which smashed the Liberal Party under The pre-1914 strike wave, the struggle of Ireland for independence, and the suffragettes had vole in World War I deepened still further but the convulsion in working class politics. advance. Out of it emerged on the one hand the mass class struggle current in the trade allies, AJ Cook's …o conau ano cerea unese currents was the most urgent task facing British capitalism. It was a task achieved by a combination of repression, concessions, by strengthening the At the level of enforced concessions, 26 out of the 32 counties of Ireland were 1921 immediately Orange bigots in the lished the miners' supporters, movement. tingers TGWU secretary used to Deakın, north, and green Tories in the south, to enforce partition.
Women were granted the right to 1918 which failed even remotely to fulfill the needs of liberation nevertheless venciCou Having thereby isolated the miners from some of their strongest potential SucCessIvC Tory governments turned their attention to preparing to smash the strongest section of the working class — as well as the mass .struggle CulTeBl WuCe emerged from it. From 1921 onwards British government policy was dictated above all by preparation to confront the miners. In the confrontation itself the Baldwin government utilised the TUC's betrayal of the general strike to isolate the Miners' Federation and crush their The defeat of 1926 in turn estabnatre •of the mass labour movement for the next half century. The Minority Movement was weakened by the defeat and then destroyed by the policies imposed on it by the stalinised Communist Party. The leadership of the Cook was isolated. After 1926 any sort of mass class struggle current disappeared for almost 60 years as a signiticant force in the British labour new, completely dominant, leadership which CON solidated itself out of the defeat of 1926 was symbolised by Ernest Bevin and Walter Citrine — class collaborationist bureaucrats down to the tips of their Bevin had become leader of the 1921, Citrine general of the TUC in 1926 Bevin like to boast that was a supplier of labour to the economy in the same way that capitalists were suppliers of capital. His speciality was destroying left wing opposition within his own, and other, unions — as with the London bus workers in the 1930s.
After Bevin's permanent departure to become foreign secretary in 1946, and Citrine's departure from the scene in 1945, the resolutely right wing line of the trade union bureaucracy shifted not one inch to the left. Figures such as Carron, Tewson and Woodcock dominated the movement in the 1950s and early 1960s — and were the mainstay of support for the policies of Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson.
Socialist Action 15 March 1985 9