Which Side are you on?

[gallinello]

Marmora Man Wrote:

--

> I do not see any of this - the miners strike, or

> the Lindsey refinery strike as class conflict.

> They are industrial disputes - about how to best

> manage the business in the interests of all -

> workforce, shareholders and management. I very

> much doubt there will be many, if any, solidarity

> strikes.

Source: BBC

Meanwhile workers at a number of sites have walked out in support of those who have lost their jobs in North Lincolnshire:

* In Teesside, some 1,100 construction workers on a new biofuel plant project, owned by Ensus, walked out. A company spokesman at the site - on the Wilton chemical complex - said the action was not taken by people directly employed by them

* About 300 contract workers downed tools at Aberthaw power station in south Wales, with some holding a peaceful protest outside. The company said no RWE npower staff were involved and operations were not affected

* Up to 450 contract maintenance staff walked out at the Stanlow Oil Refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. Shell says the action will not affect production but may delay routine maintenance projects

* Some contract workers have downed tools at Ferrybridge power station in West Yorkshire. Scottish and Southern Electric say the plant is operating normally

* In North Yorkshire, contract workers took support action at Drax and Eggborough power stations, near Selby. The GMB union says the total number taking part at Drax, Eggborough and Ferrybridge is about 600 workers.

* At Staythorpe power station near Newark, Nottinghamshire, 100 scaffolding contractors walked out unofficially for a second day

* Workers at Fiddler's Ferry power station in Cheshire, owned by Scottish and Southern Energy, also showed their support by walking out.

All this on just the first day!

Industrial disputes are the clearest, signal indicators of class conflict/struggle. How is Total, in this episode of mass sackings, showing it has the interests of its workforce at heart?

Class conflict is a term long-used mostly by socialists. Communists and many anarchists define a 'class' by its relationship to the 'means of production' --- such as factories, land, and machinery. From this point of view, the social control of production and labour is a contest between classes, and the division of these resources necessarily involves conflict and inflicts harm.

[LegalEagle-ish]

Galli - I'm on your side. Had to sell out on the class war front though in the end - had enough of being a working class hero to the apathetic, broken working class and decided to become a lawyer instead!

[Marmora Man]

Leagle E (or Chav as I remember you) your statement

Class conflict is a term long-used mostly by socialists. Communists and many anarchists define a 'class' by its relationship to the 'means of production' --- such as factories, land, and machinery. From this point of view, the social control of production and labour is a contest between classes, and the division of these resources necessarily involves conflict and inflicts harm.

Surely mean that there will always be class conflict - for if those labouring in an industry take over the control of production they become, by default the ruling class - and someone else must become the labouring class. It becomes a never ending pointless cycle. I just see it as a far more simple problem - how best to manage an industry and just cannot understand why it needs to be politicised in the way that you and Galli require - it doesn't help resolve the differences.

I acknowledge that others have come out in support of the Lindsey workers - and I'm surprised. Let's see how much impact such secondary action has.

[vinceayre]

gallinello Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

I'm afraid my analysis and

> belief system will remain fixed on the need to

> overthrow this rotten, outmoded, unjust, wasteful

> system.

Gallinello, what would you propose to replace it with, communism perhaps as that has worked so well else where.

Vince

[macroban]

I'd like to see the Transitional Programme too.

[gallinello]

vinceayre Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

Gallinello, what would you propose to replace it

with, communism perhaps as that has worked so well

else where.

Vince, I believe in a socialist form of democracy based on mass workers' organisations, as existed in the early stages of the Russian revolution. In the interim period, or transitional stage (as referred to by ex-Troskyite, Macroban), I believe in the carrying forward of democratic reforms within the existing parliamentary system - for instance, the abolition of the monarchy and House of Lords, and the introduction of proportional representation - as a vital ingredient in the fight for a workers' government.

