British Jobs For British Workers: Dividing The Working Class

by Diarmuid Fri Feb 06, 2009 09:47

In that, Gerry Downing (note spelling, critics!) is correct. I don't know all the ins and outs of what went on but that slogan by Gordon Brown is a reactionary one and it was being quoted and supported by some workers and union leaders and MPs.

The role of the trade union movement is to ensure that wage levels won are defended, not to decide which nationality of workers is employed by the employers. Also, if the employer refused to allow union organisation then they should be blacked.

What Gerry was really wrong about, although no-one so far has chosen to point it out, was his position on the British Labour Party. This party is much more than a "bourgeois labour party" now and has been for many years; it is one of the main parties providing an executive to the British ruling class. It has, while in government, organised not only attacks on British workers but also on workers in many other parts of the world; it has ferociously attacked the former Irish resistance in the 6 Counties and introduced racist and fascist pieces of legislation (including the Prevention of Terrorism Act) and it was under that party 's Government that the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four and many others were framed and jailed (and would have hung, if the death penalty had been an option).

The sooner people on the Left stop spreading illusions about this party and the sooner it is deserted by socialists and other progressive people, the sooner a real alternative movement can be built.

by John Cornford Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:11

Here are some extracts from an article from the Weekly Worker. Full text at the url below.

And the left has been in a real state over it - some groups broadly or sharply opposing the strikes (SWP, AWL ), and others offering uncritical, or virtually uncritical, support (the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain; Socialist Party).

The labour bureaucracy’s long-time toadies-in-chief, the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, bitterly complained that EU law has “effectively deprived British workers of the right to seek work in their own country”, while at least having the good sense to blame the bosses - or rather, the bosses’ Europe.

The Socialist Party has a member on the six-strong strike committee. However, while the SP in a leaflet (drafted by strike committee member Keith Gibson) states, “rather than saying ‘British jobs for British workers’, we should say ‘Trade union jobs and conditions for all workers’”,it continues to downplay the danger of the ‘British jobs’ slogan. A similar line is taken by Respect, whose approach, like the CPB’s, seems to be to dismiss the significance of chauvinism altogether, and concentrate on the narrow trade union demands - this leaves the right an open goal.

The ‘British jobs’ aspect to all this makes our intervention more necessary, not less. If the international dimension gives succour to chauvinists, it also points to our primary political duty. This paper carries on its masthead every week the slogan, “Towards a Communist Party of the European Union”. This is no lofty abstraction, but is posed as a pressing (and sadly absent) necessity with every new walkout. We have seen a united and concerted attack by the legal and political bureaucracies in Brussels and London; any fightback has to be similarly united. The call by the Lindsey strikers for cooperation between construction unions is welcome, but limited.

As a matter of urgency we need EU trade unions fighting for EU-wide common pay and conditions. That would put a stop to social dumping. But most of all we need the highest form of political organisation: precisely a Communist Party of the European Union.

by pat c Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:23

This is an article by the English SP regarding the strikes.

*********************************************************

Strikes repel attacks on jobs and conditions

Shades of the miners' strike - mass protests, car park meetings, loud hailers that don't work. Not so much flying pickets as flying texts and emails leading to spontaneous unofficial walkouts and 'illegal' strike action. The anti-trade union laws have been brushed aside without a thought.

Alistair Tice, Yorkshire Socialist Party, reporting from the Lindsey refinery strike

Each day brings news of more power plants and construction sites walking out. There's a feeling of: "We must strike while the iron's hot. Enough is enough. If we don't win this we'll be signing on for the rest of our lives."

Out of the frenzy of activity comes improvisation and initiative. National trade union leaders who were secretly holed up in a four-star hotel were tracked down and forced to accept strike committee representation in any negotiations.

by Jolly Red Giant - Socialist Party / CWI Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:48

And contrary to what Gerry Dowling has indicated - the article clearly outlines that by Tuesday all the 'British Jobs for British Workers' posters and almost all the union jacks had disappeared to be replaced by posters and banners in English and Italian calling on the Italian workers to join the strike - plus banners with the slogan 'workers of the world unite' - this was directly as a result of the influence build up by the SP/CWI among the workers during the dispute.

Of course, given the fact that Gerry was no where to be seen near the picket line - he was clearly unaware of these facts.

http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2009/02/0701.html

by Mick Burke - ex wrp Wed Feb 11, 2009 18:10

The Ballymun Regeneration project was sold to the local community with the
promise that it would give jobs to locals - twenty per cent of the work
was supposed to go to locals . I supported the call for local labour when
Ballymun Regeneration Limited refused to honour that commitment , but the
demand wasn't sustainable then and it certainly isn't now . Employers employ
the people they think will give them the most profit. That's their only
consideration. They either do business according to the principles of
capitalism or they're out of business.

With so many companies and even national economies now going to the wall
because of the financial meltdown ,how is the seeming success of the British
strikers to be explained ? The poster Pat C sees shades of the miners
strike . But the coal miners who were the most militant section of the
working class in Britain and the most hated by the British establishment ,
lost their dispute . The state threw everything at them . The nuclear power
and oil refinery workers involved in the present actions are not the same
as the miners . They are a group of workers who have been to a large extent
cultivated and kept on-side by the British state because of their ability
to threaten the functioning of the state . When I read that power workers in
the north of Ireland were striking in sympathy , I saw more similarities to
the Ulster Workers Council strike than to the miners strike .

There is another "local labour" dispute being reported today - this one at
a power plant in Staythorpe ,Nottinghamshire . The BBC quotes Unite's
regional officer Steve Syson saying, " …. they've issued contracts out to
non-UK overseas employees but we believe local labour is available". The
Socialist Party may have used its influence to persuade people to sound
rather less like Enoch Powell than Styson does , but there is nevertheless
a distinct whiff of chauvinism to it all. At the present extremely
dangerous juncture in history any hint of populist chauvinism needs to be
rejected .

Ed Balls , Gordon Brown's closest cabinet ally and former chief adviser to
the Treasury told a Labour conference in Yorkshire on Monday that the present
financial crisis is the worst for over a hundred years and "more extreme
and more serious than [the depression] of the 1930s." Yesterday's London
Independent quoted Balls forecasting possibly tougher times ahead than during the
thirties and predicting "seismic events that are going to change the
political landscape".

Internationalism needs to be asserted now by socialists , even if that means
them going against the tide of popular sentiment amongst workers , and even
if it means them losing any jobs they may hold as trade union bureaucrats .
If socialists who should understand the lessons of the thirties and the
links between financial crisis , the rise of fascism and the drive to war
chose to bury their heads in the sands, the ruling class will certainly be
taking no chances .

by pat c Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:39

"The poster Pat C sees shades of the miners strike . "

Just to clarify: the article I posted was written by a member of the SP not by me.

by Tansy Sat May 30, 2009 21:37

If this isn't considered racist, then it would be O.K for all the other countries to actually fire all of the British workers back to Britain and/or be racist to them like they do to immigrants in britain