Whatever one thinks about the possibilities for a way forward, one thing is abundantly clear -the militancy and consciousness of the British working class are at an historically low ebb.
In order to measure this, we need criteria that we can use to judge working class militancy, activism and consciousness. For the purposes of this article I will highlight three main categories: 1) Membership in trade unions and the Labour Party 2) Militancy in the trade unions as reflected in strikes and work stoppages 3) Evidence of broader social actions and their lasting impact on militancy in the working class - for the current period, I will use the antiwar movement.
Despite the Labour Party's dramatic shift to the right, the size and make-up of its membership remains important because of its working class roots. Since Tony Blair became PM in 1997, Labour membership has halved from more than 400,000 to just above the 200,000 mark in the run up to this year's general election. (1 - Guardian)
This could be taken as a promising response to New Labour's conservatism. However, these losses in membership have not directly translated into growth of "far left" organisations.
The indication is that people have left the Labour Party to simply drop out of party politics altogether, opting in some cases for single-issue campaigns such as the Stop the War Coalition.
Trade union membership can be used as an indicator of class consciousness given that it requires a fundamental, though not necessarily highly developed, recognition of being a member of a "class" that has its own interest as opposed to the interest of another more privileged "class". The current percentage of trade unionists in the workforce stands at around 26%. The last time it was this low was in 1915 when it stood at 24.1%. It has remained below 30% since 1995. (2 -National Statistics)
Similar to trade union membership, the level of work stoppages can be used to measure class militancy. The number of work stoppages has declined to its lowest level in the recorded history of the British labour movement. Last year the total of work stoppages was a paltry 130, down from 133 in 2003 and 146 in 2002. Since 1970, when there was a record 3,943 stoppages, the numbers have steadily declined. In fact, there have not been over 1,000 work stoppages since 1987.
Numbers for days lost due to work stoppages and number of workers involved were somewhat more erratic during the same period, with 2002 seeing 943,000 workers out on strike and 1,323,000 days lost. These figures can be explained by the largest one-day mass action seen in any year since 1996, which saw a similar phenomeпоп.
Otherwise, the average for years in the 1990s through to today pales in comparison to 2,125,000 workers out and 29 million days lost in 1979 during the Winter of Discontent, and 1,221,000 strikers and 27 million days lost in 1984 in the midst of the Miners' Strike.
It is important to note that days lost in 2004 were higher than the average for the 90's, yet still below days lost in 2002. This phenomenon could be explained by noting that 343,600 of the 905,000 days lost in 2004 were from strikes that began in 2003. The number of workers involved was also significantly lower at 293,000 in 2004 to the figure of 943,000 from 2002. (3 -National Statistics)
The mass anti-war demonstration on 15 February 2003 of over one million people in London was one of the largest, if not the largest, mass social action in British history. It undoubtedly involved an unprecedented level of official union backing.
However, subsequent marches against the war failed to maintain the numbers of the original demonstration. For example, an anti-war demonstration called at the start of the war, just one month later, failed to garner even half of the original protest.
Since the end of 2003, no anti-war demonstration has assembled even one-tenth of the numbers of the original demonstration.
This is evidenced more recently by the last two national actions held explicitly against the war - 17 October 2004 and 19 March 2005 -which even by optimistic organisers' estimates did not exceed 70,000. (4 - The Guardian & BBC)
While it remains to be seen whether the anti-war movement has left a lasting political legacy for the working class, evidence for a series of key indicators points to a low ebb in class consciousness and militancy.
While there may be the occasional, largely isolated example of militancy and activism, we are undoubtedly in the midst of one of the lowest periods for our class.
The discussions about where the class is headed will continue well into the future, but have particular importance today given the situation that we face. LABOUR Marxist movement.
Our political programme must set out to win the broadest support from the groups in society which are the most active and dynamic in challenging low pay, exploitation, discrimination, repression and attacks on public services.
It must build on the key principles of previous socialist programmes - but apply these flexibly and dynamically to today's situation, and incorporate and respond to new developments.