I would hold that those other places you make reference to, North Korea or the old Stalinist USSR and Cuba, in which the state owns everything, are not true communist entities. There, the state owns the social wealth but because there's little or no democracy, a privileged bureaucracy owns and controls the state. So, in fact, a privileged minority owns the social wealth.Socialism means collective ownership of social wealth. There can't be collective ownership of social wealth without collective democracy.

[vinceayre]

You seem to be wishing for an impossible socialst eutopia that will never happen. Abolishing the monachy is like cancelling your car insurance in the vain hope that you will never have a crash.When in fact if there ever was a socialist collective democracy is the one time you would need the monarchy to mopp up the mess a bunch of idealised but incompetent socialist would leave after they spent all the money and bankrupted the country( sounds a bit familiar). Nobody of any political nous supports PR as it has been prooved a total failure in all the country's it is in, even Italy who love political chaos have abandoned it. Abolishing the House of Lords may sound nice and egalitarian but you need a second chamber to keep the first chamber in check, be it made up of toffs or proles.

So far the system of free market economy has proved to be wealth creating for the country as a whole and should be continued even if it makes a cock up of things every 30 years and we go back 15 years in economic terms, the main problem is that there is not the polotical will to alow creative destruction to bring about change, one day we may have but at the momnet we aren't quite ready for it. Once we are you will genuinely see Adams Smiths invisible hand at work.

[Marmora Man]

Vince - good to read a fellow minded EDF'er.

I plan to comment further on the More4 evening that Gallinello recommended once I've watched the programmes.

[????]

*coughs*

[bigbadwolf]

Don't you come it with that treasonous Daily Star tone Quidsy, we know which comrade butters your bread! If you were caught even wiping your arse with that commie rag on CDR Marmora's vessel he would've had the skin flayed from your back!

Do svidaniya.

[Marmora Man]

Whose Side Are You On?

Review by a libertarian:

The programme was entertaining in the way that many folk tales are entertaining. It failed, completely, as history or as an objective documentary.

It was possible to sympathise with the communities and individuals that were fighting the gradual erosion of the coal industry and the jobs that went with it. Some of the folk songs and some (but very little) of the poetry that was created during the period was worth listening to. The various ?speaking heads? were all talking from one shared perspective and none of the events were put into the context of the times. There were many occasions where the film maker was, at least by implication, applauding and approving the thuggery, violence and intimidation directed toward those that didn't join the strike or who broke ranks and went back to work. Violence by the police = BAD. Violence by strikers = GOOD. This was far too simplistic.

Ken Loach is not a fully paid up Marxist historian such as Eric Hobsbaum but every one of his films and documentaries take a sentimental view of the nobility of hard labour and the brotherhood of the working class ? a harder edged version of the Ealing Comedies. This film was perhaps a more extreme example of this failing.

The erosion of the coal industry was inevitable ? as evidenced by its state today. Coal was too costly to extract, due to a combination of a lack of automation and high costs ? both contributed to, in part, by the NUMs approach to industrial relations - I do not exonerate the Coal Board in this either.

There is little doubt that Arthur Scargill initiated the strike with deliberate intent to foster, in Gallinello's terms, a Marxist class struggle. By intentionally ignoring then current legislation he created a situation where the miners were on the wrong side of the law and denied the union members proper funding and strike pay. His undoubted public speaking skills and ability to lead a crowd, by his claptrap*, to a crescendo of enthusiasm and unity gave the miners false hope. I don?t think he is unintelligent and he must have known fairly early on that he was on the wrong side of the particular issue. That he persevered is, I assume, a tribute to own wrong headed loyalty to, and belief in, the outdated, incoherent and failed political theory that is Marxism. Perhaps he truly believed that the British "working class" would rise to support his union and overthrow the government?

