Britain Responding to the New Tory Strike Laws

Note: Below is an article written in response to the recent budget in Britain, following 
the return to power of the Conservatives. Governments everywhere have a habit of copying 
each other, so opponents need to learn and ask questions about their local and national 
situations to make common linkages of resistance regarding tactics that might work. ---- 
By Phil ---- The Queen's Speech recently confirmed that the Tory government's intent to 
bring in new laws further restricting strikes. The unions have reacted with fury - but 
will they really do anything about it? ---- After years of threatening to do so, the 
Tories are finally set to bring in even tighter restrictions on strikes. They are 
introducing the requirement for 50% of balloted members to take part in any vote for it to 
be legal, and in 'essential public services' no strike can take place unless 40% of all 
those eligible to vote in the ballot support action, regardless of actual turnout.

The UK already has "the most restrictive trade union laws anywhere in the western world", 
as Tony Blair once boasted, and these new measures are only set to make things worse.

The official bullshit is that this is simply about making sure strikes are democratic, and 
a handful of rabble rousers can't use the whole workforce as pawns to hold the poor bosses 
to ransom. Because, dear me, what is freedom if not the right to pay your workers piss all 
in exchange for making you obscenely rich without them having any means to complain about 
it? Nobody wants to strike, certainly not for triffling things like fair wages or safety, 
it's only that the union barons make them do it.

This rhetoric quickly falls apart on even a cursory inspection. If it's about democracy, 
why not allow workplace balloting to guarantee high turnouts? If it's about legitimacy, 
why not apply the same standards to parliamentary elections, removing most of the Tory 
cabinet at a stroke? But of course it isn't about those things. The fact that restrictions 
on scab labour are to be lifted only underlines that the point here is explicitly to 
restrict strikes as far as they can get away with short of making them illegal altogether.

In addition, it's worth noting that these laws aren't a response to overly belligerent 
trade unions. They're the act of a ruling class on the offensive. They can enact the new 
legislation without worry for the same reason they can roll back all the concessions of 
social democracy - because the movement that won them is in retreat.

No answer from the union tops

Most people opposed to these new laws will know instinctively how to challenge them. Sure, 
there'll be a naive soul here who really thinks a petition can sort it out, and a blind 
fool there who believes Labour will repeal them in five years time. But in general, people 
who want to defeat these new laws will realise that the way to do that is by defying them.

But it would be a mistake to look for that defiance to come from the union leaderships.

Such an idea is typified by the Socialist Party of England and Wales.

The Socialist Party wrote:

At the FBU conference, just days after the election, TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady 
announced that there will be a special meeting of the TUC Executive in the aftermath of 
the Queen's Speech. But if Cameron (elected on 24% of the electorate!) announces the 
threatened new laws to bring in 50% turnout thresholds in industrial action ballots and 
worse for the public sector, this has to be widened out to an emergency TUC General Council.
It should be a 'council of war' to seriously prepare the whole union movement for a 24 
hour general strike, as a warning to the Tories. More importantly, it would raise the 
sights and lift the spirits of millions of workers and all those lined up to be on the 
receiving end of the Tories' eye-watering £12 billion welfare cuts. The left executives 
should work out a strategy to put pressure on the TUC. But if the TUC refuses to organise, 
then the left-led unions should get together to call action.

To their credit, SPEW concede the likelihood of the TUC refusing to organise such 
defiance. This is amply demonstrated by both the TUC sell-out of the 1926 general strike, 
and its retreat in the face of Thatcher's anti-strike laws. But it is more than just 
reticence or cowardice. Even were the TUC not merely an umbrella organisation with no 
power in itself to call a strike or instruct its member unions, calling a general strike 
(even in the tokenistic single-day protest form) simply isn't in its material interests.

I refered to both the existing legislation and that coming in as "anti-strike" rather than 
"anti-union" because it actually serves business trade unionism. In restricting the 
ability of workers to strike, the law also reinforces the union's representative function 
- in mediating between workers and capital and providing individual case work support 
rather than organising collective disputes. In other words, it helps the union 
bureaucracies curb militancy while reinforcing their role in defusing anger for a seat at 
the bargaining table.

Of course, militancy has already been curbed to such an extent that the incentive for 
bosses to offer a seat to the bureaucrats is ever diminishing. While the majority of 
unions remain in denial of this, some keep up a show of combativeness in order to present 
some level of threat if they're not listened to. These are the 'left'-led unions SPEW 
refers to.

But their combativeness, no matter how sharply it contrasts with the TUC as a whole, is 
still largely for show. Supposed fighting unions like PCS still ultimately exist to 
moderate class struggle and how far they will go is still limited by their need to secure 
a position in negotiations by selling industrial peace. Not to mention that as businesses 
the unions have everything to lose and nothing to gain by defying the law and risking the 
sequestration of their funds.

In short, even if the TUC general council talks the talk of a 'war council,' it will 
always be a pantomime.

What then?

We're not going to see a general strike any time soon - even a token one for a single day. 
Lobbying the TUC to 'get off their knees' in ignorance of both how it works and its 
material interests is a dead end. As is looking to the Labour Party who were responsible 
for a document called In Place of Strife and would have had us today referring to the 
'Wilson anti-strike laws' instead of the Thatcher anti-strike laws had they not been defeated.

Instead, we need to look to ourselves. Enough has been written elsewhere, including by 
myself, about the need to build a movement from the ground up based on self-organisation 
and direct action that I don't need to repeat myself here. But the point remains that the 
answer lies with our class rather than those who proclaim themselves our leaders or 
representatives.

So let's not sloganise about a general strike, especially not a one-day shadow puppet 
version of it. Let's not 'call on' the TUC or the Labour Party for a single thing since 
they can offer us nothing.

Let's take matters into our own hands so that we can start to advance instead of retreating.

END

The article was orignially posted 
here:https://libcom.org/blog/responding-new-tory-strike-laws-30052015

http://www.awsm.nz/2015/06/16/responding-to-the-new-tory-strike-laws/