DOCKERS 8 -
REPORT ON THE DOCKERS DISPUTE -
JULY 1996
It is now July and some 11 months since this dispute began. Late last month
ACL, one
of the major users of the Seaforth Container Terminal in Liverpool
announced its
intention to pull out of the Mersey 'until such time as labour relations in
the port
returned to normal'. For the moment they are diverting their traffic to
Thameshaven - an
unregistered, that is a fully casualised port in Kent, where workers'
collective
organisation does not exist. [Whether this is truly the case is still to be
established.]
Thameshaven is on the 'wrong' side of the country from the point of view of
North
Atlantic traffic and cannot be regarded as an ideal solution from the
bosses' point
of view. We shall return to this later. Some attempts have been made by the
London
Dockers Support Group - which is very active - to find out about and make
contact with dockers
in Thameshaven but so far there is nothing to report. Back on the Mersey,
it is reported
[and believed by the dockers themselves - whose information has been 100%
accurate so far] that CAN-MAR and CAST will soon quit the port. There is an
equivalent
type of dispute brewing in the Canadian East Coast ports, and this may
reflect the
shipping lines 'clearing the decks' to some extent.
This will leave the Seaforth Terminal virtually idle. Also, on at least 4
occasions
the dockers have 'picketed out' the tugboat men which paralyses the port
for at least
a tide, and on one occasion saw at least one 50 000 tonne vessel helpless
in the
channel as it attempted to enter the dock under its own power and unaided.
All in all the
dockers are reasonably pleased with the results of their efforts so far and
at their
Friday mass meetings their mood is one of quiet, if not aggressive, self
confidence.
I cannot say if this confidence is misplaced, but certainly now that MDHC
is moving
to dismiss some of the scabs and ancillary workers because of falling
traffic levels,
nobody can deny that at last the dockers campaign is effective.
In addition the dockers have shown themselves totally to immune to any of
the usual
crocodile tears that the media and bosses turn on about 'lost jobs',
'damage to the
port', etc. etc. As ever the dockers' policy remains a full commitment to
the 'status quo ante
'; ALL dockers to be reinstated on their former terms and conditions before
any negotiations
will be entered into over severance, redundancy and so on.
The time therefore comes when more serious and in depth questions can
begin to be
asked about this dispute and I should like to begin by posing this one.
First of
all from the dockers point of view - what will 'winning' [if indeed they
are winning]
this dispute mean? In the short term this is relatively easy to answer.
Over 400 dockers
will go back through the gate with their heads held high. But anyone who
has followed
my reports will know that this is what happened after the 1989 dock strike
- so we've
been here before. No doubt at least half of them will immediately apply for
severance
or redundancy on the terms they formerly enjoyed. They will then leave the
industry
with lump sums and pensions intact and good luck to them.
But what about the younger ones - many of whom are active on the dispute
committee
and are now known activists ? For them, the struggle to hold on to, never
mind improve
their terms and conditions or even to hold on to their collective
organisation AT
ALL, will resume with a vengeance. MDHC like any modern employer cannot
tolerate INDEPENDENT
COLLECTIVE ORGANISATION amongst its work force. Whether this autonomous
organisation
takes on a union type form or, as it has in other workplaces, simply goes
'underground' is not actually the issue.
Now obviously I am not the only one to have noticed that REAL workers'
collective
organisation [as opposed to that which merely takes the name] has in this
day and
age, all but disappeared from the surface of life. The question then
becomes, what
should be the relationship between this self organisation, or if you like,
this autonomy, and
the existing 'workers' organisations [ie the unions]?
Many Left organisations are even now launching campaigns to 'recapture' or
'revitalise'
the unions. Rather than debate this from a theoretical point of view [which
in my
experience is a singularly time wasting and frustrating experience] I
should merely
like to point to the dockers experience. The dockers have had to be careful
in their
position not to antagonise the union [at least openly]; but at the same
time they
have managed to keep it at arm's length from their struggle. Hence their
plea for
supporters NOT to campaign to make the dispute 'official'. The crucial
point here is that the
dockers do not look upon the union as the focal point nor the centrepiece
of their
strategy. As a result of their international conference, many actually
believe that
their future lies in a new international dock workers union and given the
long history
of antagonism between the T&G and the dockers, including a 'mass break
out from the
union in the late 1950s, this is perfectly understandable.
Well, if a new international union does ever get off the ground we'll have
a look
at this beast and see, but for the moment, the dockers prefer and rightly
so, to
rely on their own efforts. I think however we can go a bit further with our
understanding.
We started by asking the question - what does 'winning' this dispute
actually mean?
I said that in the short term we could certainly answer that, and most
people would
be able to recognise the answer. But over the longer term it would be far
harder.
Even in the 70s we knew that we could not make any real economic gains -
any wage
increases we won were quickly swallowed up and cancelled out by inflation,
and in
any case nobody ever counts the losses to our class by those forced out
into unemployment
or casualised forms of work. Today it is not even a question of advancing
wages conditions
but one simply of trying to hold on. For myself, I am more concerned to see
a growth
in the confidence and organising abilities of a whole section of workers,
than any material 'gain' they might make. And we should never forget that
this whole dispute,
like many others now, is not about improving wages and conditions, but
merely an
attempt to make previous 'victories' actually stick. It's the MDHC who have
torn
up the old collective agreements, its the MDHC who want to introduce
individual contracts
and so on. This marks out a crucial difference from disputes that broke out
in the
70s and 80s. It is also very revealing about the real dynamics of the
situation.