The decline of the coal industry was inevitable, but its precipitate decline was the result of Scargill?s wrong headed analysis and tactics. As Peter Walker (Energy Secretary) said Margaret Thatcher was fortunate in her enemies ? a more amenable stand from the NUM could have facilitated a more managed decline, with appropriate training and the development of alternative industries over time - phasing in the new as the old was phased out. The damage to the communities and individuals would have been markedly less and subsequent changes to Union legislation might not have been so easily achieved but for the image of unions and union members that the Miner?s Strike fostered. To that extent Scargill not only lost over this particular issue ? he subsequently damaged, irreversibly, the status of unionship.

* Claptrap = A trick or device of language designed to catch applause. OED.

[david_carnell]

I'm yet to watch the programme (it's not yet on 4OD) but as "Industrial Relations in Britain 1979-90" was the title of my university dissertation I shall await with interest.

As an aside, there was an interesting article with Bob Crowe in the Guardian on Saturday.

[gallinello]

MM.

Interesting and valid review, but: "outdated, invalid and incoherent political theory" how can an objective analysis arrive at that conclusion?

Times Online:

The dispute over the sacking of 650 workers at the Lindsey oil refinery increased last night as wildcat strikes spread to four other British industrial sites and Total, its French parent company, rejected calls for further talks with union chiefs.

As Lindsey workers publicly burnt their dismissal letters at a rally outside the Lincolnshire plant and union bosses branded the sackings ?outrageous?, at least 1,740 workers joined the walkouts in sympathy. They included 900 contractors at the Sellafield nuclear plant in west Cumbria, who stopped work after a lunchtime mass meeting.

Michel B?n?zit, Total?s president of refining and marketing, placed the blame for the dispute on sub-contractors who had been involved in the expansion of the Lindsey plant, which was approaching completion.

?The discussion has to take place between the unions and the sub-contractors,? he told The Times from Paris. ?It is not our duty . . . [and] we are not responsible.?

The French oil and gas company fired about 650 contracted workers last week in a dispute over threatened redundancies on a ?300 million project to install desulphurisation equipment. Total, which insists that the staff were temporary, said they had until 4pm yesterday to reapply for their jobs but many appeared intent on defying that call.

?Let them show us how many want to go back in there crawling on their bellies for their jobs,? Phil Whitehurst, a union official, said at the rally. ?We go out together, we go back together.?

Tom Hardacre, Unite?s national officer, also adopted an uncompromising stance. ?The outrageous sacking of workers at Lindsey is one the most aggressive acts I?ve witnessed as a trade union official,? he said.

?Even some of the employers at Lindsey did not want to issue the letters to the workers but were forced to do so.?

The dispute showed little sign of ending yesterday. At EDF Energy?s Eggborough coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire, 300 contracted staff walked out in sympathy. A further 240 construction staff at the South Hook liquefied natural gas terminal in Milford Haven, South Wales, and 300 workers at an oil refinery on the Humber operated by ConocoPhillips also joined the protests.

At all of them, and at Sellafield, officials emphasised that there had been no disruption to their everyday activities as most of the striking workers were builders and scaffolders rather than operations staff.

The fresh walkouts yesterday mean the disruption has affected 16 of Britain?s largest power stations and energy plants, raising fears that Britain?s power supplies could be affected if the dispute continues.

Yesterday, thousands of contractors were on strike at Drax, Britain?s largest power station, E.ON?s power power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, EDF Energy?s power plants at Cottam and West Burton and at three sites operated by RWE NPower at Aberthaw in Wales, Didcot in Oxfordshire and Staythorpe.

[Marmora Man]

Galli,

You are confusing industrial action with politics.

I am. I admit, surprised at the extent of the sympathy strikes in support of the Lindsey workers but at less than 2,000 people it hardly represents anarchy or a revolutionary uprising - the Lindsey worker's beef is with the Total management, not the government of the country.

The challenge Sean McG always throws at my libertarian stance is - "show me a country that operates a low tax, small government" - my response is that that is the way the political wind is blowing - big state and supra state operations are becoming discredited. So I throw out a similar challenge to you - where in the world is their a successful and popular Marxist government?