As with the Comintern programme, and Trotsky in 1938, both of which looked back to earlier periods for inspiration, the importance for us today is not slavishly to copy every demand from a previous programme, which was itself keyed in to the situation at that time, but to follow the method of approach.
Some of the issues which were once central to the mobilisation of working class action take a very different form and different significance today.
Inflation, for example, as the rationale for mass pay battles in the period after the Russian Revolution, and as the basis for Trotsky's call in 1938 for the sliding scale of wages, is a relatively low-profile issue in Britain in 2005.
In 2005 it is hard to persuade workers to take action on wages at all, let alone fight for such a radical solution, when inflation is running at just 2-3 percent.
And while closures and bankruptcies continue to pose severe problems for the working class, especially in manufacturing (Jaguar, Rover, Marconi, etc.) the availability of unemployment benefit, and even the call for redundancy payments - which were a focus of revolutionary demands in 1921 - are now one of the factors that saps opposition and limits workers' struggles in a small and • Moscica A programme to win mass action TAPPING IN TO THE OPPOSITION TO NEW discussion on what contribution Marxists within Respect can offer to the development of a programme which not only builds the necessary broad base for a stronger electoral challenge to New Labour, but also leads in the direction of more developed and explicitly socialist politics? The first article looked at some of the lessons from historic turning points in the This second article examines ways in which the same method of approach developed in the past by Marxists to popularising the programme and locating it in current struggles can be applied in the context of today's situation in Britain.
still shrinking manufacturing industry. their jobs. 1970s, has stewards. ers have fallen behind. leaders with no perspective to offer.
Many of the strongest bastions of union organisation - big factories, shipyards, mines, car plants, docks, the printing industry - have dwindled in size, but since the great miners strike of 1984-5 pitifully few groups of workers have mounted any sustained fight to keep
The tradition of factory occupations and strikes to challenge plant closures, which - reinforced by a strong if not very political shop stewards movement - remained powerful in the UK into the
been largely eradicated through anti-union laws, weak-kneed union leaderships and a steadily weakening level of unionisation which has also seen a huge reduction in numbers of shop
potential
The day to day solidarity and class con- strength. sciousness which flowed from the collective experiences of large numbers of manual workers in large factories, shipyards, coal mines, and steelworks, and the communities they lived in, has been broken down as the workforce has dwindled, workplaces have become smaller, the work itself become more high-tech, and the traditions, skills and memories that sustained generations of class fightThe popular local campaign to defend the Jaguar plant at Brown's Lane in Coventry, like that against the closure of Rover car production, effectively took the form of one protest march to a rally -addressed by defeatist national union
The energy and radicalism of the young, newly-organised workers in the 1930s US, thrown into struggles for sides. wages and conditions, is sadly lacking from most sectors of the British trade union movement in 2005, where recruitment is struggling to keep pace with the retirement of older activists, and where the average age in many unions is edging up towards the 50 mark.
And while it is true to say that in 1938 there was very little in the way of a public sector workforce other than the civil service, local government and the state machinery, even this post-war development in Britain has undergone massive changes since the post-war nationalisations of utilities and emergence of the welfare state, education and health care.
Although the public sector is now the largest component of the trade union movement, 25 years of neoliberal policies, privatisation and timid trade union leadership have undermined even this
centre of working class Home to art tone dey the 'owever there are differences
comparison with some of the political difficulties of the 1930s.
Then the stark threat of Nazism served to rally many social democratic and left wing workers behind the "democratic" capitalist governments, a line encouraged by years of "Popular Front" policies promoted by the Communist Party.
And Stalin's vicious repression of the revolutionaries in the Soviet Union had not deterred millions of workers who had rallied around the victorious 1917 revolution from supporting Communist Parties which were in general much bigger than any forces to their left, leaving Trotsky's supporters facing witch-hunts on all
By contrast George W Bush's hypocritical "war on terror", and the resultant invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have