Now that it appears talks between BA and Unite have collapsed the Socialist Party has released the following statement concerning the actions of the SWP and the cabin crew dispute.
Occupation A Mistake
The defeat of Willie Walsh and the brutish BA management is the most important aspect to this dispute. It is therefore unfortunate that the reported decision of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) members at the end of the Right to Work Conference to invade talks between British Airways management and Unite has partially obscured this issue. This occupation was completely mistaken.
Whatever the nature of the deal being negotiated it is not for a group like the SWP to decide to break up talks. A decision to accept or reject a deal is solely the property of cabin crew and their democratically elected representatives.
In an industrial dispute the final decision on tactics to confront the employer must always rest with the strikers themselves. Socialists can assist by sharing experiences and ideas in past disputes and building support and solidarity for the strike among the general public. This has always been the method of the Socialist Party. We will offer our opinion on the course of a dispute to workers but we believe that any initiative taken in support of a dispute should be taken in consultation with the workers themselves.
A key task for socialists and trade union activists is to raise the confidence of workers to fight not to substitute themselves for workers in struggle. This will mistakenly create the impression that a special minority of activists will do the fighting leaving workers as bystanders. The Socialist Party stands for the maximum control of workers over their dispute.
It is the view of the Socialist Party that the actions of the SWP on Saturday was not in the best interests of striking cabin crew workers. Such tactics will prove to be counter-productive. It is the mass action of cabin crew through their union that is the key to defeating Walsh, not the actions of a self appointed minority. Despite this we are totally opposed to any victimisation of those who took part in this mistaken protest.
The priority for all workers in the trade union movement now is to support the cabin crew workers against Walsh and BA management.
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Pretty sensible and uncontroversial statement – be prepared for more crazy stunts, though, from the SWP. They really are all over the place, currently, and have been getting worse since Cliffe died. He used to bang on and on about ‘substitutionalism’ – bet he’s spinning in his grave this weekend!
Yes I think this is a further development of the SWP’s theory of the “old and the new” in the emerging trade union response to the economic crisis. Presumably “the new” means more substitutionism.
I’m not entirely sure this is completley new tactics form the SWP. In the 1977 at a TUC conference to discuss the firefighters dispute members of the original incarnation of ‘Right to Work’ (which was an SWP front then as well) physically attacked Joe Gormley, the right wing President of the NUM.
Congratulations to the SWP for their intervention and shame on the Socialist Party for this petty and mean-minded criticism.
It is common knowledge that the Unite leadership is trying to sell out and stitch up the BA staff and bend over backwards to accommodate Walsh and his union-busting tactics.
*sigh* even if that’s the case ‘frank staff’ the lead should have come from the strikers themselves! Any initiatives of this type run the danger of wrecking things and muddying the waters if not discussed and agreed with workers themselves! This is basic ABC sort of stuff, pal. And apart from anything else in what way has it advanced the struggle, even just a bit? The answer, fairly obviously, is ‘not at all’. Unless publicity for one’s own little sect is the priority.
How is it an attack? We think you made a mistake. High profile actions like this effect the whole of the movement. Are we not allowed to have an opinion on this?
During the first Lindsey dispute the national officers of GMB and UNITE held secret talks with the employer. The strike committee suspected foul play. They found out where the meeting was taking place and went their to find it guarded by the police who refused to let them enter. They smuggled a note past the police to the officials demanding they speak to them. The upshot of it all was the strike committee put it’s people into the negotiations and no one had to occupy a building. Why? Becasue they were the democratically elected leaders of the dispute with the power to place demands on the officialdom and the employers that could not be ignored.
That is the difference between what you did on Saturday and the actions of the Lindsey shop stewards committee did. They represented something other than themselves, you do not.
Some comments from a comrade who took part in the disruption (from ‘Dave’s Part’ blog)
The truth of the matter is that a small group of workers, approximately 200, held a protest in SUPPORT of the BA strikers. Of which some dozens were able to enter the ACAS building a minority of whom were then able to confront the hated Willie Walsh. The whole thing lasted half an hour and we were in the building for no more than 15 minutes.
It was, allow me to remind you, a small protest in support of the BA cabin crew. In its own terms it was, by chance, highly successful. Successful in that it won publicity for both the strikers and the SWP, Successful in that it showed that imaginative militant tactics can be used without negative consequences. Successful in that it encouraged BASSA strikers in their struggle with union buster Walsh.
The latter point is of vital importance and I note that many cabin crew have greeted SWP members warmly on the picket lines only yesterday and I’m sure will do so again today. They did so because they recognised that the action was taken to support them and knew, its obvious in any case, that there was no attempt by the ‘invaders’ to substitute our small action for their strike. Nobody on the protest of the picket lines thinks for a moment that the protest was substituting for the mass pickets needed to SHUT DOWN HEATHROW.
As for the political health of the SWP that is an interesting question. A question on which Dave has nothing to say of any interest because he lacks detailed knowledge of the SWP today and an understanding of its Marxist politics.
Allow me to inform you, as a close observer of the group, that the internal culture of the SWP strikes me as more healthy today than it has been for many years. note that even around the small action discussed above some SWP militants felt happy to dissent from the positions expressed in the groups press release. Something that has not happened in many years although I’m glad to report they have reversed their views as far as I understand. Another comrade remarked of national meetings of the SWP that “they used to be boring, just rubber stamps, but now they are interesting”.
This change in internal culture and democratic functioning, it needs must go further in my view, is of massive importance for the group. It is indicative, I suggest, of a group that is recovering from a near disastrous opportunist line imposed by a now discredited leadership. A leadership (sic) that has since jumped ship for media pastures new.
As for the positions of the SWP they too are now closer to those of the old IS, in a very different period, than has been the case for years. Hence the reorientation towards Right to Work and the militant minority. Hence the return to advocacy of workplace occupations and arguments over the need for rank and file movements.
I would continue as your factual errors are many Dave but I’ve not the time. But I will note that your claim that the SWP does not engage intellectually with thinkers from outside the IS Tradition is risible. Just take a glance at the last few editions of the ISJ, Socialist Review or look at the list of speakers invited to this years ‘Marxism’ event.
Is the SWP falling apart? No, Dave, its growing once more and growing through struggle. Struggles most of its critics on the ‘far left’ are far removed from. Deal with it.
And an alternative view from an ex-SWPer – also from ‘Dave’s Part’:
“to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hutten: “I have dared!”
Euston Towers is hardly the Winter Palace and the Right To Work Conference the Petrograd Soviet, but fuck me there seem to be a lot of Mensheviks around. If our genial host doesn’t have copyright on the phrase “sad sectarian”, there are a lot of people engaging in ritual SWP bashing who should have thought to wait until they saw how the “workers in struggle” before starting another exorcism.
There are perhaps some lessons to be learned from the generally approving attitude with which Socialist Worker has been received on the picket lines. THat a group of workers bullied and scared to appear in the media for fear of reprisal might welcome those that show public support for their struggle. That groups of workers forced into action are more likely to look to those prepared to stand up for them than the traditional labour and trade union leadership more interested in attacking socialists than bosses.
When I was in the SWP there seemed to be a general attitude that IT was the embryo of a revolutionary party. The last twenty years has encouraged the belief that it could not hope to do so without wider co-operation on the far left, but these events are making me think a little that the other left groups are too sectarian to be a fundamental part of the solution. I hope I’m wrong.