[DaveR]

"I believe in a socialist form of democracy based on mass workers' organisations, as existed in the early stages of the Russian revolution."

I believe that history has shown this to be an impossible dream, and inconsistent with basic human/familial/social instincts. That's why no state has been able to combine functioning socialism with real democracy - if you give people a choice they choose something else. It's also why some sort of market based economy is inevitable - political and economic freedom go hand in hand. If there is no official market there will be a black market. This also applies to the labour market, even more so in these times of (legal and practical) free movement. The current strikes will be resolved one way or another without any significant change in terms of employment or working conditions, and certainly without any legislative change affecting employment rights, for example. They are politically irrelevant (as MM has already observed)

[gallinello]

MM: How can industrial conflict be anything other than political, especially given the level of support from fellow engineering workers, as evinced in this current crisis?

Guardian:

"In a time of general recession and with unemployment at 25-30% in the engineering construction industry, this is serious stuff. Conventional wisdom say workers don't do this in these situations. Where can the dispute go next? There are three options. The first is that the strikers succumb to financial hardship and decide to continue to fight the battle another day ? maybe later in the summer through the official ballot. The second is that Total throws in the towel as it did in February this year. The final one is that we're in for a prolonged deadlock, with the union movement starting to raise money to keep the strikers from having to be forced back through economic penury.

Already, there's some sign that it may be Total that blinks first. Today it is emphasising that it has not sacked any workers ? rather it's the two contractors that have sacked workers ? and it is actively encouraging talks between the contractors and the strikers to resolve the strike. So under the pressure of escalating action, the line that no talks could happen until the strikers returned to work has been shelved. Of course, talks neither guarantee an end to the strike nor the resolution of the issues that gave rise to it. All in all, it's shaping up to be the mother of all battles for the union movement this summer.

They are in no mood to compromise or back down. The majority did not re-apply for the jobs by the 22 June deadline set by the company. Some went further and burnt their dismissal notices in a public display of protest. On top of that, one of the strikers' unions, the GMB, has organised a mass demonstration at the gates of the Lindsey oil refinery today. Together with the Unite union, the GMB is preparing to hold a national ballot for industrial action on the issues of issue on pay and job security. This is likely to result in a national strike by 20,000-30,000 engineering construction workers. After the weekend and the solidarity action that greeted the sackings last Friday, even more workers at more sites ? between 3 and 4,000 workers at power stations and oil refineries ? have come back out on unofficial strike in support for the Lindsey strikers."

[LegalEagle-ish]

All of human life is politics.

[Marmora Man]

Gallinello,

It remains in industrial dispute and not a political dispute. You perhaps believe everything is political - I don't know, but I cannot see how this has a political dimension. It's about how much a particular section of the workforce are paid and is set against a background of high unemployment in that particular sector.

This dispute is a negotiation between two bodies - in essence it is no different between two individuals negotiating over what one is prepared to pay for some "good" and what the other is prepared to pay for that "good". Both sides have power - one controls payment, the other controls the goods. Each can threaten to withhold that which they control but then neither prospers - their mutual interest is met by negotiating a deal.

In business in every deal I have ever been involved in the optimum is usually achieved when both sides feel they have met about 80% of their objectives. Business people recognise that going for the full 100% benefit is not usually the best long term bet.

Of the three options set out by the Guardian above - not one proposes or suggests government intervention nor appeal to government. In reality there are three options but I see them as:

1. Stay out on strike until that Total folds completely (unlikely)

2. Both parties negotiate a revised deal (probable) - with or without support (financial and moral) from other unions and workers.

2. The workforce return to work now with no change. (improbable)

[Marmora Man]

LegalEagle-ish Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

All of human life is politics

I ask:

Love, parenthood, family - are these all political?

Growing flowers, tending a grave, donating time to a charity - are these all political?

