Strikes Need to be Generalised to Win

The present strike by the dockers in Liverpool, along with the continuing dispute of the firemen shows that the working class still has not been cowered by 16 years of Tory Government, nor by the massive levels of unemployment (in reality over 4 million). Urged to be responsive to the needs of the market place, workers were supposed to work harder for less wages. This way some sort of security was to be bestowed upon those still at work.

Ever-deepening crises show that any supposed security under capitalism tends to be only an illusion. The ’sacrifices’ previously made have not been enough to ensure adequate profits for the bosses, nor bail out near-bankrupt local and state services. The bosses, both private and public, are demanding even more insecurity for the working class – lower wages, reduced benefits, short-term contracts, agency work, and so on. It only seems to apply to the working class, not the bosses! We are the one’s supposed to carry the can for their crisis!

Determined strikes by the dockers and firemen show that sections of the working class can not be easily bullied into accepting these attacks. They are pushing sectional strikes to their limit – to really succeed means breaking through sectional barriers of trade, industry and jobs which the bosses impose upon the working class. The real way forward is to unite as proletarians (as Marx put it), those who have nothing to sell but their labour power. That is what unites us as a class – it is the role assigned to us as employees in the work place which divides us. The lessons of the dispute by the Careworkers against Liverpool City Council is an object lesson of what happens when workers allow themselves to become isolated, and so be defeated.

In the past workers such as dockers, miners, etc had been able to use their industrial muscle to defend their own interests. But the Tories, prepared by previous Labour Governments, have used the resources of the state to mechanise and reduce the workforces, like the mines and the docks. Industries which had been able to secure their own sectional interests have no longer been able to win on their own. On the one hand this imposes an enormous burden on those sections of workers; on the other hand it does mean that they have no other choice but to seek the help and assistance of their fellow workers – members of their own class.

Looking for help from other classes, as an attempt at respectability in front of some mythical ’community’, is a recipe for isolation and defeat. Appeals based upon pride in ’our industry’ or ’our city’ is really on the ground of the bosses, because they will always counter with the needs of industry, profitability and competing with rival enterprises – in reality competing against workers in other areas, in other countries.

Solidarity from dock workers in the USA, Australia, etc, has been far more important than support of Bishops and MPs, who participate in the maintenance of society, of the exploitation of the working class. Every connection which is forged with other members of the working class, whether employed or unemployed, is far more important than pious appeals for pride in ’our city’. The protracted docks strike (unthinkable years ago) shows more clearly than ever before the need for organisation within the working class that breaks down sectional barriers, that demolishes the distinction imposed and maintained by different trade unions, which so often keeps workers struggles bottled up and defeated.

The continuous attacks against the working class poses once again that our own interests as a class cannot be met within capitalism. Only through the abolition of capitalism, of exploitation, of wage slavery, can the interests of the working class (which in reality is the only class which is capable of representing the aspirations of humanity) be secured. The continued existence of the boss class means in the end only misery, degradation and insecurity. The interests of the working class and the exploiting classes are worlds apart. Socialism / communism is the only way the workers (proletarians) can emancipate themselves from exploitation.

January 1996.