BLACKPOOL — During the Trade Union Congress conference last month, ARTHUR SCARGILL, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, spoke with FRANK NOAKES from Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly.
Delegates to the 124th annual conference of the TUC gave Arthur Scargill a rousing reception. King Arthur, as he was affectionately known to his members during the 1984-85 miners' strike, offered a clear alternative to the movement's current path of decline. The congress loved it, and then voted against it.
This can partly be explained by the binding of delegations to previously determined outcomes. But it also reflects a lack of self-confidence in many rank and file delegates after years of retreat. Scargill often appears as a lone voice at such forums, but clearly there is a large degree of support among many union activists for a more determined approach to industrial relations.
Not so among most of the officialdom. Their fear of this appeal can be measured by the personal abuse they reserve for Scargill.
"It's true that if anyone recommends or advocates industrial action as a means of defending workers' rights, then they are referred to by their detractors as being members of the flat-earth society and friends of the dinosaur. They have to use words of abuse because they have no policy by which to come back at you", Scargill says.
"We've had a Conservative government in Britain for 13 years, and during that time we've seen eight pieces of anti-trade union legislation, we've seen unemployment rise from 1 million to 4.5 million in real terms, we've seen the greatest recession since the 1930s with business after business going bankrupt, and probably the worst yet to come.
"We have an increase in racial violence and intolerance and we've seen an upsurge of problems and difficulties in our inner cities; and as we go towards the 21st century these problems are going to get worse unless something is done to change the situation."
Scargill says it's clear "that the policies of the apologists who advocate collaboration have not worked. If their policies had worked, then during the past 13 years we would have got rid of the Tory government, we would have reduced unemployment, and we wouldn't now be enmeshed in anti-trade union legislation. It is therefore self-evident that the policies that have been advocated by the British TUC have failed miserably, not only in this country but in other countries like the USA where they were first advocated."
Indeed, in the US trade union coverage has fallen to around 12% of the work force. "That's the price of consensus politics", says Scargill.
Direct action
"We've experienced over the years that only direct action can succeed, whether it be the Tolpuddle Martyrs, whether it be the suffragists or even, as recently as 1971, the trade union movement of Britain in smashing the Industrial Relations Act. And yet there are people in this congress who still haven't learned the lessons of even recent history, and because they haven't done that we are now seeing the emergence of the kind of organisation that is not in the interest of working-class people."
A recent report shows that fewer workers are prepared to play the role of shop steward; as of 1990 only 38% of workplaces had a union representative, down from 54% in 1984. This makes more difficult the task of turning the trade union movement around, a very practical question for active unionists. How is it to be done? Scargill sees no short cuts.
"Workers have to fight back by making clear that they're not prepared to accept redundancies; they're not prepared to accept pit closures and factory closures and shipyard closures; they're not prepared to accept the destruction of industry in this country, and indeed, in any other country.
"Workers have got to understand that at local level, at area level and at national level they have got to take decisive action to defend the hard-won gains of the past century. If they don't do that, further erosion of rights will take place", he warns.
"The only way that one can defend the job that they have, the living standard that they have — at the end of the day, if all else fails, if all negotiations come to grief — is to take industrial action. There's nothing wrong with a worker saying 'I'm sorry, I'm not prepared to work for the price you're prepared to pay'. After all, if it's all right for a capitalist to say 'I'm not prepared to sell the goods produced unless I can get the price that I want', then it's perfectly correct to argue that a worker should sell the only thing that he or she has got to sell for the right sort of price."
And within their own union?
"Workers inside of trade unions should advocate and fight for policies, and until and unless they can win those policies at local, area and national levels, then we're not going to achieve the kind of breakthrough that is required to save jobs, wages and conditions and, overall, at the end of the day, transform society from a capitalist system into a socialist system."
Defeatist congress
Asked to sum up this year's conference, Scargill, who failed to regain a seat on the TUC's general council, a position he lost four years ago, says: "This TUC congress is defeatist, it's collaborationist and it's an apology for what ought to be a fight back against a Tory government.
"How else can you explain capitulation on the European Common Market and adherence to the Maastricht Treaty, which is a philosophy, on a European basis, of monetarist policy?", he asks. "How else can you explain the congress's outlook in inviting the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry to address this congress at a time when they're not allowing sufficient time for rank and file delegates to participate and argue against policies which are right-wing orientated?
"If you look at what they're putting forward, there can be no doubt that it's certainly a collaborationist TUC, and as far as anti-trade union legislation is concerned, it's an apology for what ought to be a fighting trade union movement."
The media, which exerts a greater influence on the TUC leadership than union members do, smugly dismiss Scargill as representing the past, a figure of derision. But Scargill's message remains a powerful one. Too powerful for the BBC? BBC2 televised the conference, but mysteriously developed a "technical fault" as Scargill rose to speak and overcame the problem when he resumed his seat.
"It is not the province of a Trade Union Congress, in my view, to support the capitalist system, to support the mixed economy, support the European Common Market, and also advocate adherence to anti-trade union legislation, when they recognise that it's in violation of the United Nations charters and ILO conventions."
Scargill says rather: "It's the job of a Trade Union Congress to mobilise mass opposition to anti-union legislation, to mobilise opposition to high unemployment, and the job of the TUC to mobilise mass opposition to economic, political, social madness being perpetrated by the Tory government today."