Like many in the past I had imagined the working class to be a largely
passive, almost
inert mass, that merely reacted to what the capitalists did to it. I now
wish to
challenge this view because it seems to me to no longer describe the actual
situation
[actually, it is doubtful that it ever did]. Throughout this dispute it has
been quite
clear that the initiative has lain with the dockers and not MDHC. I wish to
suggest
that this is so ALL THE TIME. Now when I came to this conclusion I realised
it meant
abandoning a whole previous outlook. Instead of formerly seeing the working
class as
the 'blind beast of revolt', merely reacting to its circumstances, we come
to conceive
of the position of the working class in capitalist society as being crucial
to our
conception of communism or the future society.If we accept that it is the
working class
that has the initiative - THAT IS CAPITAL ALWAYS REACTS TO US - then it
makes what
we have received from a previous movement all the more questionable.
Whereas before
we have had a conception of communism or socialism as belonging to the
party - as the
product of intellect and a reflection on our history, we were stuck with
something
that was very much the property of a political movement. We can now abandon
this
stultifying conception and look at what I now believe is the real
situation.
Every change in the labour process - every change in our conditions of
work, in the
state form, even in our personal relationships, comes about as a result of
our struggle
to escape from our condition as wage workers. Now stated as baldly as that,
it can
seem a kind breathtaking madness. How silly you may argue - it is the
capitalists who
control the labour process, we are merely there to do their bidding. But
stop and
think - if the labour process were merely this mechanical relationship, why
would
management experts and gurus spend a lifetime trying to learn its secrets ?
What can their
problem be ?
And the answer is staring us in the face - it is us , WE ARE THE INSURGENT
ELEMENT.
We need to recognise the class struggle as pre-existing. It is not
something invented
by communists, it is always there even if we do not recognise the peculiar
forms
it sometimes takes. We are the ones who always bend and change their system
to suit ourselves.
If communists were to do nothing else, they would do all workers a favour
if they
are hammered this one lesson home. In any work situation, because our
interests -
as human beings, are ALWAYS fundamentally opposed to theirs, we always find
ways to
challenge their system.
When Frederick Taylor started to time and break down the work of skilled
men in the
New England machine shop where he worked at the turn of the century, it was
not to
'improve' the 'scientific organisation of work' but to break down the
control over
the labour process exerted by the skilled men. Workers had imposed their
collectivity on
the labour process. That is he REACTED to the defacto
rule of Labour OVER Capital.
Today, management uses a multiplicity of tools to try and recover control
of the labour
process - 'team working', TQM, breaking up of large units into small and
scattered
ones. Always the dynamic is the same - capital runs away from what it has
created
- socialised labour, BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT CANNOT AVOID RECREATING THE
FORCE THAT SPELLS
ITS OWN DOOM.
Now armed with this insight into the real balance of forces, we can see the
end result
of our struggle, what all our partial and perhaps futile struggles are
aimed at,
and that is to get rid of this parasitic relationship.
Socialism or communism, since from this point of view they are the same
thing, becomes
therefore the property, not of an intellectual elite, the 'men of science',
but arises
directly out of our very struggle. One of the most useful things those who
call themselves socialists or communists can do, is to recognise and
document this process.
In previous reports I have used the word 're-composition' as a shorthand
way of showing
how the capitalists have used technology and the power of the state to try
and overcome
the 'collectivity' that had been created. In Briain there was a move within
transport to develop smaller, unregistered ports, so as to avoid
'collectivity'. This
process has now come to a stop as capital attempts to wrestle with an even
bigger
contradiction.
Transport as we have noted is part of the circulation of capital, although
not directly
'productive' in the same way as making goods and services, it nevertheless
shows
the same tendencies and processes - rationalistation, fragementation,
concentration
and so on. One of the problems the dockers have come up against is the lack
of collective
organisation among truck drivers, reflecting the present anarchic and
deregulated
nature of the industry.
This will change.
Already it is becoming more obvious to the far sighted capitalists that
some kind
of rationalisation is necessary - given the enormous amounts of investment
that are
going to be needed simply in order to keep transport efficient. It may be
that the
MDHC as presently set up is unable or unwilling to spend the amounts
necessary. For instance
on the Mersey there are at present TWO competing projects for Ro-Ro traffic to Ireland.
And even these are not really facing up to the problem. The reality is that
you cannot simply end at the dock gates. Whoever develops a facility on the
West Coast of
Britain [and wherever it is] will have to develop the whole chain - inland
to distribution
points, and on to exchange points with East Coast ports and the Channel
Tunnel. Plainly this is beyond the MDHC.
SINCE THE ARGUMENT BEING DEVELOPED HERE IS BEYOND THE SCOPE OF A 'REPORT'
PROPERLY
SPEAKING, I ABANDONED 'DOCKERS 8' AT THIS POINT.
With others I hope to be able to discuss and document this process more
clearly and
at greater length in a separate work - sorry if I've whetted your appetite,
you'll
just have to be patient.
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