workers. I has made the public sector a chief battleground.
If Thatcherism has pushed back the most advanced points of trade unionism it has also enormously broadened its quickly, thoroughly, there is a recovery in the 'core sectors depends probably more.on the economic situation than anything else.
All of this indicates the underlying trends of the situation - the direction trade unionism is being forced to take. The second Thatcher government saw, in the most advanced class struggle, and the most advanced leadership, in peacetime for sixty years. It took quite a different type of leadership to develop a strategy tying together the simply with trade union solidarity but with women, black workers, and whole communities. But the miners, and their leadership, were able to achieve this only because they drev smaller, 'molecular, developments which had been taking place Wilt liC : working The miners gave the first central leadership to this profound development taking place within the working class - but they did not create the process itself.
These developments indicate the task which the left faces in the unions in the developing 'dual economy' Inside the core there is the fight to defend even traditional' trade union principles and politics against the onslaught of the new realists. Here there is a necessity of united action, and organisation, with the Communist Party, straightforward social democrats, and others in the traditional Broad Lefts. This is an absolutely necessary alliance in the fight against the Hammonds, Lairds and Goldings.
The second fight is to organise in the "periphery', including large parts of the public sector where demands women, and black people, are absolutev central ana ine new realist forces relatively weak. In the public sector, in a number of cases, the fight is against the Communist Party and 'broad left' forces with which, COLICI it is necessary to unite to oppose the new realists. This situation differs from union to union. There is no common tactics although the basic forces - the class struggle left, the Kinnockites, and the realists — operate, in different relations of forces, in each union. But what is beginning to emerge is an agenda of common problems stretching across ditferent unions — one whose chief feature is the consequence of the rise of the dual Developing the basis to unify these concerns and struggles in the face of a deepening offensive by the employers, is the chief task of the left in the unions in the coming period.
Socialist Action 5 June 1987
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