London Undergroun Strike: Underground Tremors Hit Capital

At 07:00 hrs. on 24^th October 1991, London Underground services were severely disrupted by strike action.

     Seven stations were completely closed, and up to fifteen affected by the unofficial action of station foremen and women. To evade the draconian penalties that the bosses have in store for wildcat strikers these days, the station staff simply rang in sick, or turned up late for duty.

     What sparked off this dispute? After the Kings Cross fire some years ago, station staff were asked to take on more safety-related responsibilities. It comes as no surprise that the L.U. management expected the workers to deal with the problems created by bourgeois penny-pinching; nor is it surprising that they wouldn’t match an increase in Workers’ responsibilities with an increase in wages. Both of these attitudes have the same origin: the “financial constraints” imposed by capital. Such constraints – the strait-jacket of this deranged economy – are never admitted as the cause of the low safety standards that kill workers; but they’re always openly invoked when it comes to requests for pay increases.

     The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union has done nothing to help the workers it purports to represent; instead it accepts the bosses’ arguments, though with some added mutterings about “Tory government”.

     Hence the message of the “wildcats” was directed against both the London Underground management and the RMT: “We are determined to succeed with our demand, and we shall not be found wanting should further action be required”. The co-ordinating group, ignoring “their” union’s hostility, said that the strike was “just a warning. There could be more to come”.

     The union apparatuses, long subdued and trained by government legislation and a multitude of less formal controls, “bribes” etc, are today mere gangs protecting their own interests on a traditional “patch”; that of labour representation. Apart from that, they can be distinguished in no material way from the rest of the ruling class. The function of the unions is to facilitate capital’s projects for restructuring, and to undermine any tendency the working class may show towards unifying and co-ordinating its struggles.

     Earlier in the year, London Underground announced 1,000 job losses. On the 26^th November, they announced that 5,000 more jobs will be axed over the next three years. Warning had come of industrial action by the RMT, ASLEF and the white-collar union TSSA; but even if any official action does eventuate over the redundancies, it will be of the limited pecemeal type.

     Such official actions are intended only to relieve the pressure on capital, the upper crust. To defend themselves, workers will have to by-pass the unions, and organise independently to fight the bourgeoisie. The strike of the station staff on London Underground is a model that needs to be extended to wider and wider categories of workers, with the various struggles eventually being linked up and co-ordinated. Let’s hope the recent tremors on the Underground portend a revolutionary quake of force 10 in the not-so-distant future.