Singing in a choir, admiring a piece of art, painting a picture - are these all political?

Swimming in the sea, walking in the countryside, lying on your back and looking at the stars - are these all political?

Reading a novel, writing a novel, watching a movie - are these all political?

Gardening, having dinner with friends, having a pint in the pub - are these all political?

All of human life is politics - no it's not!

[gallinello]

If we take politics to mean the manner in which groups of social subjects, i.e unions and a major petro-chemical company in this case, make decisions and interact with each other, then this latest bout of industrial conflict is political.It involves a struggle with authority and concerns power and, therefore, it can only be political.

With reference to LegalE's statement, I would replace All with Much, as a lot of the activities you list - love, parenthood, attitudes to death, choice of literature, writing style, charity - can be borne out of political circumstances or decisions arrived at through politics.

Maybe some feminist EDFers could shed some light on the phrase: the personal is political, just to broaden the discussion out a little.

[Marmora Man]

If we take love to mean hate, if we take black to mean white we can live in George Orwell's 1984 and all indulge in Newspeak.

If however, we consult the Oxford English Dictionary we find:

Politic: - pertaining to a constitutional state

Politics: - The science and art of government, the science dealing with the form, organisation and administration of a state or part of one and with the regulation of its relations with other states.

Political: - pertaining to the state, its government and policy

I can remember the slogans of the 70's. Gallinello your definition is straight out of the Young Socialist guidebook circa 1975 and Leagle Eagle's from the same era as is "the personal is political". As I recall this is roughly where I started by sayng that your politics were out of date.

[vinceayre]

Are yes Marmora Man you may well be quoting from the OED but that particular tome is a bourgeois capitalist tool and not to be trusted!!!

[gallinello]

Admittedly, mine is an archaic 1995 edition, but your OED, regretably, like your political opinions, judgements and analyses, appears to omit those same definitions you find unsuitable and unpalatable in support of your rather narrow interpretation of current political developments.

However, if I consult the OED, I find, along with your 'discoveries' :

Politic: (of an action) judicious, expedient; (of a person) prudent, sagacious; political (now only in body politic).

Politics: a particular set of ideas, principles or commitments; activities concerned with the acquisition or exercise of authority or government; an organisational process or principle affecting authority, status, etc.

Political: of, relating to, or engaged in politics; belonging to or forming part of a civil administration; having an organized form of society or government; taking or belonging to a side in politics or in controversial matters; relating to or affecting interests of status or authority in an organization rather than matters of principle.

Incidentally, MM, who are we at war with this week, Eastasia or Eurasia, and where would this politically immature, politically naive comrade get himself a copy of the '75 edition of the Young Socialist 'guidebook' ?

[Marmora Man]

Galli,

In an earlier post you spoke of ?a socialist form of democracy based on mass workers' organisations, as existed in the early stages of the Russian revolution?. You have also mentioned ?class war?, ?economic oppression? ?the need to overthrow the system?. From this I take you to be a left of centre socialist keen on changing the political landscape of this country.

I do not disagree you OED definitions for Politic, Politics or Political. Except that you rely on the later, more narrow, definitions of the words to rebut my point, rather than the first and most usual definition used in the dictionary.

EG: ?an organisational process or principle affecting authority, status, etc? and ?relating to or affecting interests of status or authority in an organization rather than matters of principle?.

Politics within an organisation is not the politics that you and I have been debating. Surely you are interested in the big heroic ideas of politics, not the petty bureaucratic details of power within an organization? Linking pay disputes within a self contained business or economic unit to how the country is governed is a weak debating point. Unless, of course, you genuinely believe there is a gigantic conspiracy of all in "power", civil servants, government, businessmen, officers in the forces, managers and others in authority, to "do down" the working man.

Having worked in various elements of this list I can assure you they are incapable of organising what would have to be a vast and all encompassing conspiracy and certainly not capable of keeping it secret in the unlikely event they ever managed to get it underway.