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From International Socialism, No.23, Winter 1965/66, pp.5-6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
As we go to press, the news of the Ilford-NUGMW agreement on 100 per cent unionism in return for the management’s right to sack workers involved in ‘unofficial’ activity on the shop floor, together with Sir William Carron’s implicit support for an extension of such agreements into the engineering industry, should ring a clear warning bell for socialists and all industrial militants. It was clear from the start that the new pattern of industrial ‘discipline’ that plan-conscious capitalism demanded in return for making long-term commitments on investment and production posed major threats to untamed centres of worker sovereignty on the shop floor.
In plant agreements for 100 per cent unionism (with riders on expulsion and thus the sack for militants) lie the central strategy of the employers to break the power of the shop stewards’ movement. To the extent that the ugly vista of the State is being seen in an auxiliary role – threatening obligatory early notice of wage claims and fines for trade unions that fail to sabotage unofficial action by the rank and file – the threat is extended to even the meagre traditional ‘rights and freedoms’ of the labour movement that have been won since Taff Vale. Socialists must shout good and hard about the seriousness of these threats – the labour movement is being beaten not by direct assault but by inner rot, inner capitulation. Maximum support must be given to the shop stewards’ movement to equip itself organisationally, and politically, for the fights to come.
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Last updated on 8.10.2007