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From International Socialism, No. 62, September 1973, pp. 3–4.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Paul Blackledge.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THAT MORE has been at stake in the behaviour of Jones and Scanlon than an isolated slip is shown by their actions during the electricians’ strike in Chrysler Coventry.
Here was a strike for higher pay, even if on an exclusively sectional basis, in opposition to the freeze. The initial response of other stewards on the spot in the Stoke engine plant was to tell their members to respect the electricians’ picket line and to black any work normally done by strikers. The result was that the plant was quickly brought to a halt.
The issue for any genuine trade unionist should have been a simple one. Although the electricians’ union is on the extreme right wing of the movement, it was being compelled to give recognition to a dispute which a group of its members had begun. There should have been no argument over the need to support it.
However, it seems that even simple issues of trade union principle are too much for the leaders of the transport workers and engineering unions. They told their members to ignore the electricians’ picket lines and to man machines repaired first by supervisors and later by non- nion labour employed on a ‘self-employed, weekly contract’ basis (lump labour, to use normal English).
To justify themselves, they invented a new definition of blacklegging. For workers to do the electricians’ work themselves would, they said on 24 August, be ‘blacklegging’, but to work alongside scabs who were doing that work was not. In a letter to the electricians’ union national official, Roy Sanderson, Scanlon stated that AUEW members would take no action for or against the electricians. What in effect this meant was behaving just as Chrysler wanted, by pretending that no dispute was taking place and leaving the electricians isolated.
But it was the transport workers’ district secretary, William Lapworth, who drew out the full implications of the line being taken by the two unions:
‘If our transport workers at Chrysler, who have a separate agreement, are never going to cross picket lines – and everyone wants to put up picket lines these days – then they will become involved in everyone’s disputes.’ (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 30 August).
If such an attitude were to gain general currency in the movement it would do the employers the best favour for many years. The flying picket tactic – used to such effect in the miners, dockers and builders struggles of last year and in the earlier ‘shoddy work’ dispute at Chrysler-would be made unworkable. Trade union officials would achieve what the government, with its trials in Mold and Shrewsbury, has not. The TGWU’s attitude did not mean just letting workers go through picket lines. The union organised them to do so itself. On 30 August the electricians received an assurance from the union convenor at Lucas, Birmingham, that none of his members would drive through their picket lines. The Birmingham district official then stepped in to reverse the decision and to get Chrysler off the hook.
Hugh Scanlon made a pathetic attempt to justify the instruction to scab when he was lobbied outside the TUC by his own members from Chrysler Linwood. According to the Financial Times (which, unlike the Morning Star, prints such things) he told them that ‘the executive decision was taken in the light of Mr Chapple’s statement that the strike would be called off if the company offered to pay the £250 but was prevented by a Pay Board order. He argued that the EEPTU was therefore not opposing the government by this strike.’ (5 September)
Presumably by backing continued talks with Heath and by helping Chrysler isolate the strikers, Scanlon and Jones were opposing the government!
The way to fight the freeze is not, of course, to tell trade unionists in such cases to blackleg. It is to suggest to the rank and file electricians that they continue the strike, as they started it, unofficially if Chapple does indeed back down once the Pay Board steps in. As it is, Jones and Scanlon have enabled the right wing inside the electricians union to appear, for once, really to be caring about their members’ wages and conditions.
The instruction to scab not only harmed the electricians. It also weakened all shop floor organisation inside Chrysler by giving their head to those elements in the plants who are always hostile to any calls for solidarity. Jones and Scanlon have strengthened the right wing on the shop stewards committees and given real aid to Chrysler’s attempts to intimidate its workforce.
The redefinition of blacklegging also helps the right in the trade union movement generally. Frank Chapple has been the greatest opponent to the extension of the solidarity principle among workers in the past and there is no doubt that next time transport workers or engineers put on pickets, he will use the behaviour of these unions at Chrysler as an excuse for telling his members to scab.
No doubt he will repeat, almost word for word, what Bob Wright of the engineering union, told Linwood workers.
‘The electricians are involved in actions which are contrary to our interests and therefore we cannot be expected to act in solidarity with them. Our members at Linwood should not black these machines.’ (Financial Times, 7 September 1973)
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