ICP and the Dockers
Following my last report [Dockers 9] and in particular my reference to the
dockers
decision to bar the ICP from any more of their mass meetings, I have
received several
requests for further information and background. My first reaction was one
of resentment at being 'sidetracked' into what for me was an entirely
understandable and perhaps
overdue decision on the dockers part.
So far as the ICP are concerned they have now gained their role as
'rejected prophets'
- so they can sit on the sidelines and like Cassandra forecast doom and
gloom, without
really having to take any responsibility for what they have said and done.
Some
reflection and the realisation that this issue raises other questions has
persuaded
me to write this piece. In my view it highlights the relationship of
communists,
revolutionaries or whatever we call ourselves to workers in struggle.
The ICP have been barred from the meetings for an almost ceaseless campaign
of vilification
and gratuitous insults to the dockers and to named stewards in particular -
most
especially to self proclaimed 'Stalinist' and Chair of the Dispute
Committee - Jimmy Nolan. The ICP and its supporters will be re-admitted to
the meetings when the dockers
receive an apology and some promise of better behaviour in future. In short
the dockers
are doing no more than what many of their delegates have found themselves
doing round the country and 'knocking [leftist] heads together so that
people can actually
get on with the business in hand.
Now as I have pointed out in my previous reports, the ICP criticises the
dockers and
the stewards in particular, from a perspective of Trotskyism. And their
rather idiosyncratic
version at that. That is they believe that the trade unions today are now
organs of the capitalist class in the 'workers movement'. So far one would
have to agree
with them. But from this conclusion they jump back to 'orthodox'
Trotskyism, to continually
warn of the 'bureaucracy' [among whom they include the entire docks
committee] inevitably scheming to prepare a 'sell-out' or 'betrayal' of the
dispute.Their conception
is of a trade union movement 'in crisis' - being forced to manoeuvre
constantly under
pressure from an active and restless 'rank and file' straining at the leash
and just waiting to respond to [their] 'revolutionary leadership'. I have
in the past
tried to show how this is an utterly unrealistic and misleading
understanding, but
the ICP, blessed with the superior insight of the elect, nevertheless
insist on
it.
Hence in their view the existing shop stewards and their supporters who
form the dockers
leadership must be removed as soon as possible and as part of that campaign
their
every move and public announcement must be discredited. Of course it helps
enormously if the favourite 'bete noire
' of Trotskyists - their alter ego - Stalinists, and especially those like
Jimmy Nolan,
who makes no secret of his politics, can be held personally responsible for
'treachery',
'double dealing' and so on.
I do not think I am being unfair to the ICP since I have attempted on
numerous occasions
to probe their reasoning and I am satisfied that I am reporting it
correctly. The
point is of course that it is utterly wrong headed and a completely
ideological reading of the dynamics of the situation. What distinguishes
the ICP from other 'Left'
groups such as the SWP for instance who still believe that trade unions can
be pressurised
into a 'Left turn', is the ICPs 'principled' refusal to back down, whereas
the SWP
lacks the courage even to argue for its own understanding.
Which brings me to the point of this piece. If communists [and I do not
find anything
remotely communist about any of the Trotkyists views on the state, working
class
organisation or a whole number of questions,] are to be of any USE in a
situation
such as the dockers find themselves in, if what they say and do is to earn any respect,
then it must reflect the reality that the dockers find themselves in. I
have in previous
reports tried to argue that the world has changed around them and I am not
at all
sure that what I produce is having any influence at all.
Nevertheless, insulting the dockers leadership who are quite obviously at
the limits
of their own understanding and trying to grasp this fundamentally changed
reality
is hardly likely to endear you to them. If in addition what the ICP
proposes makes
no sense to them, since going all out against the union would only further
isolate them.
Remember its the dockers who have gone all over this country and addressed
over 5000
meetings - if anyone is qualified to judge the mood of the working class in
this
country, it is the dockers and not the ICP. If in addition you present your
argument in such
a manner as to brook no opposition and in the process aggravate and insult
them -
you fail on 3 counts.
- You have not aided the dockers to come to a better understanding of their
own position
- but then workers are only capable of a trade union consciousness anyway,
aren't
they ? But they are the ones with houses being repossessed, and
contemplating an
old age with no pension which some have paid into for nearly 40 years in
some cases
- Your intervention throws them back on to the 'certainties' of the old
movement.
Certainties we have been trying to argue which no longer hold.
- In order to sustain your analysis and make it fit the facts, you are
obliged to
distort and misrepresent what is actually going on.
I should like to illustrate this last with a concrete example - in the
latest leaflet
the ICP have put out [and which is also reprinted in their newspaper,
The International Worker
no 219 ] the ICP gives a detailed summary of the events which led up to
the second
international congress which the dockers have just held in Liverpool [which
in my
opinion was not a success]. The ICP is as ever concerned to paint a picture
of a
'bureaucracy in crisis' but they actually manage to slander the dockers as
well, saying,
'they have portrayed themselves as 'rank and filers', with the best
interests of the
dockers at heart, but who are also loyal to the union. In fact their
loyalty is solely
to the union bureaucracy of which they themselves are a part.'
Their proof for this assertion [for that is all it is] is a direct quote
from Mike
Carden,
'Look at this patform. Jimmy Davies is on the National Executive of
the TGWU Docks
and Waterways Committee. Bobby Moreton is responsible for 130 000 TGWU
members in
the North West. Jimmy Nolan is the Chair of the TGWU National Port Shop
Stewards
Committee. Terry Teague is an elected shop steward for more than 20 years.
I sit on the union's
General Council. I'm a big cheese.
'
The ICP comment,
'the stewards will do nothing that will endanger their own career in
the union
.'
Now I was not present when Mike Carden spoke the above words - but I am
assured by
those who were there, and it fits the character of the man that I know,
that this
speech was intended to be wholly ironic. The TGWU leadership [and by that I
mean
the real bureaucracy - full time paid officials, not the lay jobs mentioned
above] have made
it clear that it intends to strip Nolan, Moreton, Carden and all the others
of any
and every position they hold in the union.
Since in any deal that the TGWU stitches up with MDHC, there is no way that
these
workers and the 100 or so who make up the 'hard core' will ever work on the
dock
again, I am at a total loss to see how the 'bureaucracy' is 'looking after
its own.'
There is no crisis of the union bureaucracy - it is alive and well and
functioning
as normally as it always has. It should be obvious from the ironic and even
anguished
tone of Mike Carden's speech that the only crisis is in the old 'workers
organisation'
which so many of these militants have given their lives to and in the dockers own
view of themselves and their struggle. When I first started reporting on
this dispute
in November 1995, I commented on how dockers had a history of strong,
sectional organisation, born out of the old kind of struggle, a struggle
conditioned by the Keynesian
state. I tried to show how this state was undergoing a transformation and
that we
needed to see how this would affect struggles such as the dockers. It is
very easy
to talk of 'objective circumstances' and 'tendencies' in the economy and
state, but ultimately
we make our own history - people like Jimmy Nolan and Mike Carden. People
struggling
to come to terms with what is going on around them, not central committees
with
a ideology that is today 70 or even more years out of date.
I hope this finally disposes of the question of the ICP
Dave Graham
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