DOCKERS 9
First of all apologies to all those who did not get sight of 'dockers 8' -
which is
all of you. I abandoned it when it was almost complete because it became so
rapidly
out of date. ACL having quit the port then announced their intention to
come back.
The situation was confused but it seems that the alternative port -
Thameshaven, was not
suitable.
The dockers meanwhile had moved on to their second target CANMAR and CAST -
hence
the two dockers up the gantry cranes in Montreal [which has since been
repeated but
with not quite the same degree of success in other ports]. But the dockers
have their
own web site which people can access and the 'Dockers Charter
' gives regular updates of what is going on. The purpose of my reports is
altogether
different which I hope will become clear as people read further.
As I write [early September] we are approaching the first anniversary of
the dispute
which was sparked off by the dockers refusal to cross the picket line
mounted by
dismissed dockers employed by an 'independent' stevedoring firm called
Torside. In
Britain in the 1990s such sympathy or in the words of the legislation,
'secondary action',
is illegal. The policy of the dockers remains one of insisting on the full
reinstatement
of all dockers dismissed on the terms and conditions they 'enjoyed' prior
to the
dispute.
Now I was going to begin this report/commentary on a note of criticism of
the dockers.
By concentrating on re-instatement, the dockers I thought, were allowing
what I conceived
to be the major question of casualisation [what Jimmy Nolan, Chair ofthe
Dispute Committee confusingly calls 'employment contracts'] to be lost from
view.
But of course this is looking at events at the surface and missing what is
going on
underneath. It is, in my opinion the first duty of communists, anarchists
or whatever
we call ourselves, to look beyond the surface of events and try and
penetrate what
is really going on. That is, it is first of all our job to try and
understand.
So here is my attempt. The policy of total re-instatement which is endorsed
every
Friday at the mass meeting of dockers and their supporters is actually what
used
to be called by the American SDS student movement in the 70s a 'non
negotiable demand'.
That is, given the changes in the economy since the National Dock Labour
Scheme was abolished
in 1989, there is NO WAY the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company can allow a
return
to the previous situation. In any case a whole new scab labour force has
been recruited, trained and is even now driving up productivity levels to
unheard of heights. So,
for instance when ACL came back to the port, the 80 dockers who left
'voluntarily'
were not replaced. The fact that there is now a regular turnover of scab
labour which
cannot cope with the new casualised way of working and the much reduced
pay, does not
bother MDHC.
They have a core layer of skilled workers who are prepared to take on and
train a
succession of casualised and atomised workers to do the bulk of the basic
work in
the port. The fact also that it has been become more dangerous to work in
the Port
of Liverpool does not bother them either.
Those of you who have been following my reports will know that we have
argued that
this is a generalised and long term trend in all workplaces - and it spells
the end
of the post war Keynesian based consensus which we had all become used to.
Space
prevents me from going into this in any more detail here, but we are
working on a much longer
analysis in which we hope to demonstrate this clearly. All this being the
case, the
dockers official policy is, I have come to realise way behind their real
thinking
and practice. The only 'negotiations' going on are those sponsored by Bill
Morris and
the T & G national and local officials, ably abetted by the ITF, who
have made it
quite plain that a 'compromise' must be found over the heads of the
dockers.
And obviously not in the interests of the dockers but because Morris and Co have been
visibly shaken by the dockers international campaign and the open
discussion on 5
continents of the idea of forming a new international dockers union. Morris
came
to Liverpool and attempted to lay down the law about 'unofficial action'
and going through
official channels and just showed how out of touch he is. Unfortunately,
although
many dockers would willingly have told him where to go - they are held back
by the
fact that they are still to a major extent financially dependent on the
union, and could
find themselves slung out of the T & G building which they have made
their own almost,
for the past 11 months.
And more importantly because they are at the end of the day only some 500
and as yet
neither they nor us have seen any 'echo', or sufficient evidence from other
groups
of workers similarly affected, in conflict with 'their' unions. I said at
the beginning
that the dockers had allowed the question of casualisation to slip from the
forefront
of their campaign, but actually that is not quite accurate. Because the
campaign
is around a 'non negotiable demand' for re-instatement, the dockers are not
sitting
around waiting for the MDHC to cave in - because they now understand that
they will not.
Mike Carden on the dispute committee posed the question at the time when
ACL came
back to the port and when there was some understandable gloom about the
future of
the dispute -
Where can we go ? There is no offer 'on the table', all we have is struggle.
And struggle is what the dockers have been engaged in. And struggle, as we
know changes
everything. Wherever dockers have gone to speak in this country they have
faced concretely
the question of casualisation, they have urged workers to struggle, to
support them financially but also to learn how they have done things for
themselves and
to have the confidence to do things likewise. In the process this group of
workers
has been utterly transformed. What was by their own admission a sectional,
racist
and inward looking, male dominated group is now working consciously to
transform itself into
something else. Some of these people can never go back to the kind of life
they had
before.
If we needed concrete proof of this, it is in the recent approaches of the
dockers
to eco-warriors and other marginalised groups for help and information on
ways of
waging the campaign; it is also in the contacts the dockers and the support
groups
are beginning to make with other 'social' movements against the Job
Seekers Allowance
for instance, which will hit dockers just as it hits other members of the
unemployed.
Within all these movements the dockers are starting to play a role in
'knocking heads'
together. So many of the delegates who have gone all round the country have
come
back saying they are fed up with having to put up with members of the Left
playing
their silly games. Since I too have had some experience of this I should
like to
pass the example on.
Firstly, many of you will be aware of the intervention of the ICP late last
year and
in the Spring of this year, with their insistence that the existing
leadership of
the stewards and the especially the arch Stalinist , Jimmy Nolan, should
resign and
let the dispute be led 'properly' - well, for all their trouble the dockers
barred them
from attending the mass meetings. It has now come to the point where the
dockers
are demanding an unreserved apology from the ICP as an organisation before
they will
be allowed back in. And quite right too, for if, in reality you have
nothing constructive
to say then it is best to say nothing.
Secondly, I attended in Liverpool a meeting called by one of the Left
groups to launch
a Merseyside Socialist Alliance. It was a well attended meeting but I might
as well
have been transported back in time. Despite some recognition of the changed
era we
are in - absolute opposition to the Labour Party for example, it was clear that for
many of these people [all male, white and about the same age] nothing had
changed.
The meeting set up a steering group' to draw up a list of 'demands' around
which
the mass of the working class is supposed to unify.
No doubt for instance, each of the Left groups will engage in an auction to
decide
who is going to set the 'demand' for a minimum wage. Whether it will be the
SWP [ever
so cautious and mindful of its links to the full timers in the unions and
TUC ] and
their policy of 4.26 an hour, or Militant Labour with with their rush of
blood and a
demand for 6 an hour [and nationalisation of the banks].
The point I want to make is that I do not see it as the job of political
minorities
to set 'demands'. These arise from the movement itself and their nature is
determined
more by the movement than in what is actually said. Our job is to
understand and
to offer an explanation, to test hypotheses and to think heretically.
Unless we can have
the space to do this no movement will get off the ground. This is why it
was more
than disappointing to be told right from the outset of the meeting that the
chair
would accept no contributions critical of the overall decision to set up an
alliance. When
afterwards one of the organisers asked us if we would go and participate in
the Steering
Committee, both of us who attended, declined.
The question I would like to pose to all who read this is - were we wrong
?
DG
September 1996
This was the first report I 'posted' onto an Internet discussion list
called 'Autopsy'
which generated some discussion which will follow as Dockers 9 'Again' and 'ICP1